I reviewed this game with a key I was provided by the publisher.
They say not to take your work home with you, but I’ve done a pretty poor job of that. During the day, I work as an urban planner, and at night I come home to play city builder games so I can pretend anything I’m doing has an effect on the well being of citizens. That aside, I’ve always really enjoyed city builders, with Airborne Kingdom being probably my favorite game in the genre. However, each time a new one comes out it feels like there’s some gimmick at the forefront trying to set it apart, which makes sense in the field of such a crowded subgenre. Against the Storm stands out from the crowd because it comes in not with a gimmick, but a new layer - the building of your city is a competition you cannot afford to lose.
Against the Storm takes place in a low-fantasy world that has been destroyed by an apocalyptic storm. The one Sanctuary left is the Citadel, the capitol where the Imperial Queen resides and the remaining civilians in the kingdom have taken refuge. You serve as the Queen’s viceroy and are apparently on thin ice, because the moment you arrive in a new land to start rebuilding civilization the Queen’s impatience begins to rise. The great thing about the impatience meter is that it isn’t just a timer, it’s also related to how happy your citizens are and their work efficiency. On the left hand side is your inspiration meter, built by completing tasks, making citizens happier by clothing and feeding and sheltering them, and expanding the empire. Filling up the inspiration meter first is a victory, and filling up the impatience meter first is a loss. This balancing act is brilliant, because no matter how badly you mess up, or how high your impatience meter is, you can always come back from it with the right strategy.
The art is immediately reminiscent of World of Warcraft, and that’s a huge compliment. One reason that game has survived so long is the timeless fantasy art style that is both pleasing to the eye and harsh with color at once. The musical score in Against the Storm is wonderful, and adds just enough air of ominous mystery without being a distraction. The UI is perfect to navigate, and they allow manual scaling of the elements as well so I can blow them up as large as I like with one click. I must mention this game has an excellently paced tutorial as well, and after 30 minutes you’ll understand every complex feature of this very layered city builder and be ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Against the Storm is also somewhat of a Roguelike - when a city is completed, you’ll return to the citadel and receive praise and money that you can spend on global upgrades for your next town. If your city fails, you return in shame and get nothing but must start a new city elsewhere. Regardless, one of the features that I most dislike in roguelikes is when your deaths just mean restarting. In some games, like Hades, your deaths are canonical, and that’s true of Against the Storm as well. An incoming storm meter ticks forward as you try to build the kingdom out enough across five distinct biomes with enough cities to brace it for the impact of the oncoming apocalyptic storm - do you have what it takes for the kingdom to survive?
A lot of what I’ve described is framing material for the meat of the game, the city building part, but the framing does it a great service. Providing context for the individual actions you take in building out the city is a perfect way to make the player engrossed in what they’re doing because they know there are far reaching consequences that won’t just disappear at the end of the run. And yet, it isn’t too much pressure because, as I said before, you can always make up for your mistakes by simply focusing on quest completion to fill the inspiration meter before the impatience maxes out.
Entering a new settlement area, you’ll begin with a sacred hearth that must be tended to at all times. It needs fuel, such as wood or oil, to continue burning, and probably the only moment of real panic I had in this game was the one time I ran out of fuel. The hearth is very important because all shelters for housing citizens must be within a radius of it, and if it goes out, suddenly you have 40 citizens who are unsheltered and their desperation begins to skyrocket.
Paths are free to build and increase the speed of citizens by 5%, which is fantastic. Besides giving your settlement a sense of direction as it expands, it’s crucial that paths are free to build so you’re encouraged to keep placing key buildings in districts outside the residential ones as you build them out. There are three types of citizens - humans, lizardfolk, and beaverfolk, with a fourth unlockable harpy class later in the game. Each of these classes of citizens have different skill buffs, but importantly none of them are bad at anything - just some are better than others at specific tasks. Humans are better at brewing ale, farming, and gathering; beavers are better at woodcutting and woodwork, and so on. You’ll need to be smart about which citizens you’re sending to do what tasks or run which buildings.
