The cold winter is here. A selection of games that tell the story of survival in extreme cold

Frostpunk 2

The sequel to the real-time strategy game with survival elements set during a new ice age offers players a familiar but larger-scale experience as a mayor-operator. While the previous game had hundreds of residents under the care of the player, in the sequel the population has skyrocketed to tens of thousands, still fighting for a place near a hot generator.

One of the key features of Frostpunk 2 is the presence of the Council, where hearings and votes are held on laws necessary for the local elites. The player can influence the course of laws through bribery, intimidation, racketeering and even outright violence. However, one must be careful with these actions, as the patience of the people has its limits, especially when the 80-degree frost kills hundreds of people every day.

Frostpunk 2 has been met with a generally warm reception, with newcomers and fans of the original game alike enjoying the game. Polygon recently called Frostpunk 2 "the worst game on Game Pass, not because of the content itself, but because of what it does to the player."

For gamers from Ukraine, the developer 11 bit studios added Ukrainian localization, which is definitely a plus, because the game has a lot of text events. In December, a new expansion appeared in the game, which adds a lot of narrative events, new maps and factions.

The game brilliantly conveys the harsh everyday life of a Kyiv resident, who in these dark times sits without light, water and heat, but with hope for a better future. Frostpunk 2 will definitely appeal to fans of city-building strategies, survival and those who are not afraid to make difficult decisions that require sacrifices.

DayZ Frostline

In October 2024, Czech studio Bohemia Interactive releasedFrostline, a truly hardcore addition to the popular survival game DayZ.

Compared to the original, surviving in Frostline is many times more difficult. The main enemy in Frostline is not zombies or other players, but nature and weather. The player's task is to survive in these harsh conditions with limited resources.

The Frostline expansion adds the Sahal map, which takes the game back to the roots of true hardcore. Boats have been added to navigate the snowy archipelago. While the previous map Chernarus has long since turned into an "autumn shooter," and Livonia has become a chaotic arena for gunfights, Sahal offers a completely different experience — an uncompromising survival simulator.

Here, the main enemy is not humans or zombies, but harsh nature. Survival becomes a challenge: snow cannot be eaten due to heavy metal poisoning, food has to be defrosted by a fire, and the few sources of clean water become places of deadly ambushes. Players kill each other not for fun, but out of desperation to take warm food and live another day.

Frostline forces you to weigh every step, as any shot can attract unnecessary attention. Stealth is more important here than powerful weapons, and the lore of the map through an underground laboratory reveals the origin of the virus. This is a location where you have to think strategically so as not to die from cold or hunger before you die from a bullet.

The Pale Beyond

You are the assistant captain of a ship that has set off on an Antarctic expedition. From the very beginning, everything has gone wrong: the captain disappears, the ship is frozen in ice, and a hole in the hold is gradually filling the lower compartments with water. The confused crew expects action from the player, but earning their trust will not be so easy.

If the synopsis of The Pale Beyond seems similar to you, it's not for nothing, the developers of the game were inspired by the novel by American author Dan Simmons called "Terror". Later, a miniseries of the same name was released on the AMC channel with a great cast. However, that's where the similarities with the original source end.

The Pale Beyond is a visual novel with elements of management. Here you need to constantly extract resources by sending crew members on dangerous expeditions. In addition, the ship's crew is divided into groups of interests that often conflict with each other. The player needs to balance between supporters of the previous captain and people who have chosen a new course.

The difficulty of The Pale Beyond lies in the fact that people are the most valuable unit in the game, and they are prone to getting sick, injured, or in a bad mood. If you ignore their moral and physical condition, eventually someone may die from frostbite, scurvy, or a leopard seal attack, and fewer and fewer people will be at the player's disposal. Added to all this is the constant decrease in temperature, the sudden disappearance of the previous captain, and the mystical mystery of why the expedition was formed in the first place.

Tom Clancy's The Division: Survival

We talked about The Division in the previous top survival games, but the game still remains one of the best experiences on this topic.

