The roguelite city builder Against the Storm has managed to garner an "overwhelmingly positive" review standing on Steam in the year that it's been in Early Access, and now it's getting a full launch on December 8.
As you might've surmised by the "roguelite" qualifier, Against the Storm isn't your average city builder. The most obvious difference is that, when your settlements fail, you don't start over from scratch; instead, all of your resources, upgrades, and experience from past expeditions will carry over into your new expeditions.
Another unique thing about Against the Storm is that you aren't just building and managing a single city, but rather a vast network of settlements, each home to an array of fantasy races along with animals like beavers, lizards, and foxes. Naturally, all of your constituents have their own distinct skills, needs, and preferences you'll need to account for if you want to build happy and healthy communities. That, ideally, should add a ton of replayability as you repeatedly build new settlements while managing your existing network of established cities spread out over the large map.
"Will you manufacture raincoats, brew ale, and bake pies to boost morale in the face of the oppressive hostility of the forest, or will you prioritize the needs of one species over another to operate more swiftly for the Scorched Queen?" reads the Steam description.
With hundreds of gameplay modifiers and five distinct biomes, you'll need to adapt to changing weather conditions and play around with various building blueprints and perks that'll decide whether your settlements can weather the storm or crumble to ruin.
The 1.0 update arriving with the full launch will introduce the Queen's Hand Trial, a new and deliberately challenging mode with permadeath where your objective is to reforge the Adamantine Seal - the game's hardest objective, according to the devs - in one gameplay cycle.
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