The end of the world, a "word" that is often heard, but seems to be very far away from us. The end seems to exist only in the Bible, a mythical existence, where God sent a great flood to inundate the world, and Noah's Ark allowed the flame of life to continue. While we may not have the opportunity to experience the end of the world first-hand, we can also experience the despair and horror of the end of the world through a medium, and the game Frostpunk is this medium. Next, I will talk about the end of the world in this game world.
In August 1883, the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted. The sun darkens, and the sound of volcanic eruptions can be heard in Mauritius, more than 5,400 kilometres away. Many other unknowns have led to volcanic winters worldwide, widespread crop failures, and the deaths of millions of people. Those who survived southeast England trekked north in search of a biblical existence of "Noah's Ark," a heating facility called the "Energy Tower."
Our group of survivors wandered through the icy, still world, unable to see the horizon. The rulers of the old days were stripped of their pride and glory. Yesterday humanity was still pushing the wheel of progress, and today's cold immediately froze everything. Suddenly, without warning. The situation changes, everyone is changed, our world is lost to the snow, and together with it, there is the last shred of humanity in us. Survivors must adapt to the environment. We left our homes and headed north, drifting for weeks, perhaps months, forgetting everything we had believed to have made us.
We must survive. It's hope, and it's pushing us forward. Slowly, step by step. It's time to build the last city on earth.
I was in such a moment, on the verge of becoming the last ruler, and when I came to the last city of mankind, I found that the only force here was a tower of energy that had stopped functioning. At the beginning of the rebirth of the city, it did not have a name, and in the time that followed, the exhaustion of people's survival far outweighed the desire to define a new home, or rather, no one knew whether it could be a new home. People collected the few cold coals in the snow, set up tents around energy towers, and struggled desperately with planks and nails in the wind of minus twenty degrees. I opened the energy tower, surrounded by a long-lost warm current.
Rest assured, you will never smell a corpse
I know that the situation is difficult, and the enemies of mankind are not zombies, not alien invaders, not beasts, but the cold, and each other. Dozens of people who have traveled long distances, with their separated loved ones who may be arriving, will continue to put me in a dilemma. Every choice will determine the fate of the city. But at least the observatory still updated the temperature changes for the next few days, minus 30 degrees, not too bad, and there was still time to gather resources to withstand the big storm that had slowly approached the sky.
Working 14 hours a day, the coal collected was only enough; the automatons kept cutting through the few frozen woods day and night, and the ice picks hanging from the branches of the trees fell to the ground and shattered into pieces; once the children screamed and ran to the snow to fight snowballs, and now that the laws allowing child labor had been signed, the children were sad at the thought of returning to the snow to rummage for recyclable steel, although they had been given priority, and each meal could be given a little more hot soup. Food was never enough, though I greeted hunters who had returned from an all-night hunt every morning.
At least there is some interest in the lighthouse search team, hoping that it will be able to bring back more manpower and resources from places that are difficult to reach on foot. For the sake of resources, I can only consciously put people in cold situations, leaving them vulnerable and dead, but this in turn endangers communities, raw material supplies, and people's expectations. Would people be more willing to hear of a few more people amputated due to frostbite than a lack of resources causing the energy tower to close?
The fear of the unknown is nerve-debilitating, the death of everyone in the community will cause the hope value to be greatly reduced, no one wants to become the next forced organ donor or organic fertilizer, but rest assured, you will not smell the rotting of corpses, and I do not want to be removed because the hope value is too low. You gave me your life, and I looked into everyone's eyes and told them that everything was going to be fine, and that only I knew that the coal in stock was only enough for the energy tower to burn for ten hours, and that the next working day might have to work all night to keep the heating.
Sometimes there are better days, the temperature rises by ten degrees, and luck can even last for a few days. In such weather, the warmth is enough to diagnose the loss of bad luck. People are trying to arouse the morale of the previous era and revitalize the family business. The crowd cheered loudly as the lighthouse search team lifted off, and the gray hot air balloon was destined to bring sweetness, hope and sudden change to the nascent city. Every few days the expedition would bring back a batch of supplies, stacked in rows until they spilled out of the warehouse. They also searched for some of the lost people, and people screamed in surprise that they were not seeing the bodies of their loved ones. Patches of snow were cleared, bare permafrost was covered with factories, houses, canteens and clinics, and it wasn't long before the buildings were flooded with snow again.
The warm days are ultimately a mist on the lenses that quickly disappears.
It's stupid to be here, we should go back!
