Steam nowadays often feels like an overwhelming tide of Early Access and newly released games vying for your attention (while Valve happily takes a massive 30% revenue cut from each). Against this storm of releases (get it), you still get the regular title that may not make it massive, but still gets lucky enough to find a dedicated audience. Against the Storm is one of those titles, and as of last month, its interesting genre hybrid of roguelike city building has hit consoles after four years of updates, and has made a very strong case for itself.

Against the Storm is a city-building roguelike by Eremite Games and published by Hooded Horse. The game originally launched into Early Access on Steam in 2021 before entering full release in 2023 and now launching onto consoles. Against the Storm is set in a fantasy world ravaged by the ‘Blightstorm’, an endless maelstrom that every few years wipes out everything across the lands beside the Smouldering City, ruled by the Scorched Queen. You play as one of the Queen’s viceroys who must venture forth between Blightstorms to establish settlements, gather supplies and attempt to close magical seals to help keep the storm at bay.

On paper, the combination of city building and roguelike elements might feel at odds – one is all about long-term planning, establishment, iteration and learning increasingly overlapping systems, whereas the other favours quick gameplay fixes, repetition and constant restarts. However, Eremite Games has managed to accomplish a remarkably coherent melding of the two. While its dual logic takes some getting used to, the iterative process of starting new settlements anew, venturing out into your new surroundings to accomplish tasks, then moving onto the next made for a surprisingly compelling loop that works far better than I would have anticipated from the outset.

While its rhythms were soothing, Against the Storm does nonetheless offload a few of the strengths of the city-building genre to make its hybrid structure work. The biggest one of these is the long-term progression and emotional investment in the cities themselves. Against the Storm claims in its promotion that laying the foundations of a new city is “one of the most exciting moments in a city-building game”, but that is not something I have found true myself. Rather, one of the most exciting and satisfying things in my own experience of the genre has long been the pleasure of watching your intricate little city creation thrive and flourish over time, before blossoming into a beautifully designed and automated system that leaves you feeling like a proud parent.

Settlements in Against the Storm, however, arguably never reach this final stage, or even much of an adolescence. Rather, every time I found myself settling into the groove of neatly laying out my city and establishing smooth supply lines, I would gain enough reputation, suddenly hit the ‘job done!’ screen and be encouraged to move on. You can technically stay and continue to work on your settlements after this point, but the game never really incentivises this and instead feels eager to hurriedly rush you to the next wooded clearing populate. This doesn’t detract too much from the other solid city building elements elsewhere in Against the Storm, but it inevitably makes me feel like my carefully constructed little towns were disposable, which made me care less and less about them as I progressed.