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Loving this game: Against the Storm
(store.steampowered.com)
Just wanted to bring some more well deserved attention to this awesome game!
After playing too many city builder games I thought it'd be a long time before I got into another but after seeing the crazy high rating on steam (95% positive with more than 11k reviews) I decided to try it out and boy is it awesome.
I've been hooked playing this game for the last couple weeks now, I'd love to hear Lemmy's thoughts on the game
Official description:
A dark fantasy city builder where you must rebuild civilization in the face of apocalyptic rains. As the Queen’s Viceroy, lead humans, beavers, lizards, foxes, and harpies to reclaim the wilderness and secure a future for civilization's last survivors.
I have more than 200 hours in this game. This is the review I posted in Steam when I had 50 hours:
Against the Storm brings novelty to gaming. It is an experience that you haven't seen.
The initial premise in Against the Storm is similar to Frostpunk and Banished. At the core it is a RTS with focus on survival. Nothing that we have not seen before, but bear with me.
You are probably familiar with the countless roguelites we have seen in the last years. It does not matter if they are card based (Slay the Spire, Monster Train), bullet hells (Vampire Survivors and its million clones), 2D platformers (Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy) or hack and slash (Hades, Streets of Rogue).
All those games have the same common denominators. They bring RNG based rewards (with choices), have meta-progression and naturally, being roguelites, they revolve about the concept of doing "runs".
As a whole, these games give us dopamine rushes, and therefore it is no wonder that we are being swarmed by developers adding roguelite features to their games.
I am not complaining, I enjoy my gaming dopamine rushes the same as I enjoy my morning coffee.
So what exactly the Against the Storm developers did? What is the novelty?
They took all those roguelite features and put them into their survival RTS; they did it in a way that was never done before, and the execution is flawless.
If you are someone that enjoy the first hours of RTS games; when you discover, explore, plan ahead, climb the technology tree; then this game will be paradise for you. You get to experience exactly that, time after time, in each run.
It helps immensely that Against the Storm have a neat UI and great QOL features. It is truly impressive and part of its winning formula.
In the negative side I find the meta-progression slow in comparison to the run length.
I know I am not playing optimal but my runs take hours and unlocking the good stuff is taking me forever.
To be fair the game encourages the player to raise the difficulty levels (Settler, Pioneer, Veteran, Viceroy and then 20 levels of Prestige) to get more resources so we get to unlock things faster.
I am currently playing Prestige 5 and the runs are getting harder but the meta-progression rewards feel minor in comparison. I could play in lower difficulties and still have fun, but then it will take me even longer to unlock everything.
I think this area of the game requires balance, it is too punishing for my taste. Nobody forces me to keep upping the difficulty but that is part of the appeal of a roguelite.
In any case this is something minor in a game that is just wonderful. Highly recommended, easily a 9/10.
I hope we will get more games like this one and more devs that are not afraid to try something new.