Frostpunk developer, 11 bit Studios, has a new game in the works and, thankfully, it won't be as sad as what fans have grown used to.
People familiar with Frostpunk and This War of Mine will probably agree that both games evoke doom and gloom. The former requires the building of a city, and then preparations for an apocalyptic cold, while the latter asks players to brave it through a warzone.
Despite the depression, both games sold pretty well and garnered good reviews upon release. It was recently revealed that Frostpunk sold 1.4 million copies on PC, and the game is now set to launch for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this summer.
11 bit's lead game designer, Marta Fijak, disagrees that the two games carry a reputation of sadness and depression; she says what they provide is a "meaningful experience."
"People sometimes look at This War of Mine and Frostpunk and the common denominator for them is sadness, a kind of depression but for me, this is not true," she tells Eurogamer.
"The common denominator for those games is meaningful experience. One tells a pretty important story about what happens to civilians during war; the other says how far will you go to ensure survival. And the next story we are doing, it's also meaningful. It has that core, important question, which for me is important in my life."
In any case, 11 bit's upcoming game - called Project 8 for now - will be a sort of happy one, according to Marta (although she'd always say that), but it's not going to make you feel like you're watching an episode of Care Bears.
"We don't live in a bubble," she declared.
"This one is not sad and depressing. This is a celebration of one of the parts of our experience - celebrating that thing which, in my perspective, is really important for humans.
"Of course, we are a mature company, so it's not like Peggle and happy and rainbows. There are takeaways, there are questions I hope you will ask yourself after playing the game, and it will show you a new perspective on life."
Project 8 is still between pre-production and production, but work started on it last April. There's not much that could be said about the upcoming game right now, but we could expect it to be very different.
"For the story we want to tell right now, those Frostpunk mechanics aren't the best ones to express what we want to say and make you feel the things we want you to feel," Marta says. "So we changed it - more than slightly!"