Developed by Eremite Games and published by Hooded Horse, Against the Storm is a brand-new survival city builder set in a dark fantasy world. Against the Storm is not your traditional city builder as it brings roguelike elements into the mix as you try your best to deliver to an impatient queen and also try not to be consumed by an ever-angry forest. Hooded Horse is known for creating some of the best simulator titles and here, we are jumping into the newest title under their belt. This is our early access review of Against the Storm in which we expand our settlements while trying to keep evil spirits from killing our civilians.
Against the Storm sees a planet that has been destroyed by toxic rain and continuous sinister storms and humanity is now residing in a small place called Smoldering City. It is run by the queen, and you jump into the game as the queen’s viceroy whose sole purpose is to ensure the survival of humanity by developing settlements and giving the people a place to call their own as storms rage across the planet. Since you are working under the queen, each and every action that you do in the game is reflected in the game by the queen’s reactions and if she gets impatient with you, you are done and dusted. Unlike most city builders, Against the Storm does not force you to build and expand a single city or settlement but you have to build and manage a lot of different settlements throughout the kingdom.
When you begin the game for the first time, you are greeted with a detailed tutorial that brings you up to speed with all of the important in-game mechanics. Once done, you are brought to the Smoldering City and from there, you are on your own. You pick a location on the large kingdom map which is a hex-based grid system map and you pick any location where to start with your settlements. After choosing your caravan and starting resources, you arrive at the location and start building your settlement. The goal here is to complete and deliver tasks for the queen to make her happy and ensure that you are not taking too much time while doing so as well because the queen is pretty impatient.
The queen is so impatient that she has her impatient meter which if filled, gets you out of the settlement and this is how the roguelike mechanics kick into the whole city builder. As long as you are delivering to the queen, you are in the game but as soon as you fail to deliver, you are out. This acts like a timer but you can play around with it because every time you deliver a task that the queen has assigned to you for that particular settlement, you will reduce this impatience meter, and if your workers are good and your citizens are happy, this is slowed down as well thus it gives you everything you need to work around it instead of just slapping a time limit on everything. After arriving at the location, you have your main Hearth which is the heart of your settlement, and it must be lit and burning at all times. It literally is the heart of your settlement, and you gradually expand around it.
There are four species in the game: humans, beavers, lizards, and harpys which are initially locked but you get access to them after certain progression. Each species is unique and has one strength in a particular working field. Each species has its own demands and needs as well that you will need to fulfill in order to keep its resolve high. Luckily, the civilians in Against the Storm are not too demanding when compared to any of the other city builders and you can keep them happy and satisfied fairly easily with a few of their needs met. Another thing that keeps managing your workforce easier in the game is that there is no penalty for using different species for working on something that is not their specialty. For example, the beavers work really work well in wood-related fields but even if you put them to farming, they will perform just fine there. If there is no bonus production, there is no penalty either so it does not really force you to use specialized species in different tasks and you can assign whoever you want to whatever working camp or structure you want.
At the start of every settlement, you will have limited area in your control with thick trees blocking your paths however you can clear the wood and unlock access to other glades around your main settlement. These glades hold different secrets which could be beneficial for you such as bonus resources or could be sinister as well such as a long lost tomb that houses dark forces that may kill your civilians if you tamper with them. These also give you bigger rewards if you dare to explore these dangerous glades, so it makes it worth killing a few of your civilians for those rare resources. In Against the Storm, the queen’s strict time limits are not your only challenge because the forest itself is alive and it does not want you there as well. Depending on various factors, the forest will try its best to scare off you with different status effects that are applied to your people in special conditions such as the Storm phase. Each game has three phases: storm, drizzle, and clear.
Drizzle has normal rain while the clear is not really clear as well, but the rain becomes less dangerous, and you get a little bit of sunlight as well however the most dangerous phase is the storm during which the forest will start applying its evil status effects on different things. Every biome brings its own unique forests and challenges for you to counter. However, the longer you stay in a forest, the longer the forest gets agitated, and it tries to push you away even more. There are different things that you can do to calm down the forest but during the early stages of the game, you are left pretty much with the forest all alone and must fend it off yourself. This brings a completely different take on the city builder formula, and it also gives you a haunting feeling and increases the atmosphere of the title.
