The team behind Frostpunk and This War of Mine has announced a deepening partnership with Microsoft, as it plans to bring a bunch of games to Xbox Game Pass in the future. Frostpunk 2 is now confirmed to launch on PC and Xbox Game Pass day one, with "further Game Pass additions from 11 bit studios portfolio" to be unveiled at a later date.
For now we don't know what these titles will be, but there are some good options out there. The likes of The Invincible, South of the Circle and Children of Morta are already out on Xbox among others - they could be some of the team's upcoming Game Pass options.
As for Frostpunk 2 itself, we have a brand-new gameplay trailer up above, along with a bit of a timeline for when we can expect to go hands-on with the game. The PC Game Pass edition is expected to arrive in the first half of 2024, while the console version is coming to Xbox Game Pass sometime "later" than the PC release.
Here's what to expect from the upcoming sequel:
"As a Steward in Frostpunk 2, you will oversee an ever-growing metropolis and be required to carefully weigh the needs and demands of its society. Your people are concerned with the fate of their children and crimes on the streets.
They complain about unhealthy squalor, escalated by industrial growth, but need places to work. And what if you cannot afford to reward their toil with food and shelter or take care of their health? You can’t please everyone and when radical factions start rising, it only takes a tiny spark for the boiling tension to blow up."