Against the Storm

game is weird. you have the fun of building a settlement and overcoming challenges but then the moment that you get to the good part of where your community is up and running and economy is booming, the game ends and you go and start a new settlement. you can choose to continue a settlement and basically farm out the whole map which is fun to just see how big you can make your town. at the same time, you don't get anything for doing that so it feels like you're wasting time. with all of that said, it's still a fun game if you like city management games with variable win conditions.

its like playing Warcraft 3 + frostpunk with all the best elements of both!

Banger game, excellent resource/colony manager, beautiful art direction. Highly recommend if you're a fan of slightly autistic but not mega autistic map games.

Against the Storm is a deeply engaging city-building and survival strategy game that immerses players in a grim fantasy world perpetually battered by relentless storms. Developed by Eremite Games, it challenges players to manage a settlement of diverse factions as they struggle to endure the harsh, ever-changing environment of a cursed valley. Unlike traditional city builders, Against the Storm emphasizes survival against elemental forces, where strategic planning and adaptability are crucial to sustaining your people through frequent and devastating storms that reshape the landscape and threaten resources. The game’s procedurally generated maps ensure that no two playthroughs are alike, offering immense replayability as players must continually rethink their strategies to adapt to new conditions, resources, and challenges. The heart of the gameplay lies in balancing resource management, settlement expansion, and the unique needs of different inhabitant races, each with their own cultures, demands, and strengths. Players must carefully assign villagers to gather resources, craft goods, and construct buildings, all while maintaining morale and managing food supplies amid unpredictable weather. The inclusion of varied factions adds a rich layer of complexity and narrative depth, as alliances and rivalries influence gameplay, creating dynamic social interactions that impact survival chances. Decision-making feels meaningful, with moral choices and trade-offs shaping the development of the settlement and its inhabitants’ fates. Visually, Against the Storm offers a moody and atmospheric art style that complements its dark fantasy setting. The hand-painted environments are detailed and evocative, depicting a world battered by ceaseless storms, with shifting skies and weather effects that visually reinforce the game’s core survival theme. The sound design further enhances immersion, featuring a haunting and immersive soundtrack punctuated by the howling wind and thunder that constantly remind players of the perilous environment they face. One of the game’s standout features is its cyclical gameplay structure, where each day brings new challenges and storms that test the player’s ability to adapt and innovate. This constant pressure to optimize resource flow and settlement layout keeps the gameplay tense and rewarding. The crafting system is robust, allowing for the creation of a wide range of tools and structures that support survival and expansion, while exploration beyond the settlement adds another layer of strategic depth as players scavenge for rare materials and unlock secrets that can turn the tide in their favor. While Against the Storm is praised for its originality and atmospheric depth, it can sometimes feel overwhelming due to its steep learning curve and the complex interplay of systems. New players might find the initial balancing act challenging as the game demands constant attention and foresight. Additionally, the procedurally generated nature of the maps, while adding variety, can occasionally lead to uneven difficulty spikes or resource scarcity that feels punishing. However, these elements contribute to the game’s high stakes and sense of accomplishment when survival is achieved. In conclusion, Against the Storm is a compelling and richly layered city-building survival game that offers a fresh take on the genre through its dark fantasy setting and relentless environmental challenges. Its blend of strategic resource management, faction dynamics, and procedural world-building creates a tense yet rewarding experience that tests players’ adaptability and decision-making skills. For those who enjoy atmospheric, challenging strategy games with deep narrative undercurrents and emergent storytelling, Against the Storm provides a gripping and memorable journey through a storm-ravaged world where survival is a constant battle against both nature and time. Rating: 9/10

Very charming and coordinated graphical, sound, and story/setting design. Gameplay extremely fine-tuned between simplicity and complexity to the point of perfect balance. Like twenty layers of escalating difficulty that you're never forced to choose. A steady system of progression that has you working towards something alongside the escalating difficulty. The best gameplay loop of all time. OF ALL TIME.

The game is outrageously good. Coming in as a fan of Banished, this game hits all those highs and several more. You consistently feel the thrill of progress, and never the lull of equilibrium. The challenges, advantages, and disadvantages you find on each colony plot vary and intersect so wildly, that you'll never quite have the game in-hand until it's over. Charming, challenging, meticulously thought-out. I can't say enough for this game. It for me does for colony sims what Stardew Valley did for Harvest Moon / farming games.

