The world of Frostpunk has undergone a rapid period of cooling that kicked off a catastrophic and apocalyptic series of events. Entire cities were swallowed by snow as people scrambled to develop new cities centered around powerful steampunk generators to survive the coming frost. The events of the first game have the player manage one of these new cities through its first couple months and culminate with helping the city survive the first of the world's extremely powerful blizzards, called whiteouts.