Against the Storm Review - An Ambient Roguelite City Builder

When it comes to city builders, I’m a bit picky about the games I play. Cities: Skylines is a bit too time-consuming and meticulous for my liking, but Dorfromantik is a pretty puzzle-builder that you can easily pick up for a long or short session. Of course, sometimes you need something meatier to chew on that strikes the right balance between the two. 

Enter Against the Storm, a roguelite city builder by Eremite Games. It’s a marriage between two genres that sounds too good to be true, but Against the Storm pulls it off brilliantly. The game is set in an apocalyptic dark fantasy world where it perpetually rains–a phenomenon known as the Blightstorm. The world’s safe haven is the Smoldering City which is ruled by the Scorched Queen.

You play as one of the Queen’s viceroys and are tasked with establishing settlements and finding resources for the crown. 

This is the bit of lore that you’re given before Against the Storm drops you into its well-crafted tutorial. It explains the mechanics of the game so that newcomers to the city builder genre can pick up the game without getting overwhelmed. You’re first introduced to the basics such as constructing houses and buildings for acquiring resources, and then at the very end of the tutorial, you use everything you’ve learned to deal with the ongoing pour that is the Blightstorm. 

Rain, Rain, Go Away

To win a run in Against the Storm, not only will you have to face the storm, but you’ll also have to face the Queen. As the game goes on, you’ll be given various orders by her. The longer it takes to finish the Queen’s orders, the more impatient she gets.

The Queen’s wrath is just one of the ways you can get a game over, the other loss conditions are all your villagers dying or leaving. You’ll have humans, lizards, and beavers as your villagers, so it’s important to keep all their various needs met.

You win a run by collecting enough reputation points for your town. You’ll be able to do so by keeping your villagers happy, following the Queen’s orders, and exploring the map.

Against the Storm handles exploration wonderfully and adds both risk and reward. Amidst the thick forest that your settlement is surrounded by are glades, pockets of land that can contain resources, fertile soil, and even ruined buildings.

The best rewards, however, come from dangerous glades or forbidden glades, areas marked with a skull icon. They require you to complete a challenge or deliver certain goods to clear them, and if you don’t complete them in time, you might be in troubled waters. Well, troubled waters aside from the rain.

If you’re someone who wants to play it safe, you can avoid going into forbidden glades, as you’ll come across multiple other resources from regular glades, tradespeople, and even the Queen herself. When you finish one of her orders, you’ll be granted a blueprint for a new building, and every in-game year, you're faced with a cornerstone choice that can grant your settlement a permanent effect.

If you do end up losing a run you won’t have to completely start from scratch, you’ll still have your rewards from the previous settlement. As you successfully navigate each run, you’ll be able to buy permanent upgrades using those rewards. These upgrades help with the increasing difficulty you’ll face as time passes and the storm worsens.

The overworld map in Against the Storm is vast and has various environments and elements that you’ll either benefit from or have to deal with. 

As I continued to play more of Against the Storm, I continued to be baffled by the amount of thought and detail that’s been put into the game. The developers could have stopped at the game just being a roguelite city builder, but they went the extra mile in terms of how atmospheric the game feels. While the Blightstorm is meant to be a big looming threat, the soundtrack and art style make it feel somewhat mystical and cozy. 

As I progressed further through Against The Storm I did have some issues with the difficulty scaling, known as Prestige. There are 20 total levels of Prestige, each level adding one more modifier than the last. While some of the modifiers can completely change your play style, others are a bit of an annoyance to deal with.

Apart from that, there’s not much to complain about in Against the Storm. There’s a lot of freedom when it comes to building your settlements. You can move most buildings around without having to completely deconstruct them, there are decorations that you can place around to brighten things up, and your villagers aren’t that picky and for the most part only need to have food, shelter, and a job that they like (it’s just like real life!). 

Against The Storm Review | Final Thoughts

If you like city builders, Against the Storm is for you, if you like roguelites, Against the Storm is for you, and if you liked Timberborn for the beavers and the gameplay, Against the Storm is definitely for you. Against the Storm is leaving early access on December 6th, so if you’re looking for a quality city builder to sink hours into that’s not too big of a commitment, Against the Storm is the perfect fit.

Against the Storm was reviewed on PC with a copy provided by the developer over the course of 30 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.