Why is it so difficult to know if a game is goig to run on your system?

It's is (usually) not so difficult, and this is no exception.
Look up the game's system requirements. Frostpunk's say this:
Minimum:
Processor: 3.2 GHz Dual Core Processor
Graphics: GeForce GTX 660, Radeon R7 370 or equivalent with 2 GB of video RAM
Looks plain as day to me. Your hardware doesn't meet the published requirements, or even come close.
Keep in mind that CPU-integrated GPUs like yours are not merely slower than the discrete GPUs listed as bare minimum; they sometimes also lack features that are present in the latter. Similarly, both of your CPUs are older/weaker than the minimum, and may lack some of the newer instructions that would be present in 3.2GHz+ models.
In cases like this, there's no reason to expect the game to run on your hardware. This is not because you're running Linux. It's because of target platform decisions made by the game's developers.
You might get lucky, or discover enough workarounds to get it running anyway with some effort, but it's unlikely to be a good experience. If I were going to try anyway, I would start by enabling as much logging as possible, and searching online for any error messages I found in the logs to see if I could find someone else who had encountered and solved them. Be aware that troubleshooting like this can take a long time even if you're an experienced software developer, and might not bear fruit.

On some level ... because it often doesn't matter. Most people just buy the game and if it doesn't run well enough for them refund it under steam's 2 hour window. Even for Windows this is an issue because of the large variety of PC hardware; you might have a chip that's new but weak (kind of like buying a new Kia and expecting it to compete with a new Corvette).
On another level ... because you're using hardware that's over a decade old. What you really want for Linux gaming is either a Steam Deck or a desktop PC with an AMD GPU. If you have to go with a laptop, I'd probably look at the Framework 16; definitely no modern Macs because the ARM chips are pretty hostile to Linux and especially Linux gaming.
- Clearly I'm using old hardware, but I think it should run on the MacBook as it's also an old undemanding game. But Yeah, clearly a Steam Deck or something similar is probably gonna be on my buying list soon.
  
  minimum gpu requirement there is gtx 660, which is still like 5 times more powerful than yours. you can't really run anything more demanding than solitaire.
  
  My guess is the VRAM. These older integrated GPUs just don't have enough memory.
  
  It could be the VRAM like others said, but it could also be that the DirectX -> Vulkan translation fails because your Mac's CPU doesn't have support for the necessary parts of Vulkan.
  Not to link to "that site", but that seems to be the issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/sd7yup/how_can_i_fully_install_vulkan_in_my_intel_hd_4000/
  I did not bother to look into exactly why, but that can be a mix of what the Linux drivers for the integrated GPU support and what operations the hardware actually physically supports.
  
  This doesn't get talked about much but in my experience gaming on a Mac is often worse than on Linux despite the market share.
  
  As others said, Frostpunk is actually fairly demanding game in my experience. That is, it won't run on a potato.

because you are running integrated graphics that can barely run your OS's UI, much less a game.
it has nothing to do with steam, or proton, or frostpunk.
You don't meet the minimum system requirements.
Before you have a fit over another game, you ain't playing anything made in the last 20 years on either of those. Or anything with 3d graphics.
Only thing you're playing on those is old school games like original Fallout, and original baldurs gate, and those sort.

Neither of these systems are powerful, and they're also running Intel integrated GPUs which are frankly generally poor.
If you want to game with Proton, then the device still needs to be able run the game well if it had Windows installed.
As a general very rough rule, most games will work with proton if other games work with proton on your system. Its basically a compatibility layer between the game and your linux PC - if Proton can communicate well with your graphics card and CPU, and it has the right specs, it should just work - proton does the heavy lifting. But if no 3D games are running then most of them wont.
When it doesn't work, the first place to look is your drivers and hardware. There are then certainly lots of caveats for specific games which may behave peculiarly with certain hardware and needs adjusting but I find that is the exception rather than the norm. Start with your drivers and hardware.

Ivy Bridge doesn't fully support vulkan
- To add more context i also use an old 2012 MacBook as a retro rig
  Most unreal engine games don't even bother running. And of course you dont have CUDA support since no Nvidia hardware