The entire game, while conceptually neat, was simply a frustrating learning curve is disguise. Once the frustration over the randomness of the building selection wears off. The mechanical "move work station and wait" tedium kicks in. You'll be lagging behind on most maps hoping a chance to pick a building that makes 1 thing. When it finally pops up MAGIC HAPPENS... The genre changes into a bar-filling simulator. Just wait to win. It baffles the mind someone sat down and plotted out a rogue-like colony sim where the resources AND buildings were locked behind RNG systems. Creative and stylish concept doesn't make up for it's faults. Not recommended.

It grabbed me for hours on my first runs. It has a really nice learning curve, makes you think about the way you develop your camp and reminds me of the good old RTSs. It's been a while since a game made me play for hours like that, easy recommendation for those who like strategy and city building.

I just don't get the appeal of this game. Extremely busy, unreadable UI, hard to build because you need very specific resources which are randomly seeded on the map, convoluted production tree. There's so little character to the citizens you have, they don't act all that differently or make any unique sounds. The graphics are so basic, like something that came out of the early 3D era, but without all that much character. Buildings are so difficult to tell apart. I guess it does look very replayable, but it was losing my interest after only a couple maps.

It's good, but not your typical city sim/colony game. Losing your "Outpost"/city after accomplishing the goal makes connecting with the game after a while quite boring. I'm at a point now where I've basically seen it all, I'm just achievement farming. Would be cool if the primary/central Smoldering City had more interaction/engagement so that I felt a greater sense of progress/development. It can be unbelievably RNG heavy at times with rolls, so sometimes higher difficulty games feel really depressing, but lower difficulty is absurdly easy. The game-play itself, when luck doesn't shaft you, is fun, and I think it's uniqueness carries it as far as the genre is considered. 8/10

Cool city builder without the slow end-game that's usually present in similar games. Games are short enough to keep my attention and not lose it.

This game is perfect, it somehow marries my love of building bases in Warcraft III with resource management. It's a little too hard for me to progress to later levels, but I still give it a 10/10.

There is a lot to love in this game but after 20 hours it does get boring/repetitive, even the devs realised that as it is an option you can talk about with an NPC. It is also super easy to lock yourself into losing by one (or a few) wrong choices with no option to save the round. Old schools graphics and classes etc. are nice to have but it is not newbie friendly and the game loop does feel really repetitive after some time. I wouldn't recommend it as it is, but I can see it being improved down the line.

Against the Storm has a great and unique concept; initially I was really hooked the rogue-lite character. It is fun to constantly improvise, wing it, go with whatever resources or obstacles the game throws at you. It did have that "one more turn" feeling for me. On top, the game is very polished. The balancing seems on point, the art style, environments, and sound design work well together. The game became very hard for me on the higher difficulties, but didn't feel completely unfair. I felt that if I had planned more, knew the mechanics better, I would stand a chance. So a great challenge, but still very accessible on easier difficulties. All that being said, after only 15 hours the game became very repetitive for me. Slightly ironically, there are soooo many random elements to the game that in the end every settlement becomes the same mish-mash. Races of your settlers, trade routes, environmental hazards, resources, available buildings, global perks, traders - all random. If you roll a dice 100 times the sum goes close to 350 even though each roll is unique. This is what this game feels like. Still, thumbs up from my side - the devs had a clear vision, went for something new, delivered a polished game and obviously really care about the community. Give it a shot!

I play intuitively with no attention given to micromanaging. It's fun, and I really enjoy it. I prefer the stumble upon approach to game play. The less I know, the more to discover.

Probably the best roguelite I've played. Immensely high skill ceiling, every run is winnable, plenty of interesting decision making to be had to figure out the best way to work with what you're given. High level play has a lot of varied strategies that all seem pretty comparably viable. My only complaint is the amount of meta progression grinding there is before you're fully ready for the highest prestige level. It's not egregious, but I don't like meta progression in any game period.

Lots of variability in biomes, mods and difficulties. And just a fun core of tight settlement building.

Very addictive game play loop. If you like rogue like games, and city builders, this is a magnificent combination of those two.

Fun in between game, always a new possibility with builds, always a challenge to get to new accomplishments. I love this game. It truly gives you the random/base builder/challenging game experience you are seeking

Its a city builder, its a roguelike. Its fun. If you think that'd be up your alley, give it a go.

Very addictive game, love the slow progression!

Very good game, with lots of replay ability.

