Usually city-builders want you to kick back, chillax, and just watch the taxes roll in. But not Against the Storm. It wants you to suffer... which is an insane way to sell a game to someone. I mean, the trees want to strangle you and your boss is a phoenix god who will fire you - and I have to emphasize the fire - if morale drops too low. So why did I spend over fifty hours with it these past two weeks? Well, as I found out, there is a surprisingly addictive pleasure to be found in the pain.

When you don't even know what buildings and tools you'll be able to use in each mission, something weird happens with your brain. You stop thinking about creating a mathematically optimal beaver labor camp and just start working miracles with whatever garbage you have on hand. And then, five hours later, you'll finally wake up from your trance and realize it's 3 in the morning and you have to get up for work soon.

Video version of this retrospective (~12 minutes)

Bring an Umbrella

So yeah, Against the Storm is a dangerous game... but even that part is weird. You see, the big bad guy isn't a dragon, a demon, or even a really angry hippo - it's the weather. Just... rain.

I know that sounds silly - like 'oh no, I'm slightly moist' - but the rain in this game is endless, malicious, and is absolutely trying to murder you. It hates you. It hates your settlers. But most of all, it hates the smell of freshly-burnt wood. So unless you're a fan of rain-shaped holes in your skull, you'll want to keep those fires nice and roaring. As long as you can manage that, and keep your settlers at least somewhat sane while the trees literally scream at them, you'll be perfectly fine.... mostly.

But this isn't just a one time gimmick. Everything runs on a cycle. You get a few seasons of peace and prosperity, and then the sky tries to murder you. Because of this, the game has a strong 'go,go,go' sort of vibe, even though you can technically play it as slowly as you want. During the 'I'm not actively drowning' seasons you'll expand your settlement, slap around the local fishmen, and build the world's biggest biscuit factory. During the storm you'll then bunker down, plug any holes, and just kind of reflect on your rapidly dwindling supply of firewood.

When the storm comes, everything starts to break down

A Touch of Roguelite

Speaking of which: if the rain is trying to melt your face and the trees are made out of piranhas - why in the blazing hells would you ever leave the house? Well, the Scorched Queen is hungry, so someone has to go down to the store and get an industrial quantity of biscuits and tea.

And to get there you'll need to stumble your way through a giant, procedurally generated map. Some tiles are normal - as normal as anything in Against the Storm gets really - while others will have you wrangle angry ghosts or do insane speedruns in order to rescue a cute little cat.

But all of these side-quests are essentially just a warm-up for the Seals. They're your final boss - a nightmare realm where rats rain from the sky and where the sunrise is anything but guaranteed.

Yet despite how brutal they are, I always get a weird sense of relief playing these maps. Because once you finally hammer the seal down and the queen does a slam dunk on it, the world resets. Which means there's no point saving supplies for an even more final-er boss. This is it. Just pop everything and go wild, which as someone that frequently ends games with enough healing potions to completely destroy the local economy, really felt nice... even if this meant the world was about to get scoured by toxic rain.

There's a ton of different places to go on the world map

A Charming Hellscape

It was during one of these blight storms that I realized something genuinely surprising - despite being an endless hellscape, Against the Storm is actually quite charming. Sure, you might end up on a spooky map where the trees are made out of fish, but even then the visuals are so cheerful that I can't help but go "awwww, look at that cute little fox guy praising the dark gods".

But more than the visuals, it's the soundscape that really gets me groovin'. Hearing all of your industry whizz, whirr, clank and blobb away while a soft acoustic guitar hums in the background is enough to make you forget you nearly lost the game thirty seconds ago.

Even when things go bad, like 'people are dropping dead in the streets' kind of bad, the music never turns that sour. It keeps the overall mood nice and
pleasant, which really makes me feel like I'm on some kind of an epic quest, and not just farming turnips in actual hell.

I wouldn't recommend going out until the blightstorm is done

Of Foxes and Frogs

But if we're going to stay there, we might as well tidy up the place, maybe put up a nice monument or two. But in order to do that, we'll need an industrial quantity of fish-lumber, and as luck would have it, beavers are naturally gifted at both chopping it down and making it all nice and planky.

It's not just the beavers though. Each species has its own strengths, weaknesses and ways to annoy you. Foxes, for example, have the superpower of racism, so they're easy to keep happy by stuffing them all into the same building. Harpies, on the other hand, are miserable bastards who hate life and will look for any possible way to ruin yours. But if you somehow manage to get them on side, they'll catapult you to victory so quickly it'll feel like cheating.

My personal favorite are the froggy boys. They're a bit annoying early as they demand personal jacuzzis, but once you get their villas up and running, they're basically the ideal worker. They don't eat much, they're great at smashing rocks, and they actually bathe so you can use them to attract even more settlers.

