Frostpunk devs celebrate success, promise expansions

Frostpunk creator 11 Bit Studios has announced its impressive success, having entered profitability mere days after launch, with the news that it is working on additional modes and scenarios - including an endless mode.

Founded in 2010 by former CD Projekt and Metropolis Software staff, 11 Bit Studios' previous releases focused heavily on mobile-friendly gameplay. The company's first game, Anomaly: Warzone Earth offered a simplified tower defence mechanic and spawned various sequels, while Funky Smugglers saw players take control of an airport X-ray machine in a cartoon-style world. The company's biggest hit, however, was This War of Mine, a survival game which places the player in the shoes of civilians caught in the four-year Siege of Sarajevo and forces them to make a range of difficult choices to stay alive.

Frostpunk, the company's latest game, takes the 'depressing setting' dial and bumps it up a notch: The game takes place in an alternate timeline's 1886 when snowstorms and frost damage caused worldwide starvation, the player being given the task of finding a heat generator and building a city around it in order to survive and even prosper. The company's most ambitious title yet, it has also proven its quickest selling: In a statement on Twitter 11 Bit Studios revealed that it had sold 250,000 copies of the Windows-exclusive game within the first three days of release - enough to enter profitability.

With profit assured, 11 Bit Studios has turned its eye to expanding the base game. 'We had plans for the expansions,' chief executive Grzegorz Miechowski confirmed, 'and now we're 100 percent sure we are doing that, including many free updates of course!'

In a more detailed post to the game's Steam page, the company confirmed that it was investigating various ways to expand the game. 'We have A LOT of ideas ourselves and we also listen to our community (that's you!). We plan to polish some rough edges of the original game - you're reporting some issues with difficulty balance, with minor bugs and such. We want to fix that,' the company announced. 'We also plan to add more modes and scenarios to the game. What are they going to be exactly? It's too early to announce - but you should be excited. And yes - a sandbox/endless mode is on our mind as well. Frostpunk is going to grow - all you have to do right now is to wait a little bit. We do plan to release a roadmap for our development plans as soon as we're ready. Stay tuned!'

11 Bit Studios has also confirmed it will be monitoring social media and forums for expansion ideas, though warns that 'we also have our ideas and our plans - so we can't promise that your particular idea can be implemented in any way in Frostpunk.'

Frostpunk is available now for Windows PCs.