11 Bit Studios is no stranger to somber storytelling. In 2014, the studio released This War of Mine, a harrowing survival game inspired by the events of the Bosnian War. Rather than go a shade lighter for its follow-up, the developer doubled down on the grim nature of humanity with 2018’s Frostpunk. This city-builder — the developers don’t really consider it a real-time strategy game — cast players in the role of a leader who has to make tough decisions about who lives and who dies as humanity struggles for survival in the wake of volcanic winter. The game is grim, but that didn’t stop it from becoming a best-seller. With more than one million copies sold on PC, Frostpunk is ready to jump to consoles. It’s a move the developers aren’t taking lightly.
“We always knew we wanted to bring Frostpunk to consoles, even when we were doing the PC version,” explained Project Lead and Senior Lead Designer Jakub Stokalski during a recent interview in San Francisco. “Our resources are not unlimited so we focused on getting the PC version right. But at the same time, as soon as that game went out and did very well for us, we came back to this console project and started working on it. The first prototype wasn’t that great in the sense that we just locked in the controller and tried to go the easy way. Turns out it’s a lot of work to actually make it look and feel great on console and we really did not want to short change our approach.”
According to Stokalski, it took a lot of work for 11 Bit Studios to get Frostpunk running well on PC. For console, not only would the team have to deal with less processing power than most modern gaming PCs are capable of, but also translating the more traditional mouse-and-keyboard control scheme to an Xbox One and PS4 controller.
Source: Destructoid 11 Bit studios wants Frostpunk’s console port to be a superior experience