The second expansion to the game, called Survival, deserves special attention. In essence, the expansion has become a game within the game, as it is a separate mode that does not require hundreds of hours in the original game, which is a significant advantage for beginners.

In Survival, the player starts each time naked and barefoot, has about 40 minutes to get out of the snowy New York, if they don't make it in time, or die on the way to the evacuation point - they lose. The main idea of ​​the add-on is to put all players in the same conditions, in an environment with limited visibility due to constant blizzards, with a virus that gradually kills the player, limited resources and local gangs who don't need much reason to shoot the player on the spot. And all this with atmospheric music in the background, playing both in the most intense moments and when you just need to warm up by the barrel with a fire.

The highlight of Survival is the presence of hunters - the most dangerous bosses in the game, which the developers have made as close as possible to the behavior of real players. They constantly arrive when players call for a helicopter for evacuation, which turns the static waiting time for transport into a real dynamic boss fight that is easy to lose if you do not prepare in advance.

Survival has become so popular that Ubisoft's refusal to add it to The Division 2 has become a personal affront to many gamers. However, the company's management still understood the potential of "Survival", especially against the background of interest in extraction shooters such as ARC Raiders , which last year saw the announcement of Survival for The Division 2.

In addition, Ubisoft has revived the original game's online experience, adding special challenges and exclusive rewards for players who return to Survival. In March, the series will celebrate its tenth anniversary, for which the developers will release Tom Clancy's The Division: Definitive Edition, which will contain all the content that has been released over the years, including Survival. In addition, a mobile version of the game for smartphones is also due to be released.

This War of Mine

The top winter survival games are closed by the unconventional This War of Mine . Its unconventionality lies in the fact that most of the events take place in the city during the war. The game is based on the events of the siege of Sarajevo, in which over 5,000 civilians died in almost four years. The player must lead a group of surviving civilians to survive the hostilities.

Despite the fact that in This War of Mine the characters are always cold and have nothing to eat, the main test is to survive the night. It is with the onset of dusk that the player sends one of the characters on a raid into the city, where it is necessary to obtain supplies, find out the latest rumors about a possible evacuation, or perform not very moral actions to ensure the survival of the group. During the day, the character who was on the raid usually rests, while the others can be engaged in arranging a shelter based on the resources obtained at night.

This War of Mine constantly tests the player's moral compass: should you steal food from the elderly to feed your own? Should you risk your own skin to save a woman from armed looters, or is it better not to interfere? Should you tell armed soldiers about the presence of resistance forces, they won't shoot an unarmed character, right? It is this moral dilemma that will ultimately affect the outcome of the passage and whether all members of the group will be able to survive the horrors of war.

The advantage of the game will be its availability on smartphones, so you can play it during blackouts.

Over the course of more than a decade, This War of Mine has won numerous awards from leading publications, sold 6 million copies, and helped 11 bit studios finance the development of Frostpunk. A special expansion was released for the game, the proceeds from which went to fund the Liberty Ukraine organization, which helps Ukrainians affected by the war.

In general, 11 bit studios provided a lot of support to Ukrainians during the full-scale invasion. A week after February 24, 2022, the studio announced that it would donate UAH 21 million in aid. 11 bit studios has repeatedly released charity bundles with games in support of Ukraine, and also financed a trip to Poland for 20 Ukrainian children whose parents died defending Ukraine.

This War of Mine also influenced Ukrainian game developers from Twigames studio, who are currently developing Hollow Home, a game about the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You can learn more about the game itself in dev.ua's conversation with Twigames founder Valeriy Minenko.

What else to pay attention to

If you haven't had enough of these winter survival games, or haven't seen the previous selection , we recommend that you fix that right away. There you'll find the atmospheric The Long Dark about survival in Canada, which will soon receive a sequel, the cult Lost Planet: Extreme Condition about exploring space snowy worlds, or Subnautica: Below Zero, which can be recommended for children to play, because it has less violence, except for the violence against yourself when you can't survive on a snowy glacier.

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