Against the Storm from Eremite Games and Hooded Horse is an extremely satisfying early access title available on Steam that scratches the city-building, micromanagement itch. Playing as the Viceroy, you will be tasked with managing an outpost located in the wilds.
Does Against the Storm do enough to set itself apart from other titles in the genre and is it worth checking out in its early access state? Let’s dive into it shall we!
Micro-Management
Playing as the Viceroy, you’ll be brought up to speed with the game’s mechanics quite quickly in the tutorial. Here you will learn how to quickly establish a small village/outpost out in the dangerous wilds and how to fend for yourself. Players will have to build structures which are dedicated to performing specific tasks and then assign villagers to these structures.
How you expand your village in Against the Storm is quite different to other titles since it involves cutting down the forests around your settlement to reveal “Glades”. Getting access to a Glade reveals more resources and other things such as dangerous events. Cutting your way across forests and revealing more glades is therefore essential to gathering additional resources and progressing in Against the Storm.
The dangerous glades are clearly marked and it’s up to you if you want to risk accessing them. These glades can be avoided completely but sometimes, the rewards they contain are well worth it. Players, therefore, have to weigh up the pros and cons of venturing deeper into the forests and revealing dangerous glades.
As you rack up resources, you’ll be able to complete tasks or orders. You can pick orders from a menu and some of them are way easier to complete than others. Completing orders will net you a reward in the form of new structures or additional perks or benefits. You’ll therefore again, have to weigh up the pros and cons of accepting specific orders. You can also hit a dead end with orders if you don’t have the required resources or structures necessary to complete them so players will have to pick carefully.
Build Settlements
Building your settlement is pretty straightforward and plopping down buildings is incredibly easy. You can move buildings around without suffering any resource costs and this is great news for players who don’t like waiting around for new buildings to be constructed. Players will have a fire at the centre of their outpost and this needs to be constantly fueled to keep their villagers alive. There’s also a morale meter which needs to be monitored and this feels very reminiscent of Frostpunk. However, it’s not nearly as stressful as Frostpunk’s gameplay.
Unfortunately, Against the Storm does involve a lot of waiting around at points. Even with the fast-forward option available, there are moments when you’ll have to just sit around doing nothing while resources are gathered and products are produced. Thankfully though because there are multiple orders which can be accepted at a time and because exploration is encouraged, the downtime where you’ll be waiting for something to happen is not as bad as it could be. The fact that there are risks involved with exploration also alleviates this waiting around since you never really know what the game is going to throw at you next.
Against the Storm also incorporated rogue-lite elements into its gameplay formula. Each time you venture out away from the Smoldering City and into your settlement, you’ll eventually gather resources which can be used to upgrade the Smoldering City itself. Blightstorms, which destroy everything outside of the Smouldering City reshape the world completely and erase any and all settlements already built. This ensures that every run through the game is never the same and this keeps things fresh. Each time you build a settlement, you’ll encounter completely different resources and biomes as well as have a completely different gameplay experience because of the persistent rogue-lite elements that you’ve unlocked previously.
Against the Storm, therefore, favours replayability and is quite a hefty time investment. Once you get going though, chances are you’ll be hooked and before you know it, 5 hours would have passed and you’ll be building another city in a completely different location but with far more resources and perks at your disposal.
Against the Storm does an excellent job of onboarding players into its game world. Everything that you need to know is contained in-game and you won’t struggle at all with anything thanks to the handy tooltips and in-game atlas. Yes you will fail quests early on but once you’ve got the hang of things and once you realize that this is a roguelike that favours decision making which weighs up pros and cons, you’ll have a blast of a time.
Graphically, Against the Storm looks fantastic too with effects that are well done as well have an artistic aesthetic that suits the type of game it is perfect. The designers do need to tone down the flashing lights caused by lightning a bit but other than that, we’ve had no real gripes with the graphics. It looks great all around.
The soundtrack to Against the Storm is great too with music that doesn’t get annoying at all. For a city-builder, the music is a key aspect of the game and Against the Storm’s soundtrack while not exactly super catchy, does a good enough job of providing background music to build to. Maybe some voice acting or additional music tracks can be added over time but for now, it’s fine.
Final Verdict
Overall, as an early-access city-builder with a focus on completing logistics quests while incorporating roguelike elements into the mix, Against the Storm gets a solid recommendation from us. Give it a try and see for yourself. This is a great game that will hopefully only get better with time.
Join the early access by buying the game on Steam here https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336490/Against_the_Storm/
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