Against the Storm is something as unusual as a roguelike city builder - a combination that really shouldn't work. City builders usually have a long-term perspective; that is, how can I plan this city to make it work many hours of gameplay later, and how do I make it all fit together when I eventually need to expand it with X, Y, and Z? But the nature of a roguelike is impermanence, because in a moment I'll have to start over, so why bother planning my city when it will disappear again in a moment?
Against the Storm is the first game from Polish developer Eremite Games, and the PC version was released back in December 2023. Now, this small strategy game, with more depth than most other games, is available on consoles and Game Pass.
It all takes place in a dark fantasy world, a world plagued by a series of violent storms that make the land difficult to inhabit. Every 12 years, an extra violent storm, a Blightstorm, sweeps across the land, destroying cities and settlements - except for the capital, Smoldering City, which can withstand these storms and where the country's inhabitants understandably seek refuge.
You take on the role of the viceroy, the queen's representative, and your job between these Blightstorms is to travel the country and build as many settlements as possible to obtain resources for the queen, find treasures, and valuables around the country, but also to learn new techniques and new ways to design the settlements of the future, so that in the next gap between two Blightstorms, you can go even further into the country and learn even more.
There are several things that distinguish Against the Storm from other similar games, and one of those things is actually the queen. When you take your caravan and set out into the country to build settlements, you receive ongoing orders from the queen. These can be anything from building different structures, making various deliveries, and many other tasks, but she is impatient - if you take too long, she may call you home and cancel the expedition.
It may sound stressful, but it's actually not. It's very well balanced and, unlike other games in the genre, there's not much waiting around here. These orders from the queen help to create constant momentum, there are always goals to achieve (and thus rewards) and there is always something to aim for. You have to keep moving all the time. However, there are also areas of the country where the queen cannot get her orders out, so here you have to create your own momentum (because the queen is still just as impatient), and that is considerably more difficult, and here you could say that the queen's impatience can be a stress factor.
One might fear that the speed of the game would compromise its depth, but that is not a problem here. You have to constantly keep an eye on which resources your various buildings should focus on producing. What are the needs of your inhabitants? What do they prefer to eat? What kind of entertainment do they like when they are not working? How do you make them feel safe? All of this varies from race to race, and there are five races in total, ranging from humans, beavers, and reptiles to foxes and harpies from Greek mythology. So the happier and safer they are, the better they perform and the more resources you have available. Conversely, if they are starving or their most basic needs are not being met, their willingness to work will decline and they may leave the settlement, leaving you out in the forest with no workforce - and an angry queen on the line.
You also have to keep an eye on the types of resources required to build the structures that either the queen demands or that are needed to rebuild some of the damaged structures you find in the forest. So don't worry, even though the city-builder part is served up in small, bite-sized chunks and the pace is fast (for a game of this genre), there has been no compromise on depth here.
Due to the roguelike structure, you never know which buildings, resources, or races you will have at your disposal, so instead of making long-term plans for your city, you need to be able to adapt to the cards you are dealt. Again, this is something that is significantly different from other city builders.
It's always exciting to see how this type of game works with a controller on consoles when converted from a PC with a mouse and keyboard. The team behind the game has solved this really well, and although there are a few places where you have to press a lot of buttons to find the things you need, the user interface is intuitive and provides exactly the information you need - neither too much nor too little.
Is there nothing bad to say about Against the Storm? No, not much, actually. The only thing you can point to is the visual aspect. The graphics seem a bit old-fashioned (I get a bit of a Warcraft III vibe here), but that's okay. What's worse is that the many different structures you can build can be a bit difficult to distinguish visually from each other. The designers could have made them more caricatured, so that, for example, a sawmill had a huge circular saw, making it easy to identify as a sawmill, and similarly with other buildings. Several of them look a little too similar, requiring you to move your cursor over the building and read the overlay to see which building it is. Of course, you get to know them over time, but it's relatively easy to lose track of which buildings you have.
All in all, Against the Storm is a truly excellent game and a surprisingly well-functioning mix of two genres that shouldn't be possible. It starts off a bit slow, as the first few hours are one long tutorial, and despite that, it still has a fairly steep learning curve when you're let loose on your own. There are hundreds of hours of gameplay hidden in this little game, despite having only a single game mode. It simply eats away at the hours and summer evenings without you noticing, and before you know it, it's autumn.
Against the Storm comes with a big recommendation from us if you have even the slightest interest in strategy games and city builders. Especially if you have a Game Pass subscription, as Against the Storm is part of this service, so you can download it without having to pay extra, meaning there's no excuse not to give it a try. But beware, it may cost you a lot of hours.