Okay look, I think it is unfair to call a new game "already existing game but with X" right off the bat instead of letting it stand on its own legs. But it's kind of inevitable sometimes, especially in this case. Even the soundtrack in New Cycle sounds inspired by Piotr Musial's soundtrack for Frostpunk. So I thought it was "Frostpunk but with junk instead of steampunk and solar flares instead of a new ice age".

But the more I play of it, the more I realize the devs set out to create a game that may be similar to Frostpunk at the surface, but offers much deeper gameplay beyond that. I am totally on board for this - I love Frostpunk, but the simulation isn't actually super complicated and is more of a vessel to carry the narrative scenarios of that game.

New Cycle also has a progressing narrative, but it is obviously still in development, and much more slowly paced because a savegame lasts a lot longer than in Frostpunk. There was one major narrative twist that actually posed an interesting decision for me (and challenging consequences to manage), but other than that it is still kind of slowly building up.

The game also tries to do something with laws that change how your city works, similar to Frostpunk. However there is no real system for these laws in place yet. The way that they work right now is that you will get a prompt every now and then with your citizens making a new demand, and then you have to make a decision right there. For example your citizens might demand that you start incorporating linen in clothes, and if you accept this will give them a health bonus but also change the recipe for basic clothes to require linen. I feel like this would benefit from a system that's a bit closer to Frostpunk, where you can see all laws in a nice overview and they won't come out of nowhere and catch you off-guard. Maybe tied into the Cycle system that the game already has?

At the same time the game has a deep and intricate morale system with a bunch of different gauges that you can tweak to increase/decrease morale of groups of people by giving them certain amounts/higher quality of certain resources, and a separate work force system linked to this morale system that determines how efficient your workspaces are. I was pleasantly surprised by this, although it feels like it needs to be balanced a bit better. The workforce system also desperately needs a tutorial.

I had a bit of trouble putting my overall feelings of the game in words, but I think that the best way to describe it is that the parts are all there to make a really interesting survival city builder. They just don't quite fit together yet, and as a result the game lacks a real identity.

But that's okay, because the game was released in Early Access only a few days ago. And I think that if the developers manage to pull it all together, this game is going to be an amazing addition to the genre.

Until then, what you have here is a rough but fun survival city builder with a lot of smaller glitches but nothing so bad that reloading your save won't fix it (at least so far). If you love the genre everything is there to have a satisfying experience, and if you're on the fence it might be worth it to put off your purchase until the game has had a few major updates and its final shape is starting to become visible.

Okay look, I think it is unfair to call a new game "already existing game but with X" right off the bat instead of letting it stand on its own legs. But it's kind of inevitable sometimes, especially in this case. Even the soundtrack in New Cycle sounds inspired by Piotr Musial's soundtrack for Frostpunk. So I thought it was "Frostpunk but with junk instead of steampunk and solar flares instead of a new ice age". But the more I play of it, the more I realize the devs set out to create a game that may be similar to Frostpunk at the surface, but offers much deeper gameplay beyond that. I am totally on board for this - I love Frostpunk, but the simulation isn't actually super complicated and is more of a vessel to carry the narrative scenarios of that game. New Cycle also has a progressing narrative, but it is obviously still in development, and much more slowly paced because a savegame lasts a lot longer than in Frostpunk. There was one major narrative twist that actually posed an interesting decision for me (and challenging consequences to manage), but other than that it is still kind of slowly building up. The game also tries to do something with laws that change how your city works, similar to Frostpunk. However there is no real system for these laws in place yet. The way that they work right now is that you will get a prompt every now and then with your citizens making a new demand, and then you have to make a decision right there. For example your citizens might demand that you start incorporating linen in clothes, and if you accept this will give them a health bonus but also change the recipe for basic clothes to require linen. I feel like this would benefit from a system that's a bit closer to Frostpunk, where you can see all laws in a nice overview and they won't come out of nowhere and catch you off-guard. Maybe tied into the Cycle system that the game already has? At the same time the game has a deep and intricate morale system with a bunch of different gauges that you can tweak to increase/decrease morale of groups of people by giving them certain amounts/higher quality of certain resources, and a separate work force system linked to this morale system that determines how efficient your workspaces are. I was pleasantly surprised by this, although it feels like it needs to be balanced a bit better. The workforce system also desperately needs a tutorial. I had a bit of trouble putting my overall feelings of the game in words, but I think that the best way to describe it is that the parts are all there to make a really interesting survival city builder. They just don't [i]quite[/i] fit together yet, and as a result the game lacks a real identity. But that's okay, because the game was released in Early Access only a few days ago. And I think that if the developers manage to pull it all together, this game is going to be an amazing addition to the genre. Until then, what you have here is a rough but fun survival city builder with a lot of smaller glitches but nothing so bad that reloading your save won't fix it (at least so far). If you love the genre everything is there to have a satisfying experience, and if you're on the fence it might be worth it to put off your purchase until the game has had a few major updates and its final shape is starting to become visible.