Against The Stormis an indieroguelitestrategy game where you manage settlements in a world that never starts raining. You’re in a race against time to increase your reputation before the Queen loses her patience or your settlers abandon you (or die).
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While the game is still in early access, it already feels quite complete. Unlike most roguelikes and roguelites, it has apretty good tutorial. However, in such a big game, the tutorial can’t cover it all, and as a result, misses out on a few things that would make your attempts go smoother if you knew them.
9(Some) Buildings Can Move
A majority of the early game is spent gathering the resources you’ll need to fuel your settlement and provide the building blocks for the more complicated needs of your people. This is done by building the relevant harvesting structures close enough to the nodes that provide those resources (Woodcutters near wood, Trappers near meat etc.) and then assigning people to those posts.
The workers move in real-time, so you’ll want to put the structures as close to the thing they’re harvesting as possible since they move from the resource node to the structure to the warehouse and back. Luckily, all the Camp buildings can be moved, so you don’t have to build, destroy, and rebuild buildings as the resources are depleted. Some other buildings can be moved for a small resource cost, while others are fixed in place until destroyed, so place them carefully.
8You Can Pick Your Pace
Once a settlement gets going, you’re able to find yourself juggling a lot of balls all at once. Managing food, people, the fire, and a whole lot more is a lot to deal with and can overwhelm you if you’re not prepared for it.
Luckily, Against the Storm is from the ‘real-time with pause’ camp ofRTS gamesand you can pause and unpause at any time by hitting your Spacebar. You can even make decisions in this state, send out build orders or move buildings, adjust resource usage, and more, and then the actions will be carried out when you unpause.
Conversely, if you’re accustomed to a fast-paced game or find yourself in a lull of activity, you may speed the game up as well.
7Keep An Eye On Your People
Ultimately, the game is about your people. Your villagers are how things get done and your most important route to victory. you’re able to’t build anything if everyone is operating a building and conversely, your buildings won’t run if they are not manned. If you’re aggressive about building and expanding, verify you keep a few workers free to build.
Once you’ve got a good foothold in the land, start building the necessary elements to meet the more esoteric needs of your people, like Pickles for Beavers, Biscuits for Humans, Skewers for Lizards, or Cleanliness for Harpies. Along with basic needs, these will increase their Resolve. The more Resolve you have, the easier it is to win. Conversely, if they get unhappy, they start leaving.
6Reputation And Queen’s Impatience Basics
At its core, the game rides on two important stats, Reputation and the Queen’s Impatience. You win if you hit a certain Reputation score, and you lose if the Queen’s Impatience fills up. Impatience rises at a steady rate, though it can be influenced by certain events or people having low Resolve. Reputation, on the other hand, can be raised in a number of ways.
The easiest way to raise your Reputation is to complete Orders, which always give you one point of Reputation. Completing Glade Events will usually have Reputation and Amber as a reward option. Also, if you can keep your villagers’ Resolve above a certain threshold, marked on a gauge around their portrait, you will passively gain Reputation over time.
5Beware The Dangerous And Forbidden Glades
Advancement in a settlement means chopping down trees, both for the resources they bring and the space it gives you to expand. The foggy areas are called Glades, and if you chop into them, you’ll reveal resources, Glade Events, and more space to operate in.
However, there are also misty areas marked by a horned skull, or even more ominously, a big horned skull with a red aura. These are Dangerous and Forbidden Glades, respectively. They give you more of everything you’d get from Glades but also have dangerous Glade Events that can have terrible consequences if not resolved in time, like destroying all the wood in your storehouse or everything within a ten-tile radius around the event. Worse yet, some will persist or worsen until resolved.
If you venture into these areas, be sure you have enough people and equipment (like Simple Tools, Resin, or Incense) to deal with what you might reveal.
4Losing Isn’t The End
Sometimes, you just can’t get the settlement going in time. Whether you fail to account for fuel, leading to everyone abandoning you or a Dangerous Glade Event wipes out your infrastructure for a shortage of Simple Tools. Sometimes you just can’t win.
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Fortunately, since the game is a roguelite, you can pack it up and try again. You even get a small percentage of the experience and whatever rewards you might have gotten for your trouble, increasing the closer you got to your goal. With these rewards, you might even be able to improve the Smoldering City to make your next attempt easier. The Blightstorm meter will increase however, potentially lessening the number of settlements you can make before the Blightstorm resets everything (except for the Smoldering City).
3Deeds Matter Most (Early On)
Your level is the biggest gate that blocks the meta-progression upgrades in the Smoldering City, so getting Experience and resources is your primary goal at the meta level, so you may buy upgrades that make future runs easier and unlock new gameplay elements.
The quickest way to get Experience early is to build a successful settlement and then redeem the Deeds– basically, in-game achievements you’ve earned during gameplay, for a reward, usually Experience. Since you’ll likely be playing on the lower difficulties, your reward for a successful settlement is 30 or 70 Experience for Settler and Pioneer difficulties. However, you get 50 Experience per completed deed, and you’re likely to get a lot of them.
2Decorations Have Functionality
The Decorations category of buildables isn’t just eye candy and actually fulfills an important need. Every Hearth has a Hub level which can be increased by meeting its upgrade requirements, which will grant you powerful buffs per level.
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One of those requirements is to have a certain number of certain types of Decorations in the Hearth’s area of effect. Decorations are divided up to three categories: Comfort, Aesthetics, and Harmony. Whether you actually try to make a good-looking settlement or lump the decorations in one place to meet upgrade requirements is up to you.
1You Can Micromanage Resources
Managing your resourcesis an important aspect of Against the Storm, especially since a lot of things pull from the same base resources. Fortunately, the game allows you a lot of control over how your resources are used.
If you click on a building, you can see what it produces and what it uses to produce those things. If you click on any circular resource icons, you’ll see that you can control what is used to make them. Square icons are set resources and cannot be changed. If you want a building to stop making something altogether, you can uncheck the blue X next to its name.
Later, you can get an upgrade from the Smoldering City that allows you to control what each Species in your village consumes, but this makes them unhappy per things you restrict them from.
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