Against the Storm

Against the Storm offers unique building mechanics that lend themselves to incredible depth. Opportunities for countless hours of enjoyable gameplay. The world lore is also amazing and very unique. To me, this is in the running for best games of 2023.

Amazing unique concept, with a great art style, and very well thought mechanics. If you are familiar with roguelite games, this idea works very well with the city builder concept. You build a few cities, and then a storm wipes them all out, but you keep your rewards in the form of upgrades to your home base which never gets wiped. So the next playthrough, you start with additional features, resources or something else. The art style is good, the game is very challenging, but very easy to learn so you can get to improving fast. The music is beautiful, althought I wished there were more tracks. Maybe they can be added later. Even though every playthrough gives you random perks, conditions and buildings, you can almost always make it work, by adjusting your planned strategy, and moving on to victory in a different way. This is what makes this a very good roguelite game. Can't wait for the other roadmap updates!

Tl;Dr: A wonderful example of how to take a concept and run with it. I was initially skeptical of this game. How would such a game work? How would a roguelite's mechanics, which involve constant improvement, work with a citybuilder occur? I have to admit, I saw this game under games such as Pharaoh, Caesar and Zeus. I have been plesantly surprised and thoroghly enjoyed this game, and the incredible thing is it is still under early access, so more content to come as well. Starting off with a small colony, complete tasks, don't let blight overwhelm your city, and most importantly, don't let the Queen get impatient. Time is of the essence, in this case, and it's addictive. You need to gain resources to complete the Queen's order while trying to balance out the needs of your citizens, making sure they don't leave (There are penalties for losing citizens). In order to create your industrial zones, you need to clear out land. Glades, opened while clearing land, contain rewards and tasks that need to be done urgently. If not, you might just lose some of the hard-fought and earned resources you just gained. It's a balance that will keep you trying to plan out as much as you can. The game has difficulty settings so you don't have to sweat about every single thing, but the higher the difficulty, the more the game throws at you, from blight being a problem due to using rainwater to having more reputation to win the scenario. There's just so much going on with this game that it makes the game so replayable, not to mention all the different modifiers that each game can have that changes the experience even a little. Overall, I haven't had so much enjoyment from a game like this in a while. A very unique game that has got the balance spot on and highly recommended for fans of both genres.

To preface, I only played the demo. Pros: - nice UI, works fluently without bugs. - nice characters, nice music - You build cities level-wise (campaign-ish) with a clear goal (reach x points) - task assignment to workers is easy - overall very fun and addictive Cons: - It's not possible to plan your industry branch because buildings are enabled randomly. You can see what products they will produce, but not what is needed for production. - you need to fulfill quests to reach the goal, but they are random and might not match your industry. You might not be able to produce the necessary products, because you need a building that is enabled randomly. - I feel like its impossible to actually produce the products further in an industry branch because of those two reasons (e.g. cake: farm + soil + mill + bakery are enalbled randomly + all products to build the buildings needed) - all your cities are wiped out once a year because of a storm and you start from the beginning :(

Played a ridiculous amount of this on a DRM-riddle platform, and with the new expansion sale, I decided it was time to actually own a copy. In short, it's a "roguelike citybuilder." On the overworld map you select a region, you play through the scenario, work toward a variety of objectives, and then move on, earning permanent upgrades and new challenges along the way. The fact that everything gets wiped away in the end means most scenarios are low stakes, and you don't have to worry about doing everything perfectly. You can just have fun building things up, and not having to worry about taking on the technical debt of an increasingly complex, unwieldy settlement. Once you've gotten the hang of everything, it's also perfect for playing while watching/listening to something else, without being boring. Highly recommended.