As a city-builder enthusiast who is also incapable of staying on one playthrough for more than a few hours, this is the perfect game. Against the storm is extremely well polished, with the most intuitive mechanics, UI, and high-level gameplay loop I've seen in the genre for a bit. At the $15 price from the promo, this is a steal. At $30, you're absolutely getting your money's worth.

Very fun! I love the concept of basebuilders but sometimes get mired in letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This game heads that off at the pass quite neatly, while giving you benefits based on your experiences. Love it!

One of the smoothest level/skill progression I've experienced in a roguelite game. I'm technically still in the foundation levels (there's a lot to learn, but the step-by-step elaboration on the concepts are remarkable), and so much variety and potential have already been showcased. It's crazy how it's all designed to click together as the genius genre-mix that it is. I usually get overwhelmed by city builders, but the randomized elements per session makes this game (ironically?) more forgiving and exciting all the same! I was skeptical with how a city builder can fit with being a roguelike, but man this game just served both games together in a great package. It's a game I know I can spend a crazy lot more hours with, and I'll surely update my review then. I really love the idea of fleeting commitment over the settlements, just working enough to make them have some stability then moving on to another. There's also quite an intriguing lore to be learned, I'm actually reading dialogue off lovely characters. I can't believe I saw this from a Facebook ad of all things (advertising sure works!).

a fun engaging and slightly challenging city builder with some rogue like mechanics that makes every following colony easier and more engaging to build, new buildings new colonists and a fair feeling risk system based around the hostility of the forest, some things could have a bit more impact such as trade routs only giving amber in exchange for goods, but that could just be me. 9/10 would recommend.

This is a comfort game, rough day, against the storm, good day, against the storm, remembering the fall of contantinople, against the storm. i find the soundtracks really relaxing and the game is really fun, the difficulty is cooked to perfection, not too hard nor too easy. I really recommend it, rarely have i ever seen a game both as fun and relaxing.

Game is fantastic, I enjoy the evolving strategies required due to the events that occur during each map phase. Great game-play loop. Plays like a modern settlers game. Plenty of bang for your buck with this. Great Dad Game/ Easy pause and rewarding city building.

A city builder-survival-roguelike combo that is well put together. Can be difficult at times depending on your luck. It's a race against the clock and it will keep you on your toes. Please note that there is an emphasis on building new cities and not expanding on already established ones. The aesthetic is pretty neat and unique as well, i've seen the word "rainpunk" thrown around and i have to agree that it fits this definition. If you're into comfy top down strategy games, you cant go wrong with this one.

If you want to completely disconnect from the world for 3-4 hours and just enjoy being a sworn viceroy --whose many worries include shelter, hunger, scarcity, deadlines, trade-offs, risk vs. reward, and surprising modifiers-- then this is the game for you.

Perfect mixture of roguelite and citybuilder. Has solutions for many of the usual problems that come with city builders. If you're like me and often like the idea of city builders but then get bored of them quickly when you actually play them, this could be the game for you

This game satisfies my itch of creating good systems but also keeps the threat of loss biting into your side at all time. A good mix of cozy and thought provoking times.

Man this Game! Endless replayability! So much Content and i myself want to point out the EXCELLENT Soundtrack of this game. Music and Soundscapes are just delightful! Frog "MIM" to all

At the time of writing this, ATS still has an overwhelmly positive rating. Is it so good? Well, I spent around 50h on it, and what it does, it does it well. With each run (new town), I'm still feeling the pressure of finding a solution to the specific situation I'm in. So yes, the game manages pretty well to keep the challenges up for quite some time, without "brute force" difficulty ramping. It's just that even if the basics are quite similar every run, the parameters can be so randomnly different, that you will need to adapt. There's no real "best solution" that works every time. That's the great thing about this game. But let's be honest, it stays quite limited in terms of content. A few races, a few biomes, a few dozens of products/ingredients/material, and that's it! Music gets repetitive, graphics are quite bland and the UI is far from perfect. I also want to point out that the game isn't really playable on Steamdeck: they haven't fixed the issue of fotn scaling and most of the texts are unreadable. So yes, good game, nice time wasters for those who don't want to invest the energy to understand a new game (working dad gamers here!), but not much more than this

nice mix of genres, its just chill with different degrees of challenges & randomness making each run have its unique challenges

Easily a 10/10 city builder. Great difficulty, great spirit and feel, good mechanics. It does grow a bit stale after you complete the main "storyline" and only grind the harder modes.