The demands of the crowd are growing, and this handful of human civilizations that are left is constantly torturing my nerves, forcing me to wander among the many options that are difficult to discern which is worse. In recent days, the temperature has dropped much faster than the house has been built, and people will wake up in the morning and complain that I have broken the oath of ensuring the temperature of indoor survival. The number of frostbite is increasing, but the number of hospital beds is pitifully small. The accumulated discontent has long since outweighed the poor hopes.
One day, the lighthouse search team received news of the fall of the Winter House, which was a fatal blow.
They're all dead?!
How can we survive without assistance?
We have to go back to London!
We have no hope of staying in this frozen desert!
The news spread throughout the city, people gathered, some wanted to flee to London, and fear spread. The "London Gang" gradually became popular, and some people began to hide food and other resources. At this point, trying to appease the accumulated radical emotions has become redundant, and the gradually embryonic production has stagnated, and some people spend all the time they should be working in the house of pleasure, or vent their resentment against me in the dueling arena on colleagues with the same dissatisfaction, trying to paralyze their emotions with fighting. The concept of a "new home" has been abandoned and reduced to a sensitive nerve that no one dares to touch. At night, the lights go out, and people keep thinking about the words of the London Gang:
"We should have stayed in London in the first place, or we wouldn't have fallen into this!" If no one else survives, why should we expect a miracle to come? It's stupid to be here, we should go back! ”
As the days passed, the London Gang continued to grow in popularity, and the dissatisfaction with me in the city grew day by day. The temperature drops at an alarming rate. The sound of death bells rang again and again made people panic, tears were frozen before they could flow, and the cold took away their expressions. Shaken by fear and doubt, people have lost hope and think it is impossible to live. Despair can prompt people to act recklessly. I know that we need to unite everyone with a vision of the future, and we must find what can give them the meaning of survival and regain hope, otherwise this new city will fall into chaos.
Deliver messages to them as we intend
It was time for me to open the whole code and choose our path. One morning, people wake up to many new buildings, so many that they don't know where to start marveling. Overnight, watchtowers rise above the city, and the guards stationed inside cover every corner of the city, who will keep the city peaceful and orderly and help deal with the dangerous elements. From that day on, everyone was forced to hold a morning rally to make sure everyone was clear about the day's goals and priorities.
For three or four days in a row, I issued new decrees to soften the London Gang's campaign in the city. Some of the workers and engineers I had chosen to be foremen, some of them suddenly disappeared from their jobs—and in a few days one would look up and find his face in the dark little windows of the watchtower. I know that in any age, there will be the most attractive conditions, and in the present moment, in order to go to a warm place to work or move to a house closer to the energy tower, or even a few full meals, it is not difficult to find some people who are willing to sell their lives. Rumor has it that I secretly set up a neighborhood watch organization, and the admonitors (the United Front and Watch help organizations in the game) will privately talk to people who have been influenced by the London Gang to save their hearts.
Yet the London gang always had a wilder way to gain attention, and someone gave a passionate speech to a small group of people, denouncing my plan to control everyone:
"The ruler is trying to satisfy everyone and implement a policy of ignorance to keep everyone under his control!" Do you remember the new law of poverty alleviation, do you remember the workhouse? That's the way we live now! The rulers want us to work well and remain silent! Wake up! It's not too late! ”
The London Gang always appeared at an inopportune time, roaring angrily in the crowd. Someone wrote a prophecy on the wall about the imminent destruction of the city, and people's hearts were shaken when they heard even weak persuasion.
Fear is suppressed anger, but if the fear is big enough, it doesn't matter if the anger is not angry. The guards initially came out to maintain order, catch thieves who stole food supplies, and clean up street corners. But on a normal night, several people who often gave speeches near the energy tower were arrested and imprisoned in a newly opened prison. It's good for everyone to isolate people who threaten the stability of the city – the guard transmits care to people through radio.
That night, I gathered all the guards and admonitions, and in order for everything to go well, we had to know everything about the people and be able to deliver messages to them as we intended. We want to build publicity centers and set up information bulletin boards in every household to soothe people's hearts and convince people that we are maintaining order and protecting our cities. I repeat – it must be repeated – that the weak have no place to stand, and that they can live thanks to order. For extremists, persuasion by force is also a good way to do it.
Someone writes poetry in their spare time, about loss, pain, and disillusionment. He said that no ideal in the world deserves such a sinking price. In order not to let people be adversely affected, the propaganda team burned his poems. The next day his body was found near the House of Joy, which looked like he had died of alcoholism. The next few days seemed calm, but the undercurrent that would wreak havoc on the city was raging somewhere.
