Frostpunk 2: Fractured Utopias DLC Features More to Explore
- Antal Bokor
- 22 hours ago
- 3 min read
I know the Fractured Utopias expansion released a little while ago, but I’m still catching up with all of the end of year releases and coverage. Seriously, though: despite my initial struggles with it, Frostpunk 2 is still the most robust societal survival builder on the market. But checking back in on my frozen domain felt less like returning to a city I built and more like opening a spreadsheet I haven’t looked at in months. Fractured Utopias is a decent addition to a great—if flawed—game, even if it feels a bit like it’s just adding more columns to that spreadsheet.
I say "decent" because this DLC addresses one of my biggest gripes from the launch: the restrictive sandbox. The core addition here is "Faction Utopias." In the base game, factions were just annoying interest groups you had to balance to keep the "tiny people" from rioting. Now, they have full "Utopia Trees" that let them dictate the entire direction of your city. It shares a lot of DNA with the base game’s Idea Tree, but it finally makes the "Utopia Builder" mode feel like a proper sandbox rather than a limited scenario.
However, if you found the UI supremely unintuitive at launch, this DLC doesn’t hold your hand. It adds another layer of complexity on top of a system that already felt like it was designed by developers who forgot what it’s like to look at their game with virgin eyes.
That said, the new playstyles are genuinely interesting. Take the Technocrats. Their playstyle focuses on "Cold Algorithmic Efficiency," and as of right now, that looks like going the Steam Core Manufacturing route. It does one thing really well: overshadow the base game’s scarcity loop. It almost feels like a cheat code for the late-game economy, but it’s a satisfying one.
The Icebloods, on the other hand, are not a faction I fell into easily. With their "Unlimited Frostbreaking" ability, I found myself tearing through the map, spending "injuries" instead of resources to expand. It brings a visceral, high-risk element back to the game. I haven’t had this much fun risking it all on rapid expansion since the early days of the original Frostpunk. It sucks to have to buy a DLC to put that specific type of risk-reward fun back in the game, but at least I have it now.
But does this solve the "floating entity" problem? Not really. The new "Doomsayers" and "Plague" narrative arcs add flavor—seeing your city overrun by panic is certainly more engaging than watching a coal meter drop—but it still feels distant. You’re still a macro-manager pushing buttons to keep stats within a nominal range. The disconnect remains. I tried to care about the new faction struggles, but at the end of the day, they are still just abstract numbers on a screen.
I really like Fractured Utopias, though it doesn’t really fill a new niche—just does more of the same a little differently. That truly seems to be the 11 bit studios hallmark here. If you enjoyed the shift toward 4X-style management in the base game, this expansion gives you significantly more toys to play with. But if you were hoping for a reason to finally feel a connection to the citizens down in the snow, this expansion falls short.
Fractured Utopias fleshes out the sandbox and adds some fantastic faction mechanics, but it double-downs on the macro-scale detachment. It’s a warm spot in an icy game, but don’t expect it to melt the barrier between you and your subjects.