I've run it without issues, on a much newer system.
I don't know why it wouldn't run at all, but as you point out, you're running it on a pair of pretty low-end systems. One is from six years prior to the game's release without discrete video, and the other came out in the same year, but is a very low-end system with no discrete video card; those things aren't really aimed at playing 3d games. I don't think that you'd likely be happy with performance even if it ran.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/323190/Frostpunk/
Windows:
Minimum:
\ Memory: 4 GB RAM
\ Graphics: GeForce GTX 660, Radeon R7 370 or equivalent with 2 GB of video RAM
Recommended:
\ Memory: 8 GB RAM
\ Graphics: GeForce 970, Radeon RX 580 or equivalent with 4GB of video RAM
Mac:
Minimum:
\ Memory: 16 GB RAM
\ Graphics: 4GB AMD Radeon Pro 5300M, Radeon Pro 560X or better
My experience is that minimum requirements tend to be kind of optimistic.
The minimum system requirements specify a discrete video card.
You've got an 8GB RAM Surface Go with a non-discrete GPU and no VRAM, and a 16GB RAM Macbook also with a non-discrete GPU that had been around for six years prior to the game's release.
I've never returned a game, but IIRC Steam does have a refund policy for a short period of time after purchase, so if you buy a game and it doesn't run, you can refund it.
goes looking
https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.
It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.
The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store.
EDIT: Here's a Passmark comparison of your two Intel integrated video things and the lowest-end video card they list in their system requirements, a Geforce GTX 660. This gives a score to give a rough idea of how they'd compare in relative terms:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/2152vs2vs3593/GeForce-GTX-660-vs-Intel-HD-4000-vs-Intel-HD-615
GeForce GTX 660: 4013
\ Intel HD 4000: 348
\ Intel HD 615: 705
I mean, you might get it running, but I'm skeptical that you'd have a good experience with it.
EDIT2:
Their "recommended" card is a GeForce GTX 970. Adding that:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/2152vs2vs3593vs2954/GeForce-GTX-660-vs-Intel-HD-4000-vs-Intel-HD-615-vs-GeForce-GTX-970
GeForce GTX 970: 9634
EDIT3: Hmm. I've never really thought about it, but you'd think that Valve could get minimum requirements plonked into a database, and then have the Steam client, which can see your hardware -- assuming that you're shopping from the Steam client -- warn you on the game page if your system doesn't meet them.
- Thanks for the precise and detailed answer.
  Yeah I guess I clearly have to give up on playing games less than 10 years old, even on the more powerful MacBook.
  
  FWIW I think the Surface is the more powerful machine.
  I wouldn't bother with any 3D AAA that came out after ~2010 on the Mac and even then you're looking at 720p 30FPS
  The Surface looks like it might be a solid light indie game machine. I doubt it'll struggle too much with anything 2D and may even be able to run late PS3/super early PS4 era (before 2015) 3D games at reasonable framerates.
  
  Well, it depends. I mean, I play rather newer games that I suspect either can handle fine, but they're light on 3D rendering.
  Nova Drift is one favorite.
  That exited Early Access this year. I play it regularly. But...it just uses 3D hardware for some lightweight effects.
  goes to see what minimum system requirements are
  Yeah, that actually lists your older Intel integrated GPU, the one on the MacBook, as being the minimum requirement.
  CPUs haven't advanced all that rapidly for quite some years, so games that are CPU-bound are also less of an issue than those GPU-bound.
  EDIT: And some games won't use 3D hardware at all. I also regularly play Rule the Waves 3, which is a 2023 naval warfare military simulator that doesn't use 3D hardware at all.
  EDIT2: I've also played Balatro recently, and that just uses the barest of 3D hardware to do stuff like stick rotated sprites on the screen. They just say "integrated graphics" on their system requirements. That's a 2024 release.
  
  Not having fully functional Vulkan is going to make gaming on Linux a real pain. WINED3D (DX to OpenGL) works well enough nowadays, but DXVK and vkd3d-proton (DX to Vulkan) is where the real magic is.
  With Vulkan, very low level programming is possible, which means translation layers and HLE emulators benefit a lot in terms of accuracy and speed.
  I would strongly recommend upgrading your hardware if at all possible, not just because of performance, but because of up-to-date Vulkan driver support. AMD GPUs work best on Linux. Avoid Nvidia if you can, but if you literally can't get anything else, it will also work. Modern Intel should also be fine, but not as mature as AMD.
  If you really want to run games on these computers, you will need to force enable WINED3D via an environment variable, either in Steam, or in whatever launcher you're using.
  There is a fork of Proton designed specifically for old GPUs. I would use this if you absolutely cannot upgrade: https://github.com/pythonlover02/Proton-Sarek

I buy it on steam. If it does not work, i refund it.

I'll preface this with the fact that I don't know the game, but looking at the system requirements on steam, both of those systems are below minimum spec.
Also, it would probably help if the macbook actually was on fedora 41, it reads 40 in the screenshot - so maybe try upgrading that one, since the game runs on the system with actual fedora 41?
- Oh sorry, the spec screenshot isn't up to date. Both systems have been upgraded to Fedora 41 and both are now running the newest stock kernel.