It's a happy little city
One day, just after nightfall, the London Gang assembled for the last time around the Energy Tower, backed by gloomy snowflakes from the early stages of the blizzard, pale and unusually sharp-eyed. They packed their bags and dragged the supplies they had looted in batches from the reserves. I suddenly appeared from the crowd, and the fiery light of the energy tower reflected on my face:
"We have tried our best to reconcile with you, and you have decided to embark on a journey, not knowing that it is a warning of death. When the lighthouse search team sent the survivors of the freshwater hot springs back to the city, they told me that they searched the valley for trees with cross signs and found shallow graves under the trees. The carcasses may have been turned over by some animal, many large muscles were missing, some bones had been cut off, and the edible parts of the corpses had obviously been removed, and now we know what the survivors of the freshwater hot springs ate.
There is a simple monument in the city of Tesla, which perished earlier, which reads, May the Lord forgive the geniuses who value social progress over human life, because we do not have this realization. I don't know how to pull you out of this temptation of death. No one is a sage, no one is guilty, and I am very willing to forgive you and give you the opportunity to atone for your sins. For this reason, all those here are subject to the new order code that has just been adopted, and those who question it will be considered traitors. Obedience is the highest virtue, otherwise the city cannot survive. We will sweep away all those who do not follow the rules. ”
No one knows what the specific content of the New Order Code is, or is it that, as indicated by the prefix of the word itself, the order of the past has been abandoned in an instant, as if the process of time has broken the chain, is this testing the limits of human institutional change?! What happened next didn't cause people to fear, but in a trance, about a quarter of the people decided to resist, and people rioted in the streets, demanding in hoarse voices that I immediately stop enforcing the law. Order, they say, is about people uniting to survive, rather than concentrating more power in one person's hands. Women and children screamed and ran around the streets, taking a stand with extreme panic and cowardice in their eyes to the guards and admonitors. For a moment, there seemed to be countless small energy towers in the city.
After midnight, the streets fell silent. I declare that our city is a fortress of the strong, the courageous and the loyal! Those who are full of doubts, who like to create trouble and create turmoil, there is no place for them. Those who posed a threat to urban unity or the new order were disposed of. 27 citizens died. Others gave up expressing their opinions, hoping that value would no longer be a problem. No one will ever consider these concepts anymore. An execution ground has been set up near the energy tower, and the enemies of the public will be executed at dawn. This will greatly reduce dissatisfaction.
When obedience becomes a virtue, hope and dissatisfaction are abstracted to something worthy of scorn. No one can question my will, there is only one order in our city, and that order is obedience. Only then can we survive. There will always be a man who says to the rebellious rulers, "You have saved the city."
Dawn breaks, the temperature plummets to minus one hundred degrees Celsius, all the machines are no longer running, and everyone is hiding in their homes. There were no dead people here, nothing had happened here. There is no future now and there will be no future. It's a happy little city.
postscript
I've forgotten how I was drawn to this game in the first place, perhaps with its well-made steampunk graphics. The game has several different scenarios, the basic scene "New Home", where you can unlock "Ark", "Refugee", "Winter House Fall" and Endless Mode after 20 days.
The ruler player needs to build a city from scratch, and the visual and sound during the game are remarkable. But what I never forgot was the whole code, which is also a hidden clue to the development of the story.
Do you want your child to work?
Do you want people to work twenty-four hours straight?
Is it just soup instead of a meal?
Was the body buried in a cemetery or made into organic fertilizer?
Should critically ill patients use limited resources to diagnose and treat them?
Everyone in the game is too accustomed to being God, but how will God choose between law and faith? Some laws at the beginning of the game need to be considered but do not need to be very entangled, the first encounter with the "London Gang", open the full code, the mouse cursor on the left "order and discipline", and the right "faith and spiritual power" between the "faith and spiritual power", there are some empty-eyed people in the picture, it seems that they can not influence the decision I am about to make. In the middle is a large line of characters, "Choose our path." You may think that discipline and faith seem good, but don't forget, where there is discipline and order, there is surveillance. Where there is faith, there are pagans.
Each scene didn't bring me the joy of completing the level, they were just a small chapter in the sad story of that frozen world. At the end of "New Home," the city survives a blizzard, and the city's residents no longer have hope. In Ark, engineers may be able to keep the precious seeds in the four buildings, but it is difficult to have the extra resources to save the neighboring city.
In "refugees", the refugees who arrive in the city first develop a strong hostility towards the refugees who arrive later. And "The House of Winter Falls", the player has to take over a ruined city. When I thought the city was well fed and everything was working properly, the energy tower was scrapped. Hopefully, when you fall to the bottom, you will become another deposed monarch like me, and this game is extremely gentle at this time, slowly saying to you: You tried your best.