11BIT [11B]

The city the player creates spirals out from that central point, a structure that proved to be a neat fit for the field of motion allowed by a controller's analogue sticks. Through a context-based system of radial menus, Grzeszczuk proudly stated, every part of Frostpunk's PC UI is accessible to the console user within two button presses.

Most of what you see here is our own invention," he continued. "The good part about Frostpunk -- and we've been talking about this since its initial release on PC -- is that it's a radial city, and so it's a perfect fit for the sticks. The whole game is about the generator and those rings around it, so the menus should be like that; everything should be in line with that so we can maintain the cohesion of the game.
"It actually works, but it took us a while. We had at least three iterations: the first was not very good; the second was a bit better, but it still lacked something; and we are very happy with this one."

11 bit believes that this is the first of two key factors in attracting a substantial audience for Frostpunk in the console space. For the most part, Grzeszczuk said, strategy games have faltered on console because, "they are not usually on par with their PC equivalents.

With its elegant, intuitive solution for the game's controls, however, Grzeszczuk believes that the superior version of the game is a matter of subjective taste. There is nothing objective that makes the PC version better," he added.

"We've had that approach since day one," he said. "We were discussing Frostpunk as a universe. We wanted to create a world, and then fill that world with stories, with places, and then build connections between them.

"[The DLC] is expanding on the universe, it is adding new story, and explaining some things that might be hinted at in the past. This is what really drives us; the world of Frostpunk is growing, and we're thinking that, in the future we should think about, maybe not a sequel, but a spin-off -- an RPG set in the same universe."