Buy it and get a refund if it doesn't

There's only so much you can do with a 13 year old MacBook. You note "upgraded", but that doesn't mean much at that vintage.
If you're trying to run current games, assume they won't work.
As the other user said, better off getting a SteamDeck.
Although, TBH, if your prime concern is PlayStation going discless, that may be an unwarranted worry.
https://www.ign.com/articles/former-playstation-boss-shawn-layden-says-sony-cant-get-away-with-making-ps6-disc-less
PlayStation is ahead in too many territories that don't have the infrastructure to support a discless console.

Frostpunk minimum requirements page says you need a dedicated GPU with 2 GB VRAM. So an Intel HD Graphics GPU won't cut it. You can only do light gaming with it.
I'm sure there are gaming benchmark videos for it, or for at least CPU+GPU combination. You can get idea about what you should expect. Even Age of Empires II DE would have a hard time with it.
For Linux gaming, you need a relatively new system with a dedicated GPU. For example you can still do low to mid end gaming with GTX 1060 3GB, with a relatively new CPU.
Though for Linux gaming, AMD systems are suggested for more seamless experience. You can also get a Steam Deck if you live in one of those countries.
Edit: Also apparently Intel HD Graphics 4000 doesn't support Vulkan, so'll you need this launch option for every non-native game: PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%
- Without Vulkan, many games will not run well, if they run at all.
  
  Pre-Vulkan era games are fine if the minimum system requirements are met. Native games are also fine. I have an old laptop with the first gen Intel HD GPU and I can play FTL, Mindustry and Sid Meier's Railroads (on low settings).
- I'm gonna try the launch option you gave me before giving up, thanks.
  
  Please let us know how it goes.
  
  No problem, and good luck!

Others have already answered the main question here, but I have a different question for you and a couple recommendations.
I’m a Playstation gamer looking into moving to Linux gaming as the next Playstation might not be able to play physical games.
While I'm happy to see more people flock over, you're also not going to get physical games here, so not sure what's the advantage for you.
As for recommendation, many have replied that your system doesn't meet the minimum requirements, but there are other management games that you could play that would run okay on your system, my main recommendation is RimWorld it's an amazing colony building game, and a lot more in-depth than Frostpunk, plus it should run on your machine.
- Well, physical games are one of the things retaining me on Playstation as it gives me the ability to sell a game I don’t enjoy.
  If you take this away, it only leaves the plug&play aspect and the power for your money aspect.
  Thanks for the suggestion about Rimworld, I’ll check it out👍
  
  That makes sense, I guess I haven't thought of it that way. BTW for the plug&play feeling a Steam Deck is as console-like as it gets, I've had mine since launch and it's by far one of the best purchases I've made.

You're trying to use a laptop from a billion years ago. Of course it doesn't work. Frostpunk is older, but not that old.
How do you know if a game is gonna run on your machine?
Read the system requirements. If you meet or exceed them, and Proton DB says silver or above, it will probably work.

It may be a good idea to launch the game through the terminal for troubleshooting when it doesn't launch through the UI. More often than not on Linux, the terminal carries very useful info, of which often you can find solutions online once you spot a suspicious line. And for Steam games specifically, to not change the test environment too much, the command for starting a given game is steam steam steam://rungameid/[game_id], where [game_id] is the number that appears in a given game's page on Steam, e.g. 211820 for Starbound, making the command steam steam://rungameid/211820.

the 2008 Mirror's Edge might run with 30 fps
- https://store.steampowered.com/app/17410/Mirrors_Edge/
  NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or better
  1GB RAM or more
  The GeForce 6800 has a Passmark score of 113 and he's fine on memory, so, yeah, I'd give decent odds that it'd probably run well on his system.
  
  great game, i can recommend it. Altrough it is very short, almost anybody can finish it in 3 hours or less. All early Fallout games (1-2-3, maybe even New Vegas with compromises) would run. Far Cry 3 on 720p low, Far Cry 1 and 2 would run well. Crysis 1, 2 too. Sleeping Dogs 720p low. Minecraft too if opengl 4.5 is aviable. Resident Evil 5, Half Life 1-2, Alien Isolation 720p low, CS Source, CS 1.6, Tomb Raider 720p low. maybe these would work and worth trying. Generally, most games made before 2010 should run. The weakest part is the gpu, the strongest is the RAM

