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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2067 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 15, 2023

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So I've really been enjoying Against the Storm the last week. It was kind of a splurge when I got an email from GOG that it was out of Early Access, and it looked right up my alley.

It's basically a colony building game in the style of Settlers. You build your town workshop by workshop, home by home, and manually assign workers to various task. You are expected to beat the levels, not play them forever. I saw some people didn't like this? That seems really bizarre to me. Like, it's not that kind of game? Play one that is.

It has some fun mechanics that set it apart though. Has numerous fantasy races that each excel or have boosted resolve at different tasks. They also all have different needs to keep them happy. If they get unhappy enough they will leave your settlement. At lower difficulty settings this seems unlikely unless you really suck at the game. On "normal" it can be a real risk as the level progresses. Haven't tried the hard difficulty setting yet.

Because for various reasons, as you get further and further through a level, the "threat" from the forest grows, lowing your population's resolve. Random events pop up that you need to respond to, and sometimes as part of the choices you are presented with before consequences happen the least bad option is one that spikes this even further.

It has a fun meta progression. Instead of a simple campaign of hand crafted levels, each introducing a new mechanics, it has a rogue like design. At least that's what I see people say. I don't see it personally. I hear rogue like and that makes it seem like you are intended to fail until they give you enough honorable mention trophies to buy upgrades that let you win. I haven't lost once in this game, and it lets you pick the difficulty on a level by level basis. It's up to you to set your risk/reward threshold.

The individual levels are fun enough so far for me. The building you have access to are random, and so you'll rarely have a perfect supply chain. But if you establish trade routes and spend liberally at visiting traders, you can patch the holes you may have in it. At least enough to get past the finish line of the level. It's very much a dynamic and interesting puzzle, that engages me a lot more than going through the motions with the same 10 buildings every session.

Anyways, I guess that kind of turned into a mini review. Anyone else been into it lately?

I played it a little while back, enjoyed it for a little while.

Was the difficulty a setting, or just based on how far you are from the central place? I think difficulty was based on how far you went from the central tower thingy. If I remember correctly once your ramp up the difficulty, the game changes from "always winning" to "always losing". To the point where unless I got lucky roles on some starting races/abilities/map areas I felt better off just quitting the level and not wasting my time.

I'm a very sore loser when it comes to single player games, so I stopped playing after I stopped constantly winning. Definitely a reversal of the normal difficulty curve for rogue-lites.

I still played for about 20 hours, so I don't regret my purchase. Just wasn't the right game for me I guess.

Was the difficulty a setting, or just based on how far you are from the central place?

Both I think? There is definitely a difficulty setting you can choose before you start a level, either Settler, Pioneer or Veteran. I haven't unlocked the last one yet? Settler is definitely baby mode where villagers eat less food and hostility is super slow. Pioneer seems like "normal" mode. Veteran activated blightrot and corruption, and I'm probably about ready to jump up to that since Pioneer has gotten easy.

But I've only done the first seal, so we'll see how difficult things get when I really start stretching my legs.

I haven't unlocked the last one yet?

Certainly not- there are actually 20 more difficulty levels on top of Viceroy, each of which cumulatively adds a different complication to the settlements.

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