Frostpunk 2 is a really interesting one to me.

I LOVED the first game. Soundtrack on in the background sometimes, liked the board game (just manual meh balance FP1), got all the achievements, really enjoyed it.

The second IS a good distinction from it, it’s not just rinse and repeat the same game. Great story, epic music, different scale and problems. It’s just like… They took the second tier of ideas they had for FP1 and implemented them. It actually probably would have been a good game if it didn’t have those footsteps to follow in.

Surprisingly, a few recent sequels have been amazing. Shapez2 is an unbelievable follow up to the OG. Hades II is the same imo. Massive, beautiful, fun distinction in gameplay, but still great ideas and balanced and such.

Monster Train 2 is great in demo, Kingdoms 2 crowns is a bit less recent but is such a great follow up to what’s effectively an arcade game in the first. It’s not all downhill or anything

Also silksong wen

Also, fwiw, you can curtail wind turbines incredibly quickly. They’re the quickest moving assets on an electrical grid typically. So you are using them to balance the grid quite often. You can just pitch the blades a bit and they slow or stop. it’s not really a tech problem, but a financial one like you said.

I’m not sure much about solar curtailment, other than the fact that they receive curtailment requests and comply quite quickly as well.

Ha, instantly assumed it was the same book. I went and sought out a hot chocolate for the first time in years upon reading it. Really fun food descriptions in that book