Platforms:
Xbox One, PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Released:
June 26, 2025
Publisher:
Hooded Horse
Developer:
Eremite Games
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.
“Eremite Games has managed to accomplish a remarkably coherent melding of city building and roguelike elements”
Each settlement or ‘run’, to use the roguelike moniker, starts with your villages, a hearth and warehouse being plopped down into the clearing of an eerie forest. Your initial starting area is surrounded by glades that must be reached through chopping down trees and contain resources, tasks to accomplish and a range of different dangers with potential consequences. To complete a run, you need to reach a certain level of reputation by either accomplishing tasks for the Queen, keeping your workers happy or completing events found in glades for the Smouldering City. Hanging over your head is a timer in the form of the Queen’s impatience – take too long to gain a strong reputation, and your settlement’s short life will come to an end.
Against the Storm does a great job narratively and mechanically situating each of these settlements as a minor part of a larger whole. Each feels like a small facet of a slowly growing civilisation, connected by traders, trade routes and the transport of goods between settlements. Particularly with the Smouldering City acting as a home base that you slowly upgrade through the resources you accumulate during your escapades beyond its walls, it makes for a loop where the constant settlements both keep the gameworld and the game rolling along while funnelling progression back to its centre.
All of this is accentuated by a visual style that harkens back to the early heights of Blizzard. Against the Storm creates a deft tonal and aesthetic balance between the presentation of Warcraft III, the cozy fantasy of a farming simulator and the semi-gothic dark enchanted woods of a Disney film not afraid to scare the odd child. Even while encountering various haunted ruins, strange creatures and ‘rainpunk’ creations, Against the Storm never stopped feeling surprisingly cozy in its aspirations, which isn’t a tone that feels apparent from the outset. The ritual of coming home after a long day of work, making a small meal and resting on the couch to start up another bustling little habitation before bed was a soothing one that Against the Storm on console fostered effortlessly, and made the experience of chipping away at its somewhat belaboured time commitment an overall very satisfying one.
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.

On top of the perpetual arrested development of the city building, meta-progression can also be a bit slow for my taste. Against the Storm is clearly designed for you to spend dozens upon dozens of hours playing it; each settlement would take me one to two hours (depending on how liberally I would use its pausing or fast-forward options) and it was well over ten hours before I completed my first storm cycle and accomplished one of the main objectives (closing the seals). The sheer variety of settlement and task modifiers means that no two runs felt exactly the same, but some of the more consistent settlement elements, especially the glade-hunting and a few of the supply trees, did begin to become a tad too familiar, a tad too quickly.
It’s worth noting that Against the Storm’s adaptation to a controller is fantastically intuitive. Genres like city builders and real-time strategy games have always leant themselves to the affordances of a mouse and keyboard, but the casual deftness with which Eremite Games made all the options and information I needed always a button-press or two away was remarkable. While it did involve learning a bit of a new literacy, once I had done so a few settlements after the tutorial, swapping menus, assigning tasks and overseeing my settlement through various lenses felt seamless in a way I have rarely experienced with a mouse-to-controller adaptation. This is well worth lauding, especially since a cozy and consistent game like this feels perfect for both quiet nights on the couch and via handhelds in bed.
8.5
Great
Positive:
- Great genre combination
- Warcraft-esque aesthetic
- Exceptional transition to controller
Negative:
- Lack of long-term settlement development
Against the Storm’s genre hybridity does jettison some of the base pleasures of the city builder, but otherwise, Eremite Games has crafted a compelling ‘just one more settlement’ roguelike gameplay loop. With the combination of a beautiful and familiar fantasy aesthetic, strong foundational mechanics with a lot of variety, and a remarkably intuitive adaptation from its PC roots to a controller, Against the Storm is an assured and accomplished console port.