Permafrost Story and Lore: The Shattering, Rook and Icarus

Short answer: Permafrost is set in 2035, on a near-future Earth that froze after the Moon shattered — an event the game calls The Shattering. You play Rook, an engineer with the skills to rebuild but little wilderness experience, drawn out into the cold by a radio signal from a friend long believed lost: Icarus. Ten years of permanent winter have buried the old cities, and the story is as much about how the survivors organised themselves as it is about what happened to the Moon.

What the game calls the disaster: The Shattering

The backstory has a name in-game. The developers call the cataclysm The Shattering — a Moon-phase event that nobody managed to stop. It is not a single explosion but a chain: the Moon breaks apart, its debris forms a ring around the Earth, and the ring blocks the Sun.

The developers keep the physics deliberately vague. Project lead Mikołaj Nowak has said the narrative cares more about how people behave when disaster is closing in than about the mechanics behind it. So the question of why the Moon came apart is one of the story's open mysteries rather than a solved premise.

How the world froze, step by step

The official story trailer, How It Started, lays the sequence out in order. Stripped to its beats:

1. Unexplained signals arrive from the Moon. Nothing is visibly wrong yet — the opening scene is a quiet night sky over a lit city.
2. The catastrophe hits at sunrise. Violent weather, explosions and enormous waves strike coastlines; the skyline darkens; destruction spreads to other cities.
3. Society unravels before the ice does. Riots, fires and overwhelmed hospitals — the trailer's own summary is that people were already fighting for food, heat and shelter under sirens, before the permanent freeze set in.
4. The Moon breaks into pieces. Its shards gather into a ring of debris around the Earth, which wrecks satellites and brings global communications to a halt.
5. The ring blocks the Sun, which is the trigger for the deep freeze.
6. About a year of collapse. Governments fall while survivors fight over basics, and the old order never recovers.
7. Permanent winter sets in. Snow and ice bury whole cities; animals from the Arctic range through streets that used to be populated.
8. Ten years later is when you play. Winter still has no end in sight.

When and where it is set

Permafrost is near-future science fiction, not fantasy. Retail listings give the setting as 2035, which lines up with "ten years of winter" if the Shattering falls in the mid-2020s: the freeze starts in the recent past and the game opens a decade into the winter.

The world is a frozen open world where city ruins fade into wilderness. Real cities appear in the backstory footage, but the playable area is the ice-bound landscape rather than a named real-world map. Survivors have given the deep cold its own name: the White Hell, the frozen wilderness you cross to get anywhere.

Who you play: Rook

You are Rook, an engineer. The official description is precise about the balance: Rook has the skills to rebuild but little wilderness experience. That framing is the design logic behind the whole survival loop — scavenging, repairing and building are in character, while being a seasoned survivalist is not. Rook is not a soldier and not a hardened outdoorsman, which is why every expedition has to be planned rather than powered through.

Icarus, the friend you are looking for

The plot's engine is a radio signal from Icarus, a friend Rook had lost contact with and who is presumed dead. Finding Icarus is what pulls Rook out of safety and gives the survival loop a destination.

The game's opening narration fleshes Icarus out in Rook's own words: brilliant, but poor with both money and judgement; the best friend Rook ever had, and lost. The two were close when they were younger and idealistic, digging into things local officials wanted to keep buried, until the world changed in ways neither had imagined. 待确认 — that history is delivered as opening narration rather than stated in official copy, so treat it as Rook's account rather than a documented biography.

The dog

Rook does not walk that road alone. A rescued dog — described in press material as a German Shepherd — scouts ahead, warns of danger, carries supplies and sniffs out loot. The developers repeatedly stress that it is part of the survival loop rather than a cosmetic pet, and they frame it as the thing that keeps the player steady when the silence gets heavy.

One detail does not line up between sources. Some preview material says you choose a breed at the start, while the developer's own description simply says a rescued dog. Whether you pick the dog or are given one is 待确认.

The opening arc, in order

This is the story as it unfolds in roughly the first hour, based on a recorded playthrough of the Early Access build. Treat the beats as reliable and the wording as not — this is one recording, not the game's script.

