Against the Storm

Great game. This is not a city builder or a fantasy city management sim. It's a roguelite game that requires improvizing with what you are given. Every settlement you build is ~1 hour session. It's more Slay the Spire than a city builder. Every session is different and there are a number of random factors that make you think on the fly and adapt - if you don't enjoy this type of gameplay, don't get it. It's great.

Do you like building things, growing into a new environment until you have a sense of completion, and starting over (like the games mentioned in the title of this review)? Well you're in luck. This game does it as good as any of the best of them. Clearly a labor of love, and the developers are really engaged with the community to make this a good game. It seems to have taken pains to get rid of all the annoyances that a lot of other developers seem to think is important to include in their games. Nothing ever feels like a chore because your game is always in motion, always expanding, always building. The interface is intuitive and useful (with occasionally rough edges that keep getting patched out via the very active development process). The game design is like a kitchen full of ingredients that can be combined to make thousands of different meals. The shuffling of resources and challenges, objectives, rewards, and difficulty levels (if you choose to change it) make every map a joy to play. It is going to take an extremely long time to get old. If the developer adds modding tools someday, it could be the Stardew Valley of city builders. Anyway, you can't go wrong playing it, even if this isn't your favorite genre.

I've never got attracted by city builders, however I do like rogue likes, when I viewed a couple of videos of gameplay and some of the rules I felt like trying. With 70+ hours in this game I can say this is an awesome city builder, even when it's more randomized than a rogue like, I still liked this game. The complex yet fun mechanics, the aesthethic part of the cities, the chain of production, all in all a really awesome game that I will continue to play for some long time.

Do you like fantastical steampunk aesthetics? Do you like supply chain management? Do you like city builders? If you said yes, this game might be for you. The core gameplay loop is surprisingly addictive: you settle an unexplored territory with your intrepid woodland settlers, attempting to complete enough quests for the Queen before her patience runs thin. Along the way, you'll have to gather resources, process them into usable items, and explore the shrouded glades for more resources to collect. Oh, and the yearly storm. Don't forget about the yearly storms where your city gets stress tested. Initially, the mechanics of the game might seem a bit obtuse beyond resource collection. You'll often have to make choices about what kind of town you'd like to build with incomplete knowledge of what the randomly-generated map has to offer, adjusting your supply lines on the fly. However, while I was learning the mechanics, the game's lore and "rainpunk" art design really helped keep me hooked. Once you understand trading and selecting which resources will be used in production, the game is yours. My main criticism of this game is that I wish there was more interaction with your prior settlements. Currently, you can send resources to them for currency, but I'm not sure if there's any rhyme or reason to the resources that they demand. It would be extremely cool to have prior choices in your settlements more directly impact future settlements. It can be a bummer that you don't really get to experience your settlement after you've thoroughly built it out and have a great supply chain going. On the other hand, being forced to start from scratch with a new set of challenges once your original settlement essentially begins to run itself is addicting. You are settlers from the Smoldering City, and the Great Blightstorm is coming to wipe the world clean -- there will be no respite from the rain unless your plucky explorers find a way to end the 25-year cycle of destruction.

Spent several hours on the demo and fell in love immediately. Pretty complex from the start with increasing difficulty. Bought the full game today.