Digerati has been doing a great job at bringing hidden PC gems to current gen consoles lately and Frost is no exception. Frost plays like a more fleshed out version of the recent physical card game Oregon Trail. Fans of deck building and solo survival games will find a lot to love here.
The world is frozen and a lethal storm has ravaged the land. You are tasked with leading your group of survivors through this wasteland in search of the Refuge, a sanctuary where you and your band of nomads can be safe from the storm. Each time you travel forward you put another step between you and the storm. However, failing to move forward brings the Frost that much closer to you. Fail to reach the refuge before the Frost engulfs you and your party and you’ll be lost forever.
Gameplay
Your deck starts off with four different types of cards; Survivor, Food, Material and Fatigue. To move to the next area, you must play the allotted number of cards that each area requires to advance. For example, to move from the Scattered Taiga region you might need to play two Food cards and two Survivors. Hopefully you have them in your deck so you can play them and move on. If you don’t you then have a few options. Discarding a survivor will give you the chance at another card, hopefully in the category that you need. If you need a Food card to move on to the next area you can pick up a Fire card by discarding one Material card. The Fire card can then be used to create a new card which is hopefully the one you need to continue on your way. Idea cards are created by combining together other cards from your hand. There are many different types of Idea cards you can create, with each one potentially helping you along your journey.
When you can no longer play any cards from your hand or move forward your turn is over and the frost becomes one step closer to you.
Located above where you see what cards you need to advance is an empty space that will sometimes be populated with a hindrance or something that can help you. One to really look out for is the wolf. If you advance without killing the wolf, you must either use up one damage point on your character or kill one survivor. This can be a tough decision because running out of health or running into the Frost will end your game. Hopefully you’ll have the ability in this case to create an object to kill the wolf before proceeding to the next area.
As your progress through the game and complete more rounds you will unlock more cards that will be available to you and your deck going forward. With multiple difficulty modes and plenty of new cards to uncover there are hours of game-play available in Frost.![]()
Graphics and Sound
Graphics and SoundBoth have a minimalistic sense about them but, in both instances, it really works. Graphics on the cards and background mostly consist of hand drawn images set against an almost completely white background with a few color splashes for effect. You really get the sense that this is a frozen world void of any sense of warmth and very little hope. As the frost closes in you even get the sense of this danger as the white world becomes even more clouded than it was before.
The music is incredibly minimal, but it works. Most of the time you just hear wind with occasional industrial tunes and what appears to be one lonely oboe wailing as you make your moves. You really get a sense of how bleak your situation is and how desperate you and your party are to reach the Refuge.
Recommendation
It’s easy to lose hours at a time playing Frost, in a good way. You’ll find yourself being swallowed up by the Frost within just one or two steps from the sanctuary of the Refuge and then immediately try again hoping to reach it this time. Fans of deck building games and solo survival games will find a lot to love here. With no multiplayer or online play Frost was made with the solo gamer in mind. Though we reviewed the game on Switch and think that it was made to be played on this system with the mobility off the Switch being the perfect platform for a game like Frost, PS4 and Xbox One players will be rewarded with complete trophy lists and Gamerscores including Platinum Trophies and a complete 1,000 available. Frost launches on July 17th on PS4 in North America and July 18th in Europe as well as July 19th on Switch and July 20th on Xbox One.
*Frost was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games as well as our recent review of INK, Paranautical Activity, and Blacksea Odyssey also from Digerati Distribution.