As you gather base resources like food, stone, wood, and minerals, you’ll build the city out by exploring glades. The unexplored parts of the map are covered with a fog of war and separated by wooded areas into open glades. Upon cutting down the necessary trees, you’ll be faced with a glade event which could range from a mysterious cursed idol to a boss battle. How does a boss battle work in a city builder? Surprisingly well, actually. The boss won’t let you build in its glade until defeated, and while fighting it, it will provide a massive debuff to your whole city.
If you want to explore a new building or ruin, or fight a boss, you need a certain amount of a specific supply and 2-3 citizens. For instance, I was nearly defeated by a monster worm that depleted my meat stores every 10 seconds, but required a whopping 40 slabs of meat in order to be satiated and leave. If you ignore a glade even, whether it's an object or a boss, for too long, it’ll cast a massive negative global effect on your city that will very much ruin your day. It’s a perfectly balanced system that at once encourages you to explore, stems the flow of sprawl, and adds a real sense of urgency to tasks now and then. You can also move buildings instantly and for free, which I’ve never seen in a game like this before.
While you’re working, you’ll receive tasks from the queen every few minutes. Each one of these, when completed, earns you a new building type from a small selection and a global buff. Completing all 8 quests is one way to win the run, but they get progressively more difficult and require more complex materials as they go. Alternatively, keeping your citizens happy and active with drinks, entertainment, and nice homes is another way to go. The most effective players will take advantage of both.
Against the Storm is willing to throw out decades long traditions in mechanics of city builders that I didn’t even know I wanted to get rid of until they were gone, and benefits greatly from it. Roads are free to build, buildings are free to move immediately, all citizen classes offer only buffs with no caveats, building construction is instant, every kind of resource can be both mined and crafted from at least 3 kinds of structures, boss fights provide a sense of urgency in building, and every material needed to craft something can be substituted for 5 other materials in a pinch. In tossing out the playbook, developer Eremite Games has created both the most streamlined and exciting city builder I’ve played to date. Perhaps for the same reason Fallout 4 became one of my favorite games of all time, the post-apocalyptic theming of city building adds a gravity to your action that is both heavy and encouraging. I can’t wait to sink several dozen more hours into this game with my lizard friends and show the queen once and for all that i deserve that promotion.
They say not to take your work home with you, but I’ve done a pretty poor job of that. During the day, I work as an urban planner, and at night I come home to play city builder games so I can pretend anything I’m doing has an effect on the well being of citizens. That aside, I’ve always really enjoyed city builders, with Airborne Kingdom being probably my favorite game in the genre. However, each time a new one comes out it feels like there’s some gimmick at the forefront trying to set it apart, which makes sense in the field of such a crowded subgenre. Against the Storm stands out from the crowd because it comes in not with a gimmick, but a new layer - the building of your city is a competition you cannot afford to lose.
Against the Storm takes place in a low-fantasy world that has been destroyed by an apocalyptic storm. The one Sanctuary left is the Citadel, the capitol where the Imperial Queen resides and the remaining civilians in the kingdom have taken refuge. You serve as the Queen’s viceroy and are apparently on thin ice, because the moment you arrive in a new land to start rebuilding civilization the Queen’s impatience begins to rise. The great thing about the impatience meter is that it isn’t just a timer, it’s also related to how happy your citizens are and their work efficiency. On the left hand side is your inspiration meter, built by completing tasks, making citizens happier by clothing and feeding and sheltering them, and expanding the empire. Filling up the inspiration meter first is a victory, and filling up the impatience meter first is a loss. This balancing act is brilliant, because no matter how badly you mess up, or how high your impatience meter is, you can always come back from it with the right strategy.
The art is immediately reminiscent of World of Warcraft, and that’s a huge compliment. One reason that game has survived so long is the timeless fantasy art style that is both pleasing to the eye and harsh with color at once. The musical score in Against the Storm is wonderful, and adds just enough air of ominous mystery without being a distraction. The UI is perfect to navigate, and they allow manual scaling of the elements as well so I can blow them up as large as I like with one click. I must mention this game has an excellently paced tutorial as well, and after 30 minutes you’ll understand every complex feature of this very layered city builder and be ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Against the Storm is also somewhat of a Roguelike - when a city is completed, you’ll return to the citadel and receive praise and money that you can spend on global upgrades for your next town. If your city fails, you return in shame and get nothing but must start a new city elsewhere. Regardless, one of the features that I most dislike in roguelikes is when your deaths just mean restarting. In some games, like Hades, your deaths are canonical, and that’s true of Against the Storm as well. An incoming storm meter ticks forward as you try to build the kingdom out enough across five distinct biomes with enough cities to brace it for the impact of the oncoming apocalyptic storm - do you have what it takes for the kingdom to survive?
