Have You Played Against The Storm?

Ever since the first Sim City back in the 90's I'm in love with city builder games. Over the years, more and more sub-genres were conceived, games grew more complex, explored new settings and scenarios. But one of the main issues these games all share remained - the early game usually is the most enjoyable part of any playthrough. The reason for this is simple: In the beginning, there's usually a lot of stuff to do, your city is growing fast, you unlock new options, and it generally feels like something new is happening every few minutes. As your city grows, though, progress becomes slower, meaningful upgrades become rare and in between. Eventually you only start the game to look around your city without making much progress at all, ultimately loosing interest in the game.

Today, I want to introduce to you a game that attempts to change all this - Against The Storm, the Roguelite city builder that took Steam by storm!

So what's so special about Against the Storm? Well, as indicated above, it tries to take the best part of any city builder, the early game, and lets you experience that part again and again. Against the Storm takes place in a somewhat apocalyptic fantasy world. Some strange storm has ravaged the land and, for all you know, only a small fortress in the mountain has survived and still resists the storm. While it's basically always raining, sometimes the storm gets a little less devastating and in that time you as one of the queens heralds, are sent out into the wild to build a settlement, fulfill the queens orders, and get back in one piece before the storm consumes you and your whole settlement.

In actual gameplay terms, this means that you will pick a location on the world map to build your city, try to fulfill different goals and leave the area once you achieved enough victory points. For that, you are rewarded with experience and various items that will then allow you to upgrade the mountain fortress, giving you permanent upgrades for all future runs you start. Every few missions you play, an especially hefty storm will ravage the land, eradicating all existing settlements and reshuffling the terrain so you get to pick new locations for your next few settlements.

While building your settlement, you have two conflicting bars that fill up slowly. There's your reputation, which essentially serve as victory points, and there's the queens impatience. If the impatience maxes out first you loose the game, if your reputation maxes out, you will win the game. Sounds pretty stressful, but really, I found the game to be rather relaxing. The queens impatience mostly is just there to make sure that you can't just let the game run for a few hours without doing much. Should you loose a round, it will usually be because you made some grave mistakes during the game and not because you simply ran out of time. As you progress through the different permanent upgrades, more and more options to achieve victory points open up, making the game more and more complex but also more and more interesting. Keep your people satisfied to slowly gain reputation over time. Fulfill the queens orders, trade with other settlements, explore dangerous glades - basically everything you'd expect from a (fantasy) city builder.

Every new settlement only starts with the hearth, which basically is your city center, a storage house, and a couple of workers. So you build some early buildings, explore your surroundings, and slowly expand your settlement. Every few minutes, the storm gets harsher, making it harder and harder for you to keep the resolve of your settlers afloat. If they loose hope at any point, they'll slowly start to leave your settlement. Make it through the storm alive and some more settlers will join you. Every few reputation points you gain, you are presented with a selection of a few different blueprints for additional buildings of which you can choose one.

This is one of many ways the game tries to keep itself fresh: A lot of factors are randomized for every run and no two settlements should ever feel exactly the same. There are countless different factors to consider for each run:

• What biome are you in
• What resources are available
• What are the queens orders
• Which races make up your workforce
• What happens during the storm
• What buildings are you able to construct
• What special landmarks are close to your location

And these are only some of the examples. So far I've spent close to 25 hours playing the game and I have yet to play a single round that has even close to the same combination of effects as I had before. The game also comes with several different difficulty levels, each adding additional features and effects to the game. To me personally, the second hardest has been the most entertaining as it's still a little forgiving but needs enough focus and attention to keep things interesting.

Depending on what difficulty level you choose and how good the different random aspects align with the queen's orders, completing a single settlement usually will take something between 1 and 2 hours. I've yet to fail winning a scenario, but it was really close several times already. To me, the game strikes a great balance between the permanent progression and the freshness of each new playthrough. Even after 25 hours, there are new elements added to the game and new features unlocked, keeping the experience interesting. The game is also still in active development, being labeled as Early Access on Steam. To be clear here, though, it doesn't feel like early access at all, the game is really polished and I didn't run into a single major bug thus far.

Against the Storm is sitting at an overwhelmingly positive rating of 96% upvotes. In my personal opinion, that rating is well deserved and spot on. Their asking price is $20, which is more than fair for the entertainment you can get out of the game. Personally, I can only recommend giving the game a shot. It's the perfect title if you have a few hours to kill. And that's the only negative I can say about the game - you do need that time. Playing a settlement for a while and then coming back the other day is a nightmare. With all the random moving parts, understanding what's happening and where you left will take you quite some time. But that's really the only thing and unless you get interrupted by something all the time, that shouldn't be an issue at all.

And that's all from me for today. Thank you all for reading and see you next time!