In the roguelite city builder Against the Storm, failure is part of the process

I love city building simulations at every step of the game – from laying the foundations to planning a city grid, upgrading building complexity and dealing with the bureaucratic elements of the late game. I spent late evenings playing Frostpunk And Timberborn, sucked into the fine balance of avoiding a total city collapse. That said, if you had told me a week ago, “You're going to spend about an hour making a settlement – and then you're going to start over and over again,” I would have declined. But Against the stormthe roguelite city builder that just came out of early access on December 8 proves that this formula is not only sensible, but fantastic.

To be clear, there are other games with this unconventional genre tie-in. In Cult of the Lamb, there's a home base that functions like a sim game in which cult members work, worship, and of course, make living sacrifices. You can leave this base to take part in roguelike dungeon crawls. But Against the storm does not have that separation of mechanics. They fit together perfectly in a way that keeps things fresh while allowing you to add complexity with each successive run. Fifteen hours later I can barely tear myself away.

In Against the storm, you are the Queen's Viceroy in a country with disastrous weather conditions. You have been tasked with building settlements from the capital Smoldering City, towards a series of mysterious seals. You start each 'run' by selecting a tile on the game's brooding overworld map. Then you choose your starting population from a beautiful fantasy array of lizards, beavers, humans, harpies and more. Finally, gather some basic supplies – stone, maybe some edible mushrooms – before heading to the settlement. Then it's off to the races: on site you build shelters and basic structures, like a lumberjack to cut down trees, or sometimes even giant orchids. The whole thing has a dark fantasy flavor. Each site is full of hidden glades; reveal them and you might find a poisonous flower that will rot your food, or a cemetery that will strike fear into the hearts of your villagers.

From there, the game turns into a resource puzzle. Each scenario gives you different choices for a series of “orders” you must fulfill. You may have to deliver bags of crops within a certain time or enter a certain number of 'dangerous open areas'. Completing these will award you reputation points. Normally you need 14 points to win a scenario. Meanwhile, you fight a fickle queen. The Queen's Impatience meter only fills over time, and if it reaches the maximum before the reputation does, you lose the settlement.

This is the challenge and fun of the game: coming up with a successful strategy on the fly, before you even know what tools you have available. Think about it Hades, where Zagreus is offered various favors from the gods – while all options are fun, some can create great and unexpected synergies when fighting enemies. But in Against the Storm, you get options for building types, global benefits, open spaces to explore and quests to complete. You must constantly refine the allocation of resources: your wood will be used to keep the hearth warm, build new important buildings, And fulfilling a keg order. And oh yeah, don't forget to make some food for your villagers. It's so easy to fool yourself every step of the way Against the storm.

Suffice to say, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is 'determination' and 'hostility' of the workers; each citizen excels in different work and is simple must have certain luxuries. These are wonderfully stupid: lizards like to eat jerky and work in cookhouses (they are cold-blooded and like heat); beavers love cookies and they are terribly good at cutting wood. There is also a weather cycle that determines the time of harvest and how angry all the workers get. It is called Against the Storm, so I'll let you guess how much these guys love rain. (Spoiler: They hate it.)

Image: Eremite Games/hooded horse

It sounds complicated, but it's actually very digestible. The game effectively fuels its complexity, which helps curb the overwhelming feeling that can come with these types of management sims with a dozen menus and mechanics. There's a perk tree that you can unlock over the course of the game that introduces new gameplay mechanics: win or lose, you can purchase some of these upgrades. For example, you don't really have to worry about trading early, but as you unlock more perks it becomes an important strength.

Against the Storm always has a new trick up its sleeve, and like any great roguelite it has encouraged me to make unusual, brave plays that I would never attempt in a more typical city builder. Knowing that every run has a finite end, I can always start over if things don't work out. And when they do, it's even sweeter.

Against the Storm was released on December 8 on Windows PC. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information about Polygon's ethics policy can be found here.