I love roguelikes and roguelites, and I also love city builders. I’ve played a lot of both, but never before had I played the two blended into one. Roll up Against the Storm – a dark fantasy city builder that has just exited Early Access on PC.
I went into playing with an open mind, but if I’m honest, I wasn’t quite sure how this mix of ingredients would turn out. I mean, I’ve played hybrid games before, but all too often they seem like light versions of the genres they claim to represent.
Well, spoiler alert: Eremite Games has only gone and bloody done it. Against the Storm is an exceptional game with a surprising amount of depth. In fact, it has been out for a while in EA, but now it’s time for version 1.0. Let’s take a look at the finished article.
What is Against the Storm all about, then?
You take on the role of the Queen’s Viceroy, tasked with building settlements in a post-apocalyptic land around the Smouldering City, in a world ravaged by the Blight Storm. Each outpost you build is located on a procedurally generated map – meaning no settlement will ever be the same as the map will contain different resources, events and layouts.
Before you start building, you choose where to place your settlement on the world map. Deciding where to build is a strategy in itself as you have to consider biomes, rewards that can be used for upgrades (I’ll get to that later), and potential dangers. Once you’ve picked your spot, you can choose your items, the starting citizens, and the difficulty.
When you look at the citizens, you have to consider their species – including humans, lizards, beavers and harpies – which adds delightfully to the fantasy setting. Each has different specialities, for example; lizards are good at harvesting meat. What’s more, each has their own demands and needs.
I loved that they included different fantasy species that not only complemented the setting, but added more layers of strategy when catering for their desires.
Anyway, let’s get back on track. Once you’ve made your choices, you can start your settlement.
The heart of a city builder
You start with a few buildings in a glade surrounded by dense forest that you need to hack through to collect wood to open up new glades. These glades may contain items, such as containers you can choose to break open for resources or send back to the Queen to appease her.
You might also find buildings that can be rebuilt and resources such as copper that can be mined. There are even larger, more dangerous glades that have more resources, but also events and scenarios that need to be dealt with, such as a camp of thieves (things like this will have some sort of detrimental effect on your population).
The fundamental objective in the early stages is to complete certain tasks, such as building a number of pathways or delivering some resources, all before the Queen loses her patience, you feel her wrath and lose the stage. In other words, you’ve got to complete your jobs before the time runs out.
Each challenge successfully completed lowers the Queen’s impatience bar, giving you more time to complete the game, and oftentimes your presented with a choice of blueprints for new buildings. Some are available from the start of the stage, such as basic housing and woodcutters, but other more complex buildings that can manufacture more advanced materials need to be unlocked.
The tasks also don’t all appear at the start, meaning you sometimes have to hold back from opening up certain new buildings as you don’t know exactly what you’ll need to manufacture down the line. As you advance through the game, you’ll be building everything from trading posts to archaeological dig sites, and creating trade routes with other settlements and so on.
The joys of going rogue
Here’s where we get to the roguelite bit. Each run will have different buildings available to you, different challenges, set in different environments. This means you’ll have to adapt and change your tactics because no two runs are ever the same. There’s a hell of a lot to think about, but I if you like a challenge I don’t think you’ll mind because you’re constantly making interesting decisions.
Your settlement will end if the Queen runs out of patience or if you satisfy her and complete your tasks. Upon completion of the stage, you gain experience and some rewards – a sort of currency that can be spent on upgrades in the main city. Then the game informs you of your performance. There are also certain challenges to complete, such as not letting anyone die in a stage, which is easier said than done.
You then head back to the main map to buy upgrades that make your next settlements easier, such as opening up new starting buildings, the ability to take more starting items, or even slowing down the Queen’s impatience. The higher your level, the more upgrades you can buy.
There are also deeds (triggered by in-game achievements) that you receive when completing in-stage challenges, and the rewards here are things such as new buildings or experience points. In short, the more you play and the more upgrades you buy, the more satisfying tactical options open up to you.
What’s your strategy going to be?
One thing I really loved is how danger presents itself. There are no enemies, no band of warriors storming in and destroying your settlement. Instead, it’s environmental danger, with pounding storms and rain affecting your people’s resolve, or a dangerous glade revealing things, like totems that kill you if you don’t burn them down.
You need to manage your citizens, satisfying their basic needs such as food and shelter. You also need to manage their resolve by producing certain goods, like jerky for lizards, or building specie-specific houses. Then, the more you expand, the more trees you cut down, the more peril will come from the forest, affecting their resolve.
If things get too bad, your citizens either leave or die. You have to be aware of events that can damage your colony and deal with them in a timely fashion. Effectively, the name of the game is resource management and then adapting your tactics accordingly.
Classically trained strategy
Stylistically, it reminded me of the old Warcraft city builders, but with enhanced graphics and lighting. It has this dark otherworldly feel that I really appreciated. The buildings looked great and so did the animations, but obviously, this game is sold more on its mechanics than looks. So, in short, looking good was a welcome bonus.
Then there’s the music, which had this dark and mysterious feel to it. It suited the gameplay perfectly – a kind of classical music that wouldn’t sound out of place in Game of Thrones.
Summing up: I’ve really loved my time with Against the Storm. I’ve enjoyed learning its mechanics and the progression loop, and it pleasantly surprised me how well the developer pulled off the blend of the two genres.
Against the Storm provides a decent learning curve with loads of things to discover. If you want a challenge and a game that will test your adaptive strategies, this has got that in spades, especially in the new permadeath mode that was added in 1.0.
This new mode is called the Queen’s Hand Trial and it gives players a mountain to climb. You’ll have to start from scratch and the pressure is on, as you can’t abandon a settlement and if you do, your progress will reset.
Overall, Against the Storm is a great roguelite city builder, and for fans of either genre, I’d say it’s well worth a look.
Against the Storm left Early Access on Steam, however, the game also launched on PC Game Pass, too.
