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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336490/Against_the_Storm/

Anyone else picked this one up in the Steam sale? I had a little birthday money burning a hole in my pocket so decided to grab it.

So far it's turned out to be pretty fun. Just not really a fast paced game, and the extended tutorial drags it down a little so in the beginning I was more on the fence.

But basically, the short version is that if you like base builders (Banished, etc), this is a really solid addition to the genre that also adds some fresh stuff to the mix to give you longer term goals too and a little more structure. And it's 50% off the next couple days still, so you know.

The longer version is that there's this cursed storm that covers the world every so often and wipes out all the villages, except for the Queen's city in the ruins of some ancient civilization.

As a long term goal you're supposed to be placing a string of settlements from that city out to these ancient glowing seals. Repairing those has some kind of global effects and I guess eventually stops the storm when you catch em all.

Once you finally escape the tutorial you pick a hex on the world map, and take a mix of humans, beavers, and lizard men who are all good at different things. (There are supposed to be foxes and harpes too, but I haven't seen those yet.) And then you do the typical thing of placing shelters, farms, workshops etc. More people will show up at intervals.

But the maps are all these thick forests (with different effects you can see when picking the hex) with little clearings filed with fog of war you have to cut your way into. At that point you get to pick from old caches and ruins for a boost of resources and currency, or you get an event. Some will have higher rewards but negative effects until you assign the people and resources to deal with them, but those glades are marked--the game is pretty chill overall, I'm not sure there even is combat, and you don't get bad events without fair warning.

The settlement additionally has a hearth that needs to be constantly fed to keep moral from nosediving, but it can also be given extra resources to create positive events. Although, I have not tested out the higher difficulties yet and I'm still just starting out with my first settlement past the two you build in the tutorial, so maybe things get a little spicier later.

And the things meanwhile giving a little structure to gameplay, besides the ancient seals you're after are these orders from the Queen that put you on a timer to fulfill. You're always up against a bar called the Queen's Impatience, although it doesn't grow too quickly and can be reduced by various means.

So anyway, it appears that you'd set up a couple of settlements, then the game laughs and wipes them out in the next Blightstorm cycle. (But everyone in the world is used to this and just returns to the capital.) The universal currency is amber you can collect from events, and you spend what gained there to get some little global benefits for the next time around.

I'm not getting the ideal experience because it runs kinda sluggish on my shitbox laptop, but it's still very playable even on a laughably old and bad machine fwiw. I could improve it a little if I was willing to turn the graphics down more I'm sure.

(There are no ducks here to destroy you, no really Crimson it's okay.)

Also I'll just add that I've enjoyed one of the publishers other on sale games, Clanfolk. Which is basically Rimworld if Rimworld was in medieval Scotland. It just happens to cause a hard freeze up and crash of the aforemention garbage laptop at a certain point in every settlement, very sad.

How would you say it compares to others in the genre? is it worth it so far?

glad to hear theres no OP ducks! I can relate to the poor laptop issues, i still use the same PC that ive had since i was around 14, so it is severely outdated, so any game with remotely modern visuals will make it seize up, heck most games will literally tell me i cant play them because my graphics card is too outdated lol

I love the art-style! Management simulation games and God simulation games are some of my favourite, i actually remember begging my dad to give me some money so i could add to the universim kick-starter lol (he said no thankfully, i found the game lackluster). Some of my favourite base management sim games were American Conquest (my dad had it on his laptop, about the first I played), evil genius probably wasn't that good in retrospect, but it left a big impression on kid me. Sadly, I'm a bit broke this month, i only give myself a 100 quid allowance to spend on myself on nice things, and ive already went and bought some black cargo pants, among other personal care items. lol

keep us updated on your play through! 

I haven't thought about Evil Genius in years lol. I don't know of it a a good game by anyone's standards now, but it was a lot of fun.

There was an old game, a "fantasy kingdom sim" called Majesty that was entire life for a bit in high school. Another one I'm not sure how well it holds up now, you have to do some fiddling to get it in fullscreen at a modern screen resolution anyway, but it might be something you want to look up someday.

There were a bunch of scenarios your settlements had to deal with, but it had a really easy to use map and scenario editor too. The gimmick was that you built guilds and hired heroes, then built all the other goods and services and upgraded bulldings as needed, but couldn't control them beyond placing exploration and bounty flags around. They had a lot of behaviors and personality with their little voice clips, so it was fun just to sit back and watch them go about their day shopping and studying and then deciding to join a group clearing out a goblin lair. The bounty money they'd then take back to town and spend on potions and gear from the blacksmiths, and they all could gain levels and learn new abilities with experience.

You had a choice at one point of adding gnomes, dwarves, or elves, but they wouldn't co exist. I usually added elves for the economy boost but they were annoying little bastards. Decadent blue haired hedonists who built gambling halls and lounges your adventurers would waste money in, while they themselves would constantly get murdered stirring up monsters while trying to reach inns on the edge of the map to make extra cash as bards.


Oh yeah, and Against the Storm is still a very solid game. It goes at a very relaxed pace so may not be for everyone, but there's plenty of challenge and detail. Might be one of those "easy to play, hard to master" type games, although I haven't had time to play a huge amount so I'm still getting a handle on production trees.

Though it also works great as a sleep aid if you leave it running lol. Lots of chill piano music over rain.

This game really needs better options for enforcing Human superiority. The absolute best I can do is make the animals live in segregated shacks. And not let them bake out biscuits and pies of course, disgusting creatures.

I started playing this again since the time change, since I've started falling asleep early and waking up in the middle of the night, and well what else is there to do at 3am?

I'd still recommend it to anyone especially if you can grab it in a sale. It's actually a lot more complex than I originally gave it credit for--in fact I may be pretty bad at it, my furries are often starving and miserable and the Queen has booted me out of two colonies now.

If you're bad at it I just know I'm going to be shit lol

Especially if my adventures with the duckies is any indicator