Against the Storm Review (Miuw)
I wanted to wait until i completely 100%'d the game before writting this review, although it wouldn't change much for how i feel about this game. This is orginality, quality and a true masterpiece of a game, hardly will you find a game that really makes you feel like your experiencing a passion project quite like this one.
Should you buy this game: YES, if you are a person who have the attention span to count to 5 and do things like "Chill", this game is for you.
Now where to start in describing this game, the first thing that comes to mind is it's difficulty, as a person who always NEEDS to pick the highest difficulty to prove to myself that i am a certified "gamer" this game does it in a way that isn't just: pick "Brutal" and step into hell. No this game has difficulty be linked with how experienced you are with the game. It scales along with you in a very clever way, Once you get more experienced, higher difficulties come step by step as you adventure onwards, with the lower barier lifting up as you're forced to learn and adapt to tougher and tougher challenges. But the lowest difficulty is still avalible to you to play around with, but to progress, eventually you need to leave that comfortzone and take on the all increasing "storm", fitting with the name of the game.
This game is about strategy, mostly macro level at that, you're not going to do quick small actions a lot of the time, but you are more in a broader view, taking strategic slower but well thought out decissions. There are a few times where you have to work quick, even a spesific "challenge" where they take away your ability to pause even, but it's completely up to you if u want to do that, but you will ALWAYS be rewarded for pushing yourself onwards.
This game has lots of those fun things that i love, lots of permanent upgrades, temporary upgrades, short and long lasting, events and lots of that stuff i love about rougelike things, but almost all things sadly comes to an end, i will write about this more later.
This game is grid based which my OCD loves, how you face things, how you draw your roads, it all matters, but you can also just slam things down left and right, things will still work if you don't like making things look nice, good for when you wanna keep a venture short and just get in and out when you're more experienced, but its always nice to make things look good if thats what you like, all up to you.
Art, Sound, Music, I am not a person who has the understanding to critiq this area, but i find it just the right tone, the music and sound is there to just set the tone and stage, it's background ambience, not a radio to put it in words i would describe it. Buildings and the way the game looks fits the theme, and i love that its very colourful, with a dark setting of the game the brighter but not absurdly vivid colors just makes it look nice to me at least.
The few things that leave me wanting is, i love really putting in way to many hours into good strategy games, and sadly this game does hinder you, there are only so many years that you can use, or so much time in a singel stage until you will have to move on, there is a minor "freeplay" but it's nothing u can come back to after you left. I hope for the future that really long multiple real life days mission will come along to this game, an option to go infinetly taking on further and further difficulty until eventually you can't last or something of the kind. I just wanna keep building more in this game, but perhaps it's better left for the more city builder focused sorta games.
And for the devs, i will put this wild idea here that just gets into my mind while playing thinking about the what if's and what could be. A Major DLC where you go underground, under the mountain, where rainwater seeps through the dark caverns from above, making it a lot more scarces but also less of a threat, for down in the dark forgotten caverns your enemy is not the storm but the darkness, where you have to keep the lights on in your settelment lit at all times, or be consumed by the unknown darkness that lurks. Discover ruins of unknown races and species, and perhaps go on a mjaor story questline with the Priestess from the Forsaken Altar and learn about the true story behind the Queen, perhaps she's not all that good? Dark and gloomy caves await you in the Forgotten caverns DLC! Only 29,99 Wishlist now on Steam, (terms and condition may apply, consult your doctor before use)
Anyways, thanks for reading my review, hope this game is the right for you, support developers who make great games! Nominate!
(Sorry for any bad formating or spelling mistakes)