Frostpunk (Mac) 

Frostpunk on Mac

Frostpunk is a city builder survival game that you can play on your Mac natively, by downloading the game from Steam. You can also play Frostpunk on your Mac via streaming it with the help of game streaming services like Boosteroid.

Frostpunk is an interesting game that seamlessly combines several different gaming genres that you wouldn’t normally see together. On the one hand, you have the everyday struggles of a survival game set in a post-apocalyptic version of the world, but on the other hand, you have the steady and methodical gameplay of a city-builder. There’s also a more pronounced strategy element here, because, in Frostpunk, unlike other city builders, the steaks are higher and the struggle is real: if you fail, you will either be killed or outcast by the city’s denizens, and the city itself will most likely collapse and its denizens die due to their inability to survive the cold. To add some spicy to the mix, as things start to get rougher, you will be forced to make tough decisions that will make you ask questions about your own moral and ethical values. As you can see, Frostpunk is a not just another city-builder, but rather a game with its own unique personality, and the best part is that it’s available for Mac it’s also on several cloud gaming services, so you can easily play it on your Intel or M1 Mac. If you want directly to get the game, check out the instructions on how to play Frostpunk on Mac that you will find in the second half of this article. And if you want to learn a bit more about the game itself, before deciding whether you want to play it, keep reading our review of Frostpunk.

The setting

As mentioned, Frostpunk is set in a post-apocalyptic version of our world. Note that we aren’t talking about the future, but rather the past – a version of it where an ice age occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, causing humanity to retreat to specially built cities, that are powered by a huge heat-producing, coal-fed generator, built in the center of each city. In the game, you play as the leader of a group of survivors who have happened upon one such abandoned generator, and your goal is to govern the survivors to build a city around that generator and thus survive the harsh weather.

Though the premise may sound simple, it’s the random in-game events that would inevitably spice things up. At first, you may start okay – the temperature won’t be too low, and the people you command may be willing to do as they are told, but once you start to build up your city and get a hang of the game’s mechanics, you will inevitably begin to realize just how tough it can be to manage the needs of a post-apocalyptic city and its denizens. 

The struggle

Think of Frostpunk as a huge balancing act – your city’s most primary need is heat, and the generator grants you that. For the generator to function, you need coal. To gain coal, you need workers to mine the coal available near your city, but you will first need to build homes for those workers. Houses, and other buildings, require wood resources, so you must also send some of your workforce to cut down trees and bring you wood. Inevitably, sending people out into the wilderness to mine coal and cut and bring back wood will cause them to get sick due to the cold, so you will now also need to build some medical facilities to treat the sick, thus more wood is needed. Another resource you will need is food, so another group of people will be needed to take care of this. Then there’s also steel – one of the main resources required for upgrading and improving your city. And while trying to manage all those other resources, you must always make sure that you have enough coal, because if you run out of it, your city is as good as dead.

Other types of resources are Discontent and Hope – these two meters represent the current mental state of the city’s denizens, and both of them have direct effects on your gameplay. Low Discontent and high Hope mean that work is being done fast and few if any of the workers are refusing to do their job. On the other hand, if Hope is low and Discontent is high, the tasks you give out will be done more slowly, and a lot of the workers may outright refuse to follow orders. If Discontent gets too high, you may be exiled or even executed, resulting in losing the game.

As is with many other strategies and survival games, resource management is essential, and while this type of gameplay may sound a little dull on paper, the game provides you with a variety of ways to acquire each resource, so you always have multiple options to choose from. However, not all options are equally good in every situation, and even the smallest of choices you may make at the earlier stages of the game can have drastic consequences down the way.

The choice

If you pay enough attention and don’t make any rash decisions, albeit, with some difficulty, you should soon get the general hang of how to play Frostpunk in the earlier parts of the game. You will learn how to balance each resource and have a general idea of what new buildings you need to build and what new technologies you need to research to improve your city. However, as was said earlier, random things happen in the game and disaster strikes when you least expect it. Maybe there’s a sudden drop in temperature or a work-related accident. Whatever it is, if you haven’t made all the right choices up until this point in order to be over-prepared for such a disaster, you will be faced with a tough decision – you will need to pick between Order or Faith. These are two possible paths in which to steer your policy as the city’s governor and both of those paths represent a form of totalitarianism. Making the choice between these two becomes necessary if your city is brought to a critical state, and only either of those two options will allow you to save it. Both paths allow you to pass totalitarian laws that can help stabilize your city’s society and resources in the short term, but that could also have some pretty severe long-term consequences such as riots and mass insubordination. On top of that, a lot of the laws that you’d be able to pass (and oftentimes forced to) range from morally ambiguous to outright tyrannical and cruel. However, your end goal is to keep the city and as many of its denizens alive, so often, you may end up asking yourself “What choice do I truly have?”, and that is the beauty of Frostpunk, especially towards its endgame.

The conclusion

Frostpunk is truly a gem of a game that is sure to appeal to a very large number of players due to it creatively and successfully combining a couple of different gaming genres to deliver a gripping and engaging strategic, survival, and city-building experience, spiced up by the morality of the decision that the game will invariably force you to make. It’s overall a very well-made game with only a couple of weaknesses, the main one being that the two paths you can choose – Order and Faith- play out very similarly to one another from a gameplay perspective. Other than that, Frostpunk is a great game, and we highly recommend it, so, if you are interested in giving it a go, check out the next instructions on how you can play it on your Mac.

