This isn’t a Game of the Year piece, but it might be: Against the Storm has grown to be one of my all-time favorites since its initial release in Early Access. The idea of a renegade city builder might get tiresome at a lot of moments since it eludes them all with unexpected depths and boundless possibilities. It’s now my go-to game when I simply want to play, and even after all the time I’ve spent on it, I’m constantly discovering new things about it with happy frustration.
The idea is that you will be creating towns all across the globe, and your efforts will continue for until long it takes for each colony to either succeed or for the evil Scorched Queen to become impatient and declare it lost. You are able to leave a town that is unworkable when you have a particular amount of reputation points, which are earned by reducing impatience points. The impatience points are accrued gradually over time and quickly increase when residents go or pass away. In any case, my problems usually get cured in an hour or two, which is plenty for a single evening session.
Its elevator pitch is alluring: a city builder without any grind, where every session is as novel and thrilling as the last, and where you don’t tire of your tried-and-true tactics. Finding out that Against the Storm is all of those things is a thrill, but after working on it for over a year, it seems almost misleading to state that this is what Against the Storm is. If you want it, there’s basically an infinite amount of depth and intricacy to it.
At first, it seems like your sole task is to attempt to survive among the pandemonium. Maintaining your settlers’ happiness, fulfilling orders, and finishing glade events all help you build reputation, but they all involve resources that you can’t be certain you’ll have or be able to manufacture. Of course, city builders are no strangers to complex resource pipelines, but in Against the Storm, unpredictability is a major influence, especially when it comes to the transition from “easy to learn” to “difficult to master.”
Let’s say I wish to meet the leisure demands of my settlers: I need a structure to house my ale. I need the building’s blueprint, which will be selected at random from a collection of blueprints. If a merchant is providing ale and I have enough money or trade goods, I may be able to purchase it; otherwise, I’ll need another structure to manufacture the ale in, one or more containers to store the ale, and either grain or roots to brew. You can gather both grain and roots in the wild, but if I’m fortunate, I’ve managed to roll a farm or herb garden so I can always have my own.
Yes, this may be really chaotic, as it sounds! I may never fill this pipeline in many towns, or I may have everything set up to make ale, but no location to sip it. Or maybe there’s a plank bottleneck keeping me from constructing the tavern. The way you approach this varies with time and experience: can I package and sell ale that I have the tools to produce but nowhere to enjoy it? Or should I start with a caravan of people who like farming and brewing if I know at the time of embarking that there is a lot of arable land?
It’s exciting to discover how to transition from fighting to survive to leveraging each settlement’s special advantages. For example, you can take advantage of a settlement that grants you free coins at the beginning of each year as part of its special buff by rolling a cornerstone that encourages traders to visit more frequently. It makes no difference in this settlement, at least, if your ale industry isn’t booming because business is doing well.
This is aided by the fact that, even with all the time I’ve spent talking about ale, setting up that pipeline won’t always look the same since Against the Storm has a perpetual growth component that develops with play. You have additional options early in a session when you achieve upgrades that provide you fresh embark bonuses or new beginning blueprints.
Here’s another area where Against the Storm’s balance wins me over: the early game isn’t unpleasant or grindy; rather, it’s simply easier, and if you begin to desire to play with more complexity, you can unlock additional options. It’s not a playstyle you’ll start with, but there are moments when you won’t want to give your settlers precisely what they want, or when having high levels of impatience is a beneficial thing.
Actually, I usually get pushed to start playing with various playstyles by a global map modification. Accept a compromise that eliminates your ability to carry out any royal instructions in order to preserve your reputation. What happens next? First and foremost, I need to make sure my settlers are satisfied, but it might be very sluggish at first. Glade events are another source of reputation, but opening glades also increases antagonism, which decreases settler satisfaction during storms. But until I figured it out, I wasn’t getting any new blueprints! And after mastering that task and others like to it, I gained the abilities to advance to ever-more-difficulter stages.
This is due to the fact that the global map replicates the same sensation of progression—that is, the game becomes more intricate with play. Every colony stands alone, but as you move away from the Smouldering City and toward the completion of a Broken Seal—your desired end result—each settlement’s minimum difficulty level increases and your available resources decrease. Although the challenge’s pace is very rewarding, it’s liberal in that you may always select your own reward level. You can play at whatever difficulty level you desire, low or high, by starting inside certain zones.
I dislike randomness in games because it actively turns me off when I sense that they’re trying to take advantage of my time and attention. The ideal mix between Against the Storm’s random components and the knowledge it provides ahead of time is why I’m so engrossed in it. I am aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the biome I will be entering before I go out, and I am also aware of the particular challenges and rewards that will influence my long-term strategy once I am there. That’s where all of the crazy fluctuations in destiny take place.
The effects of animosity and storms are the finest illustrations of this. Although you can’t choose and caravan around your seasonal bonuses and debuffs after you set off, you are aware of them before you begin constructing anything. Knowing that all of my settlers without complex food have a probability of dying at level 3 antagonism allows me to prioritize my food businesses far in advance of what would have been an unpleasant discovery after a few years. When my plans don’t work out, they may be meticulously planned for or capitalized upon. They can also lead to many thrilling, adrenaline-pumping tactical scrambles.
I recently failed one colony, and I was well aware of the faults I had made: I had neglected to change the fuel sources in my hearth, even though I knew I required wood to feed a hostility tax that would have killed my people otherwise. Next, I selected a glade event that required me to put out fires throughout the duration of the storm, despite the fact that I needed to do other tasks to build my reputation at that period. Finally, I used up all of my money on pies, which quickly ran out since I neglected to restrict them to only those who would benefit in terms of reputation. One of these things would have healed me, but not all three. The town eventually collapsed, but they were all tactical errors made in an intricate network of intriguing decisions that were unique to this community. I’ve never had a session when I felt like I was screwed over by the game, poor luck, or RNG.
Playing a game where every little element brings you back to the core of what a game is best at is enjoyable. Each new layer in Against the Storm exposes something more fascinating than the one before it, to the point that each layer is already very fascinating on its own. Even while my current opinion of it is still favorable, it is quite different from what it was a year ago. Even while Against the Storm has evolved significantly throughout its Early Access period, this is mostly due to my observations and understanding of the game rather than any big changes. It’s among the most creative and well-made city builders I’ve ever played; it grows on you and changes with you as a player. undoubtedly the outcome of some superb rolls against chaos in addition to a well-thought-out strategy.
Eurogamer acquired a copy of Against the Storm on its own for review.