A lot of what I’ve described is framing material for the meat of the game, the city building part, but the framing does it a great service. Providing context for the individual actions you take in building out the city is a perfect way to make the player engrossed in what they’re doing because they know there are far reaching consequences that won’t just disappear at the end of the run. And yet, it isn’t too much pressure because, as I said before, you can always make up for your mistakes by simply focusing on quest completion to fill the inspiration meter before the impatience maxes out.
Entering a new settlement area, you’ll begin with a sacred hearth that must be tended to at all times. It needs fuel, such as wood or oil, to continue burning, and probably the only moment of real panic I had in this game was the one time I ran out of fuel. The hearth is very important because all shelters for housing citizens must be within a radius of it, and if it goes out, suddenly you have 40 citizens who are unsheltered and their desperation begins to skyrocket.
Paths are free to build and increase the speed of citizens by 5%, which is fantastic. Besides giving your settlement a sense of direction as it expands, it’s crucial that paths are free to build so you’re encouraged to keep placing key buildings in districts outside the residential ones as you build them out. There are three types of citizens - humans, lizardfolk, and beaverfolk, with a fourth unlockable harpy class later in the game. Each of these classes of citizens have different skill buffs, but importantly none of them are bad at anything - just some are better than others at specific tasks. Humans are better at brewing ale, farming, and gathering; beavers are better at woodcutting and woodwork, and so on. You’ll need to be smart about which citizens you’re sending to do what tasks or run which buildings.
As you gather base resources like food, stone, wood, and minerals, you’ll build the city out by exploring glades. The unexplored parts of the map are covered with a fog of war and separated by wooded areas into open glades. Upon cutting down the necessary trees, you’ll be faced with a glade event which could range from a mysterious cursed idol to a boss battle. How does a boss battle work in a city builder? Surprisingly well, actually. The boss won’t let you build in its glade until defeated, and while fighting it, it will provide a massive debuff to your whole city.
If you want to explore a new building or ruin, or fight a boss, you need a certain amount of a specific supply and 2-3 citizens. For instance, I was nearly defeated by a monster worm that depleted my meat stores every 10 seconds, but required a whopping 40 slabs of meat in order to be satiated and leave. If you ignore a glade even, whether it's an object or a boss, for too long, it’ll cast a massive negative global effect on your city that will very much ruin your day. It’s a perfectly balanced system that at once encourages you to explore, stems the flow of sprawl, and adds a real sense of urgency to tasks now and then. You can also move buildings instantly and for free, which I’ve never seen in a game like this before.
While you’re working, you’ll receive tasks from the queen every few minutes. Each one of these, when completed, earns you a new building type from a small selection and a global buff. Completing all 8 quests is one way to win the run, but they get progressively more difficult and require more complex materials as they go. Alternatively, keeping your citizens happy and active with drinks, entertainment, and nice homes is another way to go. The most effective players will take advantage of both.
Against the Storm is willing to throw out decades long traditions in mechanics of city builders that I didn’t even know I wanted to get rid of until they were gone, and benefits greatly from it. Roads are free to build, buildings are free to move immediately, all citizen classes offer only buffs with no caveats, building construction is instant, every kind of resource can be both mined and crafted from at least 3 kinds of structures, boss fights provide a sense of urgency in building, and every material needed to craft something can be substituted for 5 other materials in a pinch. In tossing out the playbook, developer Eremite Games has created both the most streamlined and exciting city builder I’ve played to date. Perhaps for the same reason Fallout 4 became one of my favorite games of all time, the post-apocalyptic theming of city building adds a gravity to your action that is both heavy and encouraging. I can’t wait to sink several dozen more hours into this game with my lizard friends and show the queen once and for all that i deserve that promotion.