For the iron-willed survivalists among you who think that Frostpunk's "hard" mode is too damn easy, today's 1.10 update introduces the new Survivor Mode promised last month. The mode, which I assume is named ironically, ratchets up the challenge by eliminating the ability to pause the game unless you open a menu, and only saving progress when you exit. 

The core difficulty is also cranked up in Survivor Mode: Developer 11 Bit Studios didn't get into the details but said that "meeting the people's needs or balancing the delicate economy of your city will be even harder." The good news is that all the innocent people who will inevitably suffer slow, grim deaths because of your insistence on playing this way won't have died in vain, thanks to the addition of new Survivor Mode achievements. 

On the technical side of things, Frostpunk now supports Nvidia's Ansel, which enables—among other things—"super cool high-resolution screenshots like this one." (That's 12672 × 6432, by the way.) There's also a new quicksave/quickload option (F5 and F9 by default), and multiple other changes and fixes that you can dive into below. And if you haven't already picked it up, Frostpunk is also currently on sale on Steam for 15 percent off, taking it to $26/£21/€26 until June 21. Read the patch notes below.

 Smaller changes and balancing: 

• Constructed streets now more easily connect to already existing street net
• Rebalanced amount of starting resources and resources on frostland for Refugees and The Arks scenarios in easy and hard difficulty setting
• Hunters will now have to rest for a few hours after coming back from the hunt. It will no longer be possible to send them to other work immediately
• Added blocking other panels by in-game menu Changed extraction rate value for all pickable resources - replaced potential value with all employees by actual value based on efficiency
• It is now possible to bind keyboard shortcuts to “Fast speed” and “Very fast speed” commands
• Increased precision of the gathered Steam Cores amount to 2 digits after comma
• Added emergency shift trackers to pickable resources

 Fixes:

• Fixed certain endlog variations that didn’t display properly when Cannibalism law was passed
• Fixed overlapping trackers on frostland (sites, expeditions, transports, survivors)
• Fixed missing recurring consequences of Emergency Shifts. Watch out when you exert your workforce!
• Fixed showing tutorials after loading save
• Fixed a bug causing snow caps to accumulate on buildings that were just built inside heat zone
• Fixed scrollbars in all expedition building selection panels
• Fixed some translations
• Fixed many UI show/hide animations
• Fixed closing notifications on pause
• Enabled notifications visibility on Frostland
• Fixed queuing unlocked resources on resource bar
• Fixed texts serializations - all texts will be in current language, even after changing language in main menu and loading save
• Fixed calculating average discontent for expeditions
• Fixed states (selected, pressed) for many buttons in selection panel
• Fixed current research description text on workshop selection panel
• Fixed displaying prohibited citizen groups on population panel
• Fixed disabled people outside care house count
• Fixed two crashes that occurred in rare circumstances
• Fixed a bug causing upgraded buildings to overlap adjacent streets

Frostpunk's good, ain't it? Chris called it a grim and engrossing city-builder in his review, and I was already engrossed after talking to developer 11 Bit Studios earlier this year. Today, 11 Bit announced a slew of free content which will be added to the frosty society sim throughout the year, starting with a tough new survivor mode arriving next month. Frostpunk is plenty hard already, so I shudder to think what challenges survivor mode's "new, special modifiers" will bring. 

Additionally, another mode called 'endurance' is in the works. 11 Bit describes endurance mode as a direct response to mounting demand for an endless or sandbox mode, but in a Steam blog post, the studio said "it's gonna be our distinctive take on this feature." A new scenario called The Builders, said to be "the most substantial update for 2018," is also on its way, but 11 Bit is keeping details close to its chest for now. 

Outside of new modes and challenges, a few quality of life features are planned for the year. Customization options for citizens, both human and automaton, are perhaps the most interesting. It will just be names at first but more options are planned for the future, and as Chris said in his review, anything that helps you connect with your citizens is a plus. 

Finally, a photo mode will let you capture better shots of Frostpunk's gorgeous wintry landscapes. Smaller patches loaded with tweaks and fixes will arrive between these more sizable updates, and 11 Bit says new content will continue to roll out well into 2019.