Following the massive acclaim of its predecessor, Frostpunk 2 took a slightly different route and offered a much-expanded gameplay, ensuring greater replayability while staying true to its core of forcing the player to balance demands from various factions with what the city actually needs, as well as dealing with a host of oftentimes dilemmatic issues as they arise. Earlier this month, 11 Bit Studios has released the sequel’s very first DLC, Fractured Utopias, and with it came a lot of goodies. Let’s take a deep dive and find out what’s new!

As it is likely evident from the title of the DLC, Fractured Utopias focuses on the Utopia Builder mode, giving it a much-needed revamp, and personality, so to speak! The DLC introduces a brand-new Utopia Tree where each faction has its own tree with nodes that will unlock perks, buildings, laws, or even abilities that align to the ideals of a specific faction. This system allows players to really delve deep into each faction’s unique ideology, going all the way up until you’ve basically created a utopia for that particular faction… that is, if they want to. It’s still their choice as Captain, after all!

This system alone adds identity, strategic depth, and replayability to the base game’s sandbox mode, further fleshing out each faction, making them feel more distinct and intriguing. There are up to eight different kinds of utopia endgames that you can attempt to achieve as well.

To complement the Utopia tree, there are also Faction hubs – one per faction – that grants additional benefits to relevant adjacent districts that match their ideology, as well as faction-based housing district upgrades that come with some really nice perks. These features add more ways to strategize and build as you develop your utopia.

Of course, there are other non-faction-related additions, too, including two new Tales to take on and experience, one of which involve quelling doomsayers who are hellbent on destroying what you’re trying to build, while the other includes a harrowing fight against time in the search for a cure as a plague threatens the survival of your city… something that’s very reminiscent of the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Along with these new Tales, you’ll also get up to 100 fresh narrative events, and two new maps, Forsaken Valley and Jagged Bay, both offering new challenges that you’ll need to overcome to ensure the long-term survival of your people.

Now, as amazing as this DLC can be for fans of the Utopia Builder mode since it adds so much more playtime to the game, it falls short in appealing to the other side of the game’s community – the fans of its story-heavy campaigns. However, considering that there are definitely more DLCs to come for the game, it’s very likely the next one could lean more towards campaigns, which would then satisfy this part of their community. After all, it’s just not possible nor coherent to fit everything into a single DLC.

There are also some complaints of balancing where some factions seem to be stronger than others, and bugs – sometimes, game-breaking ones, though, I’ve personally not encountered any of them.

So, overall, Frostpunk 2’s Fractured Utopias DLC is definitely a no-brainer for fans of the game’s endless builder mode since it makes the Utopia Builder mode feels so much more rewarding to playthrough. Plus, you’ll get so much more playtime out of the game, especially if you’re determined to check out all the different – eight total – utopias you can set up for each faction. However, if you’re looking for a stronger narrative experience much like what a brand-new campaign would offer, then perhaps you should save your cash up for their subsequent DLCs. Surely one of them would be comparable to The Last Autumn in the case of Frostpunk 1!