Against the Storm - Switch Review

A city-builder first released in 2023 on Steam, Against the Storm brings its roguelike elements and dark fantasy setting onto Switch, and not a moment too soon. With its world of storms, monsters and darkness, only the best and most dedicated city builders will be able to handle its challenges. So, is the Switch the place to play it? Let’s see…

The Good

Your role in Against the Storm is that of a Viceroy of the Smouldering City, a sort of Royal Town Planner, tasked with setting up a series of settlements in the inhospitable, storm-ravaged world. Each settlement you find starts you with some citizens (a mix of fantasy-animal races, each with their own skills, buffs and needs), some basic supplies, and a hearth in a small clearing to gather round. From there you must build your settlement from on high as the omnipresent planner, placing buildings, assigning villagers to roles and tasks, exploring and handling ambient dangers and magics in the surrounding forest. It is all very standard city-building-game fare, but it is expertly done. A particular mention should go to how well this style of game has been ported to Switch—the wealth of information, overlays, and options with this style of game is usually better suited to PCs but feels right at home on my handheld.

But what really makes Against the Storm stand out is its time-limited, roguelike approach. In each settlement there is a time limit on getting things up and running, represented by the ‘Queen’s Impatience’ back in the centre city. Before time runs out, you have to build up the settlement to a sufficient level of reputation, either by keeping your citizens extra happy, completing requests for the Queen, or exploring the more dangerous areas of the surrounding forest. And each settlement will be different—you’ll have a different mix of starting villagers and resources, different modifiers and available resources on the procedurally generated maps, and even different building types that you’re able to build. What this means in practice is that every 1-2 hour settlement you play will be a completely unique experience, and you’ll be forced to change up your approach each time. Rather than finding a tried-and-tested city plan to repeat ad nauseam like in some games, you’ll be worrying about a beaver settlement with a wood-based economy one hour, then the next be setting up a harpy-led coat supply chain somewhere else.

The roguelike metagame takes the form of global buffs and perks and new buildings you can unlock as you progress, with your main goal to build settlements out towards bespoke ‘mystical seal’ challenge maps; beat these and you can push back the storm and travel further afield into the absolutely huge map, into more challenging areas with more complex mechanics that will require you to bring your best city-building skills. There is a semblance of story overlaid too, but it knows you’ll likely be itching to start your next settlement to worry too much about that.

TL;DR

• Excellent city-building gameplay in a dark fantasy setting
• Rogue-like nature offers constant challenge and variation
• Ported to Switch expertly

The Bad

A roguelike city builder is, it turns out, a bit of a double-edged sword—albeit with the ‘good’ edge much sharper than the ‘bad’ one. While every settlement is indeed different with varying challenges, there is a limit to how different the very start of each settlement can be—you’ll need to start chopping trees, cutting planks and building houses, etc. With the short-lived nature of each village, you’ll be repeating these fairly dull steps more often than in other games. The time limit on each area also means you do miss out on building the big, perfect city of your hopes and dreams, at least until you are a long, long way into the game. I appreciate it is not the point of Against the Storm, but part of the allure of these sorts of games for their devotees is the chance to optimise and maximise a perfectly functioning cityscape.

And this game is definitely one for the city-builder fans. It’s full of complex mechanics, and as the challenge level rises, it will require you to master all of them to progress. The tutorial is certainly long, but not necessarily thorough, and you will have to go out of your way to read up on how some features work, and in some cases even to understand how to access them with your switch controls.

Finally, while the overall presentation and style of Against the Storm fits its dark, foreboding tone—and it looks good on your handheld—there is a little bit of graphical oomph lacking when docked to the TV—certainly not a huge issue for this sort of game, but I’d recommend enjoying it in handheld mode.

TL;DR

• Repetitive start-of-city process
• Important, complex mechanics not always explained well
• Graphics don’t hold up on a big screen

Final Score: 8/10

Against the Storm feels like a perfect fit for the Switch—you can jump in for an hour or two and complete a settlement from scratch, ready to move on to the next. The roguelike aspects keep the game fresh and challenging and make it stand out from other similar games. It won’t be for everyone, but fans of this genre will find Against the Storm is part of their game rotation for a long time to come.

Thank you for checking out our Against the Storm Switch review, thank you to Hooded Horse (via Five Star Games PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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