Amazing roguelike rts. It really captures the fun parts of a city building resource management RTS and each level feels like it cuts off right as it starts to get boring. Then you do it all again. Also works amazing on the steam deck.

An interesting world to explore, I have enjoyed watching it evolve. The soundtrack is perfect for this game and definitely adds to the immersive experience. Would recommend to anyone who has enjoyed similar types of games.

Great City Builder, not without its flaws, the longer the game goes the harder it is for me to keep track about all the Bonus i have collected & negative effects. A round can take easily 2-3 hours, but in general i really enjoy getting a city to work every time even after 60hours+

This game is an absolute gem. It has that sense of early urgency when building in a game like oldschool sim city, but with a completely brilliant reset mechanic to make it feel more like a rogue-like. The rounds are fast-paced, the strategy imminent and important, and it looks good, too. I keep coming back to this one to play another round.

The game loop brings back fond memories of games like Dwarf Fortress: designing a city to meet the needs of your villagers, utilizing their strengths, and automating various industries for trading and prosperity. The roguelite elements are icing on the cake, requiring you to think and play differently each time, while not forcing you into any one specific play style or victory condition. However, in my experience, if there is a play style you prefer, you can still craft your choices to tackle the challenges presented to you in the way you like best. Note: Before I purchased, I was worried by some comments suggesting the RNG could be (randomly) unfair but I have not experienced this in my play time. Yes, sometimes RNG makes victory more difficult, and it's probably true if you are not thoughtful you could get yourself in a bind, but even then you typically still have a variety of opportunities across multiple systems (orders, blueprints, glades and glade events, and trading) to make up for it. If you're worried about RNG, but are willing to think through your choices and adapt to changes, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

9/10 เป็นเกมดูแลเมืองที่ดีมาก ระบบดี ซับซ้อนกำลังดี เล่นเพลินมาก แต่จุดที่ผู้เล่นสายชิล อาจจะไม่ชอบ 1. ระบบสุ่มสิ่งก่อสร้าง อันนี้น่ารำคาญมาก ลำดับการได้มาของสิ่งก่อสร้างมีผลต่อความยากง่ายต่อการเล่นในแต่ละแผนที่ แม้จะมี Reroll แต่ก็ต้องใช้ไอเท็มแพงในการรี 2. เกมตั้งใจให้คุณเล่นซ้ำ ๆ เกิน 100+ รอบ เพื่อเอารางวัลไปใช้ในระบบการอัพเกรดเมือง แต่ว่าการชนะแต่ละครั้งได้ไอเท็มอัพเกรดน้อยมาก การอัพเกรดแต่ละครั้งแทบจะไม่คุ้มค่าอะไรเลย (+2% something) กับเวลาที่เสีย 30-60 นาที ที่ใช้ไปในแต่ละแผ่นที 3. แม้ว่าจะสุ่มสิ่งก่อสร้าง แต่เอาเข้าจริง การเล่นในแต่ละแผนที่ก็มีอยู่ไม่กี่รูปแบบ แอบผิดหวังนิดหน่อย

This is the most addictive game I've played in years. Takes the very best of what City builders shine at (i.e initial rush of resource collection) with the added randomness of a roguelike.

One of the greatest strategy and one of the greatest roguelite games ever made. The economy of the game is wholly proletarian. You can only make money by creating more intricate and efficient supply chains. To not lose, you overcome your Queen's impatience by doing missions or sending her "gifts" while dealing with the growing hostility of the natural world. You can't be good at everything, so you have to try and specialize. This forces you to make interesting decisions. Each run ends around the time we become unstoppable, keeping the game fresh. Haven't played the expansion(s) yet but will update when I do.

Fast paced colony builder that keeps it fresh with different biomes, etc. to keep each go around unique. Failure is part of it especially on harder difficulty, but in an engaging way.

Very well designed game and great intro and scaling.

Best city builder/management game I have ever played and one of my all-time favorite games. Each run is different and keeps you engaged the whole time. Multiple ways to victory each time and all of them are fun. One run of this game is the perfect lenght to not overstay its welcome. Performance is also great.

First rogue like game I've played. Welcomed addition to a strategy city builder resource game.

Great game, perfect atmosphere and a lot of depth

Whenever I don't know what to play, I come back to this, because it's so good and it feels like playing a different game every time.