Can you play Frostpunk on Mac?

You can play Frostpunk on Mac, either natively, or by streaming the game to your computer. Frostpunk has a version for Mac available on Steam, so you can easily download the game from there and play it on your Mac.

Another great thing about Frostpunk is that it is available for macOS, so Mac users who want to be able to experience this gem of a game can easily do so without needing to employ any complex and time-consuming alternative methods of playing the game. Just note that only the Steam version of the game offers support for macOS, so be sure to purchase it from there if you want to be able to play it natively on your Mac.

Note that there’s one other very easy method of playing this game on a Mac and that is through the help of Boosteroid or another cloud gaming service. Such services allow you to stream the game to your computer, removing the need for downloading the game.

Below, you will learn how to play Frostpunk on your Mac both natively and via streaming the game.

How to play Frostpunk on Mac

To play Frostpunk on Mac, all you need to do is install Steam on your Mac and then download the game through the Steam client. Alternatively, you can also play Frostpunk on Mac by streaming the game via Boosteroid or GeForce Now.

Installing Frostpunk on Mac is very easy, yet we will still show you the specific steps of how to do this. However, if you are short on storage space or your Mac is not very powerful, you may find it better to stream the game to your Mac rather than download it. Streaming a game means that the game is being run on a remote gaming rig with the gameplay being streamed to your Mac, from where you can play. The advantage of this is first, that you don’t need to download the game and so it won’t take up space on your drive, and secondly, that the gameplay performance you’d get won’t be limited by the specs of your Mac (see Frostpunk system requirements below). The downside is that you will need fast and stable Internet, or else there will likely be lag and performance hiccups. If you are interested in trying out this method of playing Frostpunk, check out the following instructions for the Boosteroid and GeForce Now game streaming services. If you prefer the native experience and want to actually download the game, scroll down a bit further for the instructions on how to download Frostpunk.

Frostpunk Set-Up Methods

How to Get Frostpunk on Mac:

First, you will need to purchase the game. Limited time offer on CD.Keys.com for a discount – 82 % Frostpunk for $5.69

Now you will need to register for Boosteroid. This allows you to add Frostpunk to their Cloud Gaming Library. Once uploaded you can seamlessly play the game from your Mac, TV, or Mobile Device.

When Registered you will have additional access to more games for free. Pricing varies depending on the subscription plan.

Play Frostpunk on Mac with Boosteroid

1. You will first need to get an account on the Boosteroid website, so go there and register with your email.
2. Click on your profile name in the upper-right corner, and then click the Subscribe option.
   
3. Pick a preferred subscription plan, choose what payment method you want to use, and enter your payment details to begin your Boosteroid subscription.
4. Next, click the search button from the top, type Frostpunk, and click the game’s search result when it appears.
   
   • Boosteroid supports both the Steam and the Epic Games Store version of the game – click on the one that you own.
5. Click Play on the Frostpunk page, click OK, let’s go, and wait for a couple of moments for Boosteroid to load.
   
6. Next, enter your Steam/Epic Games Store login details and log in to the respective store to start the game.

Play Frostpunk on Mac with GeForce Now

1. Visit the site of GeForce Now, get an account there, and log in.
2. Go to the downloads section, download the Mac version of the GeForce Now client, and install it.
3. Open the client, log in, and search for Frostpunk.
4. Click on either Steam or Epic Games, depending on which version you own, and then click Play.
5. Confirm that you agree to connect your GeForce account to your account in the respective game store, and then enter your login details to proceed. After this, Frostpunk should start in the GeForce Now client in a couple of moments.

Click for our detailed GeForce Now guide

How to download Frostpunk on Mac

To download Frostpunk on Mac, first purchase the game on Steam, and then download and install the Steam client app for macOS on your Mac. Then, search for the game in the Steam client and download Frostpunk on your Mac.

If you want to take advantage of the fact that Frostpunk is officially supported for Mac, here are the exact steps of how you can quickly get the game downloaded on your machine to play it natively:

1. First, if you aren’t registered on Steam, go there, and create a new account.
2. Next, click the Install Steam button on the Steam site, and download the Steam client for Mac and install it.
3. Start the client, enter your login details, and access your account.
4. Click the Store section of the client, then type Frostpunk in the search bar, and click the game’s tile.
   
5. Click on Add to Cart on the game’s page, then click Purchase for myself, and proceed to choose a payment method and entering your payment details to complete the purchase.
   
   
6. Once you buy Frostpunk, select the Library section of the Steam client, then find the game in your library, and click on it.
7. Next, click on Install, select Next, and patiently wait as the game downloads and installs (this could take a while).
8. Finally, once the game downloads, go back to your library in the Steam client, click on the game, and click Play.

Frostpunk on Mac M1

You can easily play Frostpunk on Mac M1 – Apple’s proprietary emulation software Rosetta 2 software designed for Intel Macs to also run on M1 Macs. All you need to do to play Frostpunk on Mac M1 is to agree to the Rosetta 2 installation prompt.

The first time you start an Intel Mac app or program (such as Frostpunk) on your Mac, you will get a prompt to install Rosetta 2. All you need to do is agree to the installation and the emulation tool will be added to your macOS. After that, you don’t need to manually start it – Rosetta 2 will automatically activate if you start a program that isn’t natively available for M1 Macs. You won’t notice any difference in performance, and it would be as if the program you are running (Frostpunk in this case) is being run natively.