In a remarkable display of good timing, we are currently giving away Frostpunk 1 game keys to yearly supporters of Eurogamer.
At a glance, Frostpunk 2 looks quite a lot like Frostpunk 1, and I was actually relieved to see this because the silence has been such around the sequel I honestly wasn't sure what to expect. It could have been anything. But it's not; it's familiar. We're still building a Victorian-style city in the snow, and it still looks very cold out there. Look more closely, though, and there are some surprisingly profound differences underneath.
The biggest immediate change is that the weather - the extreme cold - is no longer your major concern in the game. It's still there, you're still in a frozen wilderness and it's still a contributing factor to the pressurised situation you're in - as is having enough food for your city and staving off disease - but you won't spend the game as preoccupied by it, or by an apocalyptic storm that's rolling in.