The upcoming Frostpunk 2 is set to expand and build on its beloved predecessor in a number of ways, from the introduction of districts to factions and more, but one in particular that’s sure to help greatly extend the game’s life is the fact that, unlike the original, Frostpunk 2 is going to feature full modding support.
Speaking in a recent interview with Polygon, co-director Jakub Stokalski explained that since the original Frostpunk was built on developer 11 bit studios’ proprietary Liquid Engine, giving players access to full modding tools proved quite complicated. However, with Frostpunk 2 built on Unreal Engine 5, enabling mod support became much easier, which, as per Stokalski, is something that’s likely going to lengthen the game’s shelf life significantly.
“It’s something that we actually were wanting to do even since Frostpunk, but weren’t really able to,” he said. “We built Frostpunk on our proprietary engine, which allowed us to do a lot of cool custom things, but the investment needed to make it available to the players was just not warranted. This decision is a lot easier now, because Unreal is an established game engine with a known pipeline for this type of stuff.
“Strategy games, and PC games in particular, benefit from having a vibrant modding community. People enjoy playing with the games — not only by playing them. That’s a great thing to support, period.
“The community for Frostpunk and Frostpunk 2 seems to be very invested not only in the game, with the way the game works, but in the world of the game. There’s people coming up with fanfiction, like writing different scenarios, playing scenarios on Reddit in correspondence form. So just having the opportunity for those who would like to have a go at trying to expand this world to what they imagine is exciting for the whole team.”
Frostpunk 2 is launching for PC on September 20. PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions are also in the works, but don’t yet have a release date.
