Games like Frostpunk, where the law book does the damage
Playze Staff · Nov 9, 2026
Heat means life and every decision comes at a price. That is Frostpunk's own store listing describing itself, and the second clause is the half nobody manages to copy. Establishing laws that regulate the existence of your society is a menu in this game, and signing one is not a tech unlock — it is something you have done, and the book keeps the page. Games like Frostpunk therefore split cleanly into the ones that rebuilt the thermometer and the ones that rebuilt the law book.
Seven that get at least one half of it right, with what our record has logged for each.
| Game | Ends, or endless? | Low | Date | Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banished | Endless | $5.44 | 19 Oct | Driffle |
| IXION | Ends, in chapters | $8.39 | 28 Oct | Loaded |
| Frostpunk 2 | Story, then endless | $4.33 | 17 Oct | GAMIVO |
| This War of Mine | Ends with the siege | $1.06 | 20 Oct | Gameseal |
| Timberborn | Endless | $18.36 | 30 Oct | YUPLAY |
| Endzone: A World Apart | Scenarios and sandbox | $0.78 | 20 Oct | Gameseal |
| Against the Storm | Runs end, campaign goes on | $2.28 | 13 Oct | Gameseal |
Coal, heat and a settlement that cannot move
Banished
Before the generator there was a cart of supplies and a group of exiles, and Banished is still the cleanest statement of the thing Frostpunk built on. Its own Steam listing is blunt about where the pressure comes from: the townspeople are the primary resource, and they are born, grow older, work, have children and eventually die. A town that looks stable is often a town with nobody of working age in twelve years' time, and you find that out far too late to fix it.
The difference is that nothing here is scripted. There are no skill trees — any structure can be built at any time, as the store listing puts it — and no storm arriving on a timer to tell you when your plan ran out. That makes it harder to lose dramatically and much easier to lose slowly, which is a particular taste. Our data has Banished at 90% positive from 43,353 Steam reviews, a figure that has barely shifted in a decade, and Shining Rock Software built it.
No timer, no storm warning. The crisis in Banished is usually a birth rate you stopped watching. (Official Steam screenshot)
IXION
Nothing here is a city. The Tiqqun is a space station and an ark already coming apart, so you cannot expand outward, only rearrange the sectors of the hull you have. Bulwark Studios' pitch is a builder that wants you vigilant, constantly reassessing, and in practice it means the layout you committed to in chapter one is the layout you are stuck arguing with in chapter four.
Its chapters give it the one structural thing Banished lacks and Frostpunk has — an ending that arrives whether you are ready or not. Our data has IXION at 79% from 17,866 reviews, the second-lowest here, and the structural reason is easy to see: the chapters are scripted, so a station laid out badly in the first act is a station you argue with for the rest of the game. Accept that and it is the nearest thing to a second Frostpunk campaign, in orbit.
Six sectors of hull, and no outside to build into. Everything in IXION competes for the same floor. (Official Steam screenshot)
Games like Frostpunk where signing a law is the mechanic
Frostpunk 2
The sequel does the obvious thing and scales the Book of Laws up until you are no longer the one who decides. You are a Steward now, districts replace individual buildings, and the factions inside your metropolis have their own interests to be bargained with — 11 bit's own description frames expansion as the only route to survival, which is the trap: every district you add buys you a problem with somebody.
Whether that is an improvement is the most argued question on this list. Our data has Frostpunk 2 at 75% from 27,227 reviews, the lowest score among the seven, and the shift in scale is the obvious reason why: you no longer walk past one hungry family on the way to the generator, you read a council vote. What the change buys is a law book with real political weight behind it, difficulty you can adjust, and Steam Workshop support. If the laws were the part that stayed with you rather than the frost, this is the only game here that takes them further rather than borrowing them.
The original launch trailer, uploaded by 11 bit studios, who made both Frostpunk games and This War of Mine.
This War of Mine
Same studio, twelve years older, and no city at all — a handful of civilians in one bombed building, scavenging at night and surviving the day. Its listing states the premise by negation: you do not play as an elite soldier. The Final Cut edition bundles every update and free expansion plus an extra scenario. Where it matches the generator is the arithmetic of harm; where it goes further is that there is no law to hide behind when you take food from someone weaker. Our data has This War of Mine at 94% from 97,835 reviews.
One building, a handful of people, and the same arithmetic of harm with no law to sign for it. (Official Steam screenshot)
Winter swapped for drought and fallout
Timberborn
Beavers inherited the ruins, and the constraint is water rather than heat — recurring droughts and waves of toxic waste that you survive by damming rivers and irrigating in advance. Two factions, Folktails and Iron Teeth, build differently enough to be worth separate runs. At 96% from 41,972 reviews in our data, Timberborn holds the highest score here.
Endzone: A World Apart
A hundred and fifty years after an ecological collapse, people come back up from underground shelters into radioactivity and contaminated rain. It is Frostpunk's grimness with a Geiger counter where the thermometer goes, and over seventy buildings to arrange. Our data has Endzone at 77% from 10,044 reviews.
Timberborn's dams are the whole plan. A dry season you failed to store for is the loss condition. (Official Steam screenshot)
A network instead of New London
Against the Storm
Eremite Games explicitly inverts the premise. Its listing says so: unlike most survival city builders where your focus is on a single city, here you build a network of settlements for the Scorched Queen, each one a timed expedition into a wilderness that the Blightstorm will take back. The listing names the races it hands you, and they do not eat the same things, so no two settlements are run the same way.
That makes it the furthest from Frostpunk in shape and among the closest in feeling — always short of something, always on a clock — and a failed run costs forty minutes rather than an evening. The settlement is disposable; what improves between attempts is you. Against the Storm sits at 94% from 37,638 reviews in our data, and it has save-anytime and adjustable difficulty, which the older games on this list do not.
Each settlement is temporary. The storm takes it back, and what carries forward is what you learned to prioritise. (Official Steam screenshot)
Two of these sit in wider round-ups worth a look if none of the seven is quite it: our simulation and management list goes broader on the builders, and the survival round-up covers the games where the colony is one person. For the tactical end of the same shelf, there is the strategy list.
Where to send the scouts next
The real choice is between going further into the laws or further into the cold, and for most people who have just finished Frostpunk it should be the laws. Frostpunk 2 is the only game here that takes the Book of Laws somewhere new instead of nodding at it, and the 75% score is a complaint about scale rather than about quality — people miss the single street, not the mechanic. If what gripped you was instead the slow mathematical dread of a settlement you cannot save, Banished does that better than its sequel-makers ever did, and Against the Storm does it in forty-minute pieces.
One thing the seed's own Steam listing adds: Frostpunk 1886, a full remake in Unreal Engine, is committed to 2027 and billed as about seventy per cent old game and thirty per cent new. Worth knowing before anyone invests in the original's season pass.
One figure in the table has not moved. Timberborn's cheapest listing stayed inside seven per cent across twenty-eight readings in our window, and our own read of its habit says the same — it sits low and stays there. It is the dearest row above and also the one where patience buys nothing.
We wrote this from store pages, published reviews and our own price record, not from playing each game for this piece. Some store links on our game pages are affiliate links, so playze may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.