Is it getting cold in here, or just me? Why surviving the cold is such a popular strategy theme today

• It seems that survival strategy games are becoming increasingly popular on mobile
• Whiteout Survival, Frostpunk and more all illustrate a frozen world of constant survival
• I’ll take you through some of the reasons that this theme seems so prevalent

Frostpunk, Whiteout Survival, Landnama; the list goes on. What do all of them have in common? Well, for whatever reason they’re preoccupied with the main threat of freezing to death. It’s a strangely common theme for many games, and, in particular,  surprisingly common in strategy. It got me thinking, and I think I have a few reasons for why this is the case.

But, a little bit of context. Frostpunk is set in a pseudo-19th-century world where a new ice age has begun. As the leader of the last city, it’s your job to balance the wants of your people with the needs of the broader whole to survive. That means making difficult decisions on whether or not to satisfy the few, try and keep the many alive, or even sacrifice those who can’t provide to stave off inevitable death.

And central to surviving said ice age is the furnace at the centre of your city. You need to keep that burning in order to survive, and bringing in fuel is almost as – if not more – important than even food. Its popularity has inspired both a mobile port and imitators like the aforementioned Whiteout Survival to also explore the idea of survival strategy in a new ice age.

With zombies having previously dominated the genre, this new focus on freezing is one of the first big paradigm shifts we’ve seen that isn’t just a new flavour of evil monsters or ticking time bombs.

So! Let’s dig in and figure out just why the idea of freezing to death and fighting to survive a frigid waste seems to be so appealing for players and developers alike.

Climate change

Alright, let’s get the big ones out of the way. I don’t want to randomly pull you back to the days of Media Studies and trying to parse the inner psyche of creators and viewers, but it’s undeniable that climate change and freak weather are facts of life nowadays. And just as the idea of a new ice age has grabbed people’s imagination for centuries, the utterly alien nature of it is also appealing to developers and players.

With how massive “storms of the century” are constantly cropping up in the yearly news cycle, more and more people are becoming aware of how fragile the world’s ecosystem really is. And the fact that it would only take a series of falling environmental dominoes to plunge much of the world into ice is both a frightening and enthralling thought.

It’s not specific

I think we should also consider the broad appeal of an ice age scenario for both developers and players. Whereas subjects like zombies can range drastically in appeal, from being relatively accepted in the West to being a contentious issue in the East, natural weather is something that few can have an issue with.

It’s also just foreign enough to be chilling (pun not intended) and frightening, but not too real, at least not for now. This means there’s a comfortable level of disconnect while also being relatable. So ideally developers won’t find themselves falling afoul of local laws that might frown at the idea of walking corpses.

It remains underused

However, even though this entire article is predicated on the fact that it’s becoming more common, the idea of surviving the cold is still a relatively new concept for games. Sure, some have drawn on it in the past, like the Lost Planet series, but it was usually just an environmental hazard and not an existential threat.

In contrast, Frostpunk’s influence on the survival-strategy genre means that the idea of cold as a truly dire threat and one you can build an entire game around has become an intriguing idea for many. After all, it’s easy to kill a zombie or a monster (relatively speaking) but you can’t exactly ‘kill’ the cold.

And, as pointed out by our editor Dann Sullivan, this isn’t usually post-apocalyptic (i.e. due to an external threat) but post-societal. So you’re not trying to rebuild the world as it was by definition, but instead trying to build a new world that can survive the extreme weather. It’s equally, if not more enthralling content for people who want to reshape the world in their image, as terrifyingly tyrannical a thought as that might be.

It’s cosy(?)

Alright, hear me out. While it is of course frightening to think of having to kill and destroy to survive a frigid ice age, I think there’s an element of comfort to actually achieving that goal. Sheltering from a storm is one of those primal human urges – if the constant presence of ASMR videos that are titled things like “surviving a blizzard” is any evidence.

Whereas zombies or monsters are an omnipresent threat – suiting their horror theme – you can escape the cold. And while normal strategy games or city-builders require you to build up a perfectly functioning society or dominate your enemies to feel a sense of achievement, just managing to stay out of the ever-present cold is a victory in and of itself. 

You only need to look as far as the comparison between Frostpunk and Whiteout Survival to see the two sides of the terrifying vs cosiness depiction of the frigid wastes. But equally so, the environment (no matter how cutesy things may look) also presents a constantly dangling Sword of Damocles above your head that means you can’t quite relax for too long, and always need to plan for the next challenge.

Is this a growing trend?

Now, we should ask whether or not this is going to be a continuously growing trend or maybe more of a flash in the pan. That’s a difficult question to answer, but I think it’s important to remember that the reason I’m mentioning Frostpunk so much is specifically because it’s inspired both its own mobile port and the equally popular Whiteout Survival (which even had its own prominent booth across the Pacific at Tokyo Game Show).

Whiteout Survival in particular cribs the idea of the massive heating furnace which is the main source of survival (and conflict) in Frostpunk. In contrast, Landnama is more about the historical environmental factors that Vikings in the far north had to contend with. Not quite as existential in the latter case, but just as deadly.

Ultimately I reckon there’s a solid case to be made that we might soon see this “cold survival” trend begin to plateau unless there’s something that significantly innovates on the idea.

So overall, what’s the takeaway here? Well, if you’re an average gamer you probably don’t see much point in dissecting the rationale behind games like this. But for me, and I’m sure plenty of other readers, I reckon it’s interesting to take a step back and look at something we very much take for granted. It’s like, why are most MOBAs based in fantasy and not, say, sci-fi or modern-day? By asking these questions I think we begin to appreciate just how our assumptions about what we players can inform how we can step out of our comfort zone and try something new.

And if all this talk about enduring the frozen frigid wastes has you hankering to see how you can do in similar situations, why not check out our list of the top survival games for Android? We’ve also got an equivalent list for iOS that’ll let you put your skills to the test no matter the platform!