Left a comment as a reply to one of yours about the laptops themselves.
The way I can tell if a game does/should run on my PC is kind of a multi-prong approach
System requirements page
DigitalFoundry does really good performance analysis videos on new games (REALLY good if you have a rough idea of how your components compare to others)
Determining what console my PC compares to in terms of performance and going off that. Specific examples:
First laptop had an i7 3610HQ and a GT 740M - a bit more powerful than PS3/Xbox 360. If a game runs on those consoles (720p with inconsistent 30FPS) I should be able to run it on this laptop at slightly lower (trash port) or slightly better (good port) resolution or fps.
Second laptop had an i5 7300HQ and a GTX 1050Ti - performance between a PS4 and PS4 Pro
If it gets 30FPS on base PS4, this laptop can easily run it at 45 unless it's a bad port (FPS can be higher if I lower settings)
It's also comparable to a desktop GTX 970 (although 970 is still a bit better) so If I see 970 as the minimum, I know I can tweak stuff to get it running.
Current laptop has an i7 11800HQ with a GTX 3070 - quite a bit better than PS5, not sure how it compares to PS5 Pro yet. It's new enough and supports DLSS so I expect a locked 60FPS at 1440p on everything with some tweaking. Right now, until a new console generation comes out, if I can't lock 60 on a game, it's probably really poorly made and not worth my time.
Once you've seen how different games run on your hardware, you sorta get a sense of how certain types of graphics should perform
And then check protondb to see if it can run on linux (most likely will)
Integrated graphics may have some gotchas but the general rule I follow is "if it came out within a console generation, it can't run that console's games. Last gen can be serviceable. 2 generations back run pretty well."

Hmm, maybe your setup is just too different from what the masses use. If you scroll through the comments on ProtonDB, you'll find most people with a Intel GPU (like you) are also reporting issues. At least in the more recent comments. And the System Requirements on the Steam page for MacOS say something about unsupported Intel Macs. So I'd say it's probably some issue with Intel GPUs. And since the majority of people use other GPUs, you'll get an overall score that doesn't match your situation. You can filter reviews on ProtonDB btw.

Also if it crashes on video playback that's a good indicator that you might need proton GE as the video is wanting a weird windows codec that reg proton doesn't want to install in vanilla proton for good reason.

these computers with linux are good as lightweight servers, not really for gaming

I have used proton DB to help me trouble shoot other games that were rated silver and above. I basically try to find reviews (using the filter search function) with my specs and see what input they have to offer (sometimes solutions to issues that are exactly like mine). If I don't find anything, then I start looking up solutions from other peoples' setups.
Sometimes, it could just be that your hardware isn't strong enough for the game. Sadly I can't offer anything more specific than that.

Where did you buy Frostpunk and how are you installing it?
- I bought it on Steam (flatpak), so I could clearly get a refund but I won’t do that as I still plan on playing this game one day.

Linux support for steam games has come a long way and I find the section on the steam page that says what works on the steam deck is pretty bang on for my debian based Linux gaming.
That said I feel your pain. You are running Linux on a MacBook and that is a very small fringe group in a little larger fringe group. If you want to play games on pc you need to get something with more gaming centered hardware. Gaming on a Macbook is never going to be a great process at this stage of the game. A 10 year old PC running linux with a 1050ti would provide a better experience than a MacBook.

No info about "how to make sure game is gonna run", that is actually one of the reason I switched to console so many years ago.
BTW you don't have to worry about not being able to play physical games on PS, even if it doesn't come with optical drive by default, they will always sell the attachment. At least for next 2 or so generations (if not more), too many people with physical games exist.
- I had the same idea and bought an Xbox many years ago. Had to send it back twice for red rings and I had games that literally wouldn't load properly. That's when I realized the "consoles don't have any problems" claim was a lie just like it is when people say it about windows or Mac.
  
  They are machines, they can have any number of issues, but generally speaking, if a game is released on a console (and it works) then it will work for you too. No worrying about configs or system requirements.
- Yeah the plug and play advantage of consoles is a big one. You just know that it’ll always run fine.
  Well I guess you’re right about an optical drive being sold for a while, but I’m sensing that more and more games are gonna have no physical edition.
  Also, to be honest, Linux gaming and the ability to have your game on every computer while being on an open system is also attracting me.
  I think my perfect setup would be:
  a Steam Deck with the ability to run Fedora workstation (I love Gnome) for a few games and my administration
  a Playstation for demanding games and racing simulations
  
  Just FYI, if you ever do get a steam deck maybe consider Bazzite instead of Fedora. It is based on Fedora atomic, offers a gnome version, is specifically optimized for a bunch of handhelds including steam deck and supports the game mode of steamOS.
  
  Yeah, I agree. I just didn't have any idea about your other question, and you didn't have any responses then so thought I should at least help assuage your PlayStation fears 😀
  
  Steam Deck with the ability to run Fedora workstation (I love Gnome)
  Don't be too focussed on needing to run Fedora for access to Gnome. The OS on the deck (Arch in this case) has the ability to run Gnome. It'll just be getting it working "right" that'll be a pain. I would have thought some people are already on it (even if just for a laugh). A cursory web search says it does work with some odd input issues.
  That is the beauty of (and often the complexity of) the Linux ecosphere. You can change one thing, Fedora to Arch, and the other things "should" still work.
  
  If you don't specifically need Fedora, you can certainly install Gnome on Steam Deck with SteamOS, it just comes with KDE as a default.