Against the Storm has all the mechanics of a proper city builder that you would want in a game without making it look too complex. The UI is simple enough and you can easily see what resources you currently have, which resources are increasing in your storage, and which resources are dwindling. You can construct various roads in your settlements to increase the movement speed of your civilians and also for organizing your settlement. The best bit is that the game has completely eliminated some of the dated mechanics from the game, for example, the basic road infrastructure is completely free and if you are out of resources near one of the campsites, you can destroy it and get all of the resources back before you place it down somewhere else. Assigning workers is really simple and you can create the best-looking settlements, complete with designated residential and industrial zones separated by roads in the most efficient manner.
One of the strongest suits of Against the Storm is the visual art style of the game. I have always loved Warcraft III and I love the fact that Against the Storm looked like a brand-new Warcraft game to me. The building design is really good and how the units move around the map along with the animations, special effects, and everything else, feels really good and sits exceptionally well with the overall theme of the game. The art style of the game coupled with an equally good soundtrack just pulls you into the game as you sit there spending hours after hours moving from settlement to settlement, trying to tame a forest that is hating you more and more with each new settlement you create and a queen that becomes more and more impatient with you.
As you expand and deliver tasks to your queen, she will grant you various passive bonuses for your settlement as well. You can choose what passive bonus you want from the available options, and they will be present throughout your current game. These are called Cornerstones and you can think of these as passive bonuses from the queen for good performance. As you progress, the queen will also grant you the ability to unlock new structures and buildings called blueprints which you can place down after selecting them. There is a proper sense of progression in the game because every settlement you complete unlocks new structures for you and when you earn enough XP, you will level up further unlocking new buildings and features for your settlements. For some bonus XP, you can complete some challenges called Deeds in the game as well which range from exploration, industry, and prosperity. Apart from XP, some Deeds unlock special buildings and bonuses for you as well. For unlocking upgrades for your settlements, you have three main resources food supplies, machinery, and artifacts which you earn at the completion of settlements. These are used to purchase settlement upgrades at the Smoldering City.
With that being said, I do have a few suggestions if the developers would like to consider adding them to the full release of the game. I understand the whole concept of moving from one settlement to another in order to expand and keep things fresh however I would love to see a free-build mode in the game where you could just settle down and gradually expand on randomly generated maps without any time constraints. Having a free build mode will just breathe so much life into the game and I would love to spend just hours facing the forest and trying my best to survive as long as I can. Apart from this, I would also like to point out a few UI additions that would make playing the game much more convenient. One, having to know right in the UI how many civilians currently are homeless will massively help in order to build the right number of houses for them.
For me, this was the biggest problem because no matter how many houses I would build in the game, every time the storm would come, my population would start losing resolve because someone was still left without a home. This helps that each of the four races in the game has their own resolve statuses, but I would appreciate having this shown in a menu for certainly be beneficial for the players. Apart from this, there are no other major issues or problems that I remember having or feeling that it should have been in the game. Everything seems to be effectively developed and properly executed. I am really looking forward to seeing how the developers further expand and enhance the title with new features and until its full release, I will be coming back to this brilliant city builder.
Final Verdict:
Against the Storm brings a much-needed change to the typical survival city builders and the addition of roguelite elements into the mix brings a new sense of challenge to the whole genre. I love the art style of Against the Storm and how lively the world of the game actually feels. Even for an early access title, Against the Storm brings to shame many fully released titles which lack content and are ridden with bugs. I would love to see additional features arrive in the full release of Against the Storm to make this game even better and with a detailed roadmap already presented in the game, it seems like the developer has a clear mind of what they need in the game. Keeping all of this in mind, if you are looking for a city builder with a twist, amazing art style, and solid gameplay mechanics, I will highly recommend that you jump into Against the Storm even in its early access state.
Final Score: 8.5/10