And that's where things get interesting. While you do get to choose between two different platters of newcomers, you can't really stack one species over another. You're forced to adapt to whatever mixture the game throws at you. That might sound unfair - especially given how much I harped on the harpies - but I genuinely like it since it forces you to try different strategies... some of which might end up becoming your favorites because of it. And I speak from frog-hating experience.

You can guide your settlement, but it's overall shape is out of your hands

The Spice of Life

Which brings us to the reason my friends haven't seen me for the past two weeks. There are just so many different ways to play that I can't help but keep coming back to build more urban dystopias. I don't care it's 3AM either - I neeeeed this.

So how does Against the Storm pull it off? Well, again it keeps things interesting by acting like a drug dealer and only giving you tiny samples at a time. Every mission hands you a random selection of blueprints, which means you can't stick to one foolproof strategy. You have to keep adapting.

Sometimes this means you have almost no food and have to figure out how to survive by eating bricks. Other times you're drowning in a sea of turnips and desperately trying to convert vegetables into crowbars. There are even maps that have literally zero wood. The trees are made out of granite, because why not!? But regardless of how insane the maps get, I never found the challenge to be impossible.

And that's because every recipe in accepts a wide range of materials - everything from the sensible to the downright demented. If you're making jerky, you can be a normal human being and combine meat and wood. Or, if you hate life and want to make sure everyone else suffers with you, you can also mash together insects and fish bones. And while the very idea of a cockroach-and-bone sandwich makes me gag, the fact that it works is kind of impressive.

Against the Storm has some really creative mission designs

All Roads Lead to Victory

The game takes a similar, and thankfully far less disgusting, approach towards victory. Your goal is to simply gain reputation, and the way you go about that is between you and lady luck.

Sometimes the stars align and you get the perfect blueprints, letting you cruise to victory through quests you pick up every few seasons. Other times your morale will be in the gutter and you'll have belligerent beavers, so you'll have to rummage through the woods for ancient artifacts, forgotten riches, or majorly miffed moles.

You never quite know what a mission will demand of you, but it all works, and I really like that. It made my runs feel less like going down a checklist, and more like sitting down for a delicious mystery meal.

Every run is winnable, so don't ever give up

Pleasant Suffering

And much like a good, crunchy loaf of bread, the difficulty is what ties everything together. Depending on your choices, it ranges from 'baby's first city-builder' all the way to 'I need an adult' levels of punishment, with plenty of steps in between.

And much to my surprise, it never felt like an incoherent, broken mess. As I got better at the game I kept increasing the difficulty, and somehow Against the Storm always managed to kick my ass just enough to make me sweat, but not enough to actually make things frustrating.

For example, a random event might spawn multiple carnivorous plants right when you're not ready for a Little Shop of Horrors kind of situation. Dealing with them is a complete pain in the ass, but once you cut them down, you'll get a ton of cool loot.

And I think that's the trick. Against the Storm likes to step on your toes, but it'll always do that while bringing you flowers. So whenever something cruel and unfair happens, you can turn it into a blessing, and that is some damn good game design.

The flowers really are awful, but dealing with them loads you up with riches

Number Go Up!

And even if everything does fall apart, it's not actually that big of a deal. Since this is a roguelite, you can just pick a new direction on the world map, and maybe this time around you'll have a big fluffy owlbear to take care of.

The more you play, the easier things will become thanks to a mountain of upgrades back in the main city. They're not anything too fancy, but as any strategy fan will tell you, even a couple of extra resources early on can really help you rocket towards victory.

The upgrade system is very much a long term project though. I've put in over fifty hours at this point and I still can't see the end of the tree. So either I need glasses, or this thing will likely take over a hundred hours to fully finish.

I'm almost certainly never going to see the end of it - the beaver mafia is already on to me - but honestly, that's okay... not the beaver part. Having a distant goal to chase is always satisfying. It's that caveman part of my brain that simply cannot resist watching numbers go up.

There sure is a ton of upgrades!

Is Against the Storm Worth Playing?

And so, the most important question: is Against the Storm worth playing five years down the line? Well, considering that I'm writing this while knee-deep in yet another run, I think the answer is a pretty easy yes.

It's a charming, sharply designed city-builder that cranks the pressure just high enough to make you panic, but never so high that it feels like you're being punished for not playing "correctly." You're actually encouraged to experiment, adapt and occasionally even lose - which is a lot more fun than just following a spreadsheet.

And that's without even mentioning how absurdly cheap it is. If you're like me and you embody the spirit of Scrooge McDuck, you can grab it for around 9 euros on sale, which is borderline criminal for the amount of playtime you're getting in return.

So if you're a fan of city-builders, or want a good reason to become one, Against the Storm is absolutely worth your time. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another run queued up!