Imperfect Placement in Circular City Building Frostpunk

The circular grid placement pushes you to place buildings in non-optimized ways that you will want to rework when new types of buildings are available.

Frostpunk is a city-building survival game in which everything is built in circles around a central heat generator. Houses and buildings require enough heat to operate.

As the game progresses, additional heaters and other buildings with area of effect can be built. To optimize your constructions, you want to have as many compatible buildings within the areas of effect. But the circular placement and the different sizes of the buildings create small gaps and irregularities over time. The heating area of the central generator has to be upgraded, so you cannot plan your whole city ahead of time. You need to build with the constraints you have and adapt and change the city’s layout as it expands.

Construction view of a middle sized city
Optimized layout by a skilled player

The imperfect placement that is forced by having a circular grid gives the player a reason to remove and replace non-optimized buildings as the city develops and new types of buildings have to be added.
In Frostpunk’s case, it contributes to the survival theme: you often want to rebuild but it is just another reminder that the ressources are scarce and that there is always something more urgent.