Roguelike... City Builder (Against the Storm)

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Downhammer

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Yeah, there's some arbitrary game duration that people seem to use to call things "roguelike." If someone came out with a new chess simulator I'm sure someone somewhere would call it a stylized roguelike strategy game. No, it's just a fucking game with replayability and a short session duration.

Just downloaded this. Sounds like it's up my alley given how I play city builders and economy sims. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Hateyou

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Anyways I personally wouldn’t refer this game as a rogue(anything) game. You build tiny little towns and unlock shit as you go. Finish the little task then move on to the next town. You continue to unlock shit as you go. It’s very much like a city builder except you are just working on one city for the entire game, you’re just getting a little settlement started and slowly taking over a larger map with small settlements.

For me a rouge(whatever) game is you try to beat something, die but got stronger or earned shit to unlock meta and keep dying over and over until you’ve unlocked enough meta shit you can win. This game doesn’t feel like that at all.
 
Gavinmad

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Hateyou said:
Anyways I personally wouldn’t refer this game as a rogue(anything) game. You build tiny little towns and unlock shit as you go. Finish the little task then move on to the next town. You continue to unlock shit as you go. It’s very much like a city builder except you are just working on one city for the entire game, you’re just getting a little settlement started and slowly taking over a larger map with small settlements.

For me a rouge(whatever) game is you try to beat something, die but got stronger or earned shit to unlock meta and keep dying over and over until you’ve unlocked enough meta shit you can win. This game doesn’t feel like that at all.
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It's randomized scenarios with randomized blueprint availability and meta progression. It's not some huge stretch to call it roguelite even if it is a citybuilder.
 
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Hateyou

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Gavinmad said:
It's randomized scenarios with randomized blueprint availability and meta progression. It's not some huge stretch to call it roguelite even if it is a citybuilder.
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Yeah I understand. Just saying I wouldn’t use it personally cause I think people would take it the wrong way. Like this doesn’t feel like StS or Hades, and people associate that term with games like that.
 
Pyros

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Hateyou said:
Yeah I understand. Just saying I wouldn’t use it personally cause I think people would take it the wrong way. Like this doesn’t feel like StS or Hades, and people associate that term with games like that.
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Even these games aren't like Rogue at all though, they simply have some elements. Rogue, and games inspired by it are a very specific niche of games that very few modern games actually do. Stoneshard and Caves of Qud are 2 good modern examples that are in early access. Once you start calling Slay the Spire or Hades rogue-like, you can basically call everything rogue-like. You can use rogue-lite to separate it a bit, but similarly you can call a lot of stuff rogue-lite once you do. Hell StS and Hades are 2 very different type of games to begin with.

People definitely overuse the term which makes it a pain in the ass to figure out what genre the game is without looking in details at it. If you call a game a FPS, you know roughly what to expect. People don't go around saying "Skyrim is the best FPS imo, much better than Minecraft". Like technically both Skyrim and Minecraft are first person, and technically you can shoot in both(bows and stuff) but calling them FPS is stupid, yet everyone seems to like to slap Rogue-like/lite to their games nowadays because it has some element of randomness or whatever. I guess it's because they use it as more of an adjective/tag for the game rather than a whole genre, which is fine but weird because rogue-like is a specific genre but rogue-lite is like a gameplay element and lots of people just use them interchangeably.
 
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MusicForFish

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Just unlocked consumption control. My beavers:

Hungry Feed Me GIF
 
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faille

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what happened to the demo on steam for this game? tried to install it on my laptop and doesn't appear available anymore
 
Gavinmad

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faille said:
what happened to the demo on steam for this game? tried to install it on my laptop and doesn't appear available anymore
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A lot of demos were only made available for Steam's demo event, which is over.
 
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Hateyou

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faille said:
what happened to the demo on steam for this game? tried to install it on my laptop and doesn't appear available anymore
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I played the demo and was able to figure out if I’d like the game in under 90 minutes, so you’re probably safe just buying it and staying under the 2 hour return limit as a “demo” once it’s released.
 
Ukerric

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Early access now unlocked on Steam, and there's a 15% off until Nov 8th.

(haven't time to play right now, maybe later today)
 
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The art style is pretty clean, the ambient music is well done, and I haven’t come across any major bugs or glitches as of yet. The gameplay itself is either complex or convoluted depending on your own tolerance. There is no easy “build this in this order” to win. You have to match your city to what you find from opening the surrounding glades, the random mandates from the Queen, and from the randomized rewards for completing tasks. All while balancing several different stress mechanics (Worker morale, Queen’s patience, and environmental factors). The game doesn’t seem to have a problem with starting complex and adding options as you unlock things. I want to play more before I comment on balance, but I find the game oddly stressful and relaxing at the same time. You are constantly managing the city while trying to balance all the things, but it’s easy to get into the flow of the game and find that several hours have passed without notice.

Note: I really do enjoy the ambient music, it’s one of the few games where I don’t need anything on in the background while I play.



Edit: Rogue-like = Procedurally generated dungeon crawler. Rogue-lite = Game where some major elements are procedurally generated. (Mainly the map) This game bills itself as rogue-lite.
 
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Downhammer

Downhammer

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Yea, I'm enjoying the "rogue-like" aspects. Beyond lumber, a couple houses, and maybe the workshop there's no sense in preplanning any build order. You have to take what the map and available blueprints gives you. I agree that it's a good combination of stress and relaxing since you can't coast through an initial build.

I think one of the steam reviews said it best. "Do you constantly restart city builders/economy sims because you learn something new and want to start over and re-optimize? If so, Against the Storm is for you."
 
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Hateyou

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I’m not sure if I’ll buy it. I enjoyed the demo but it didn’t hook me hard or anything. This is absolutely the game I’ll play if I ever get a city sim itch, because I liked how it was done. Being designed to not have an optimal path every time is pretty refreshing. A lot of “rogue” games there are a few optimal paths you always take and that gets old really quickly in city games.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Hateyou said:
I’m not sure if I’ll buy it. I enjoyed the demo but it didn’t hook me hard or anything. This is absolutely the game I’ll play if I ever get a city sim itch, because I liked how it was done. Being designed to not have an optimal path every time is pretty refreshing. A lot of “rogue” games there are a few optimal paths you always take and that gets old really quickly in city games.
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It's cheap and entertaining.

I wonder what the 5th species will be, though.
 
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