1. Icarus's message. Rook receives a radio message from Icarus, who has rebuilt a life inside an old shopping mall he calls City Mall, and who asks Rook to meet him halfway, at Horizon.
2. The bridge. Rook's route collapses. Anders, a guide leading a group through, pulls survivors out of the wreckage; Rook is the only one from the lower group to make it. Anders stays behind with the wounded and promises to follow on to Horizon.
3. Back to basics. The party's supplies went down with the bridge, so the opening is a rebuild from nothing: a fire for warmth, makeshift tools, a bow, and Rook's journal of schematics.
4. Reaching Horizon. Horizon is the first real settlement. There Rook meets Robyn, who lays out Horizon's history — including that someone who was with the settlement at the start left, promising to return and connect them to other settlements, and never did.
5. The plan for an antenna. Robyn points Rook at a spot past the Bone Cave that was scouted earlier as an antenna site, and asks Rook to build it — the run also doubles as a camping trip if it takes longer than expected. Horizon can then support Rook from a distance.
6. Liam. A quieter thread opens at Horizon: Liam keeps to himself, turns up only sometimes to eat, and speaks less each time. Rook is asked to check on him and bring the food.
7. Hunter's Glade. A Horizon resident asks Rook to retrieve something left behind in the woods at Hunter's Glade — a recording. They did not think it mattered at the time.

Two of those names are worth a double-take. Liam appears in the map data as Liam's Confession, and Robyn appears there as a trader near Horizon, so both are corroborated by the game's own files. Anders is not corroborated by any official or press source reviewed here — he appears in the opening but nowhere else, so treat him as a guide rather than a confirmed main character. 待确认.

The factions and the names you will hear

Official material describes several groups with clashing goals, and the map labels line up with several of them:

The developers name the story's tensions as the individual against the community, nature against technology, and cooperation against conflict, where a larger group has to stretch limited resources. They also say the player can push the Technocrats and Tribals toward cooperation, or use the friction for personal gain.

One naming overlap needs flagging. Robyn's rebuild effort is called New Haven, while the settlement Rook reaches at the start is Horizon, and Icarus's rebuilt home is City Mall. Whether these are three places, or the same place described from different angles in different sources, is 待确认 — official copy and in-game narration do not line up cleanly here, and this page will not force them into a single story.

A short glossary of story terms

What the story leaves open

Deliberately. The developers frame the question of why the Moon came apart as an open mystery rather than a premise, and the Early Access build is the opening stretch rather than the ending. Moral choices run through the side stories rather than a single branching main path, and the studio has said the Early Access phase exists to add content and respond to feedback.

Practically, that means anything on this page reflects the launch-window build. The patch notes page tracks what each update changes, and the known issues page collects the quest problems the developers have acknowledged so far.

FAQ

Does Permafrost have a story, or is it just survival?

Both, with the story underneath the loop. It is marketed as a story-driven survival sandbox: Rook's search for Icarus runs below the scavenging and building rather than replacing them, and the developers name the story and its side quests as the thing that separates it from a bare survive-as-long-as-you-can game. For how the loop itself works, see the gameplay breakdown.

Is the setting fantasy or science fiction?

Science fiction. It is near-future Earth, given as 2035, with no fantasy elements — the developers are explicit that there are "no fantasy tropes".

Do I need to follow the story to play?

No. Progression is gated by exploration and gear, not by story chapter, so the sandbox works without the plot. What the story supplies is the reason Rook is out in the cold at all.

Are the named factions the same as the ones on the map?

Partly, and the match is worth using. The map labels include a Technocrats Colony safe zone and a fortified Technocrat territory, which line up with the Technocrats named in official faction descriptions. Read the map for geography and official copy for politics.

Is Rook a fixed character or a blank slate?

Fixed enough to have a name, a job and a history. There is no class system to commit to — see the classes page — but Rook is always an engineer with a past, not a custom protagonist you invent.

What this page cannot tell you

The backstory facts here come from official and retail material. The opening-arc beats come from a single recorded playthrough, which is why several of them carry a 待确认 marker. Recordings of that kind garble proper nouns, so a name spelled one way in a video may be spelled differently in game text; where a name could not be corroborated against the game's files or official copy, this page says so rather than inventing a spelling.

Where two sources disagree — the dog's breed being the clearest example — this page lists both instead of picking one. Nothing here is copied from the game's script, and this wiki is an independent fan site with no affiliation to SpaceRocket Games or Toplitz Productions.

Permafrost Wiki is an independent fan site. Permafrost and all related names, artwork and assets belong to SpaceRocket Games and Toplitz Productions. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.