Against the Storm is a city-builder rogue-like that is incredibly fun. It's set in a fantasy world in which it never stops raining. In regular cycles there are incredibly strong storms that destroy everything. The only safe place is the Smoldering City, which is located at a volcano.
You play as a viceroy, your job is to build several settlements that provide goods for the Smoldering City. But be aware, the patience of the queen has it's limits and you have to hurry if you don't want to get called back.

The game is divided into two gameplay sections. The map is where you do meta decisions. Choose locations for your settlements, upgrade the Smoldering City with goods you have provided and look for anything that could help you on the map. A full run is called a cycle and when time runs out, the world will be destroyed by the blightstorm, ending your current run and generating a new worldmap. The goal is to reach different seals that are scattered on the map. These seals are supposed to imprison old, malevolent gods that are responsible for the blightstorms, however the seals have been broken and your job is to reforge them.
Building an actual setlement is a sub-run of the cycle. Settlements are the core gameplay and the city-builder aspect of Against the Storm. Your goal is to reach a specific number of reputation (essentially victory points). However, the impatoience of the queen constantly rises and if it reaches it's maximum, the settlement is considered a failure. You can still attempt other settlements but each settlement you build will advance the time, which means the end of the cycle grows closer.
To get reputation, you have various options to choose from. The most straightforward is to do tasks that are provided by the Queen. These taks give you various rewards in formof resources, citizens or cornerstones but you will always get a full reputation point. Each full reputation point will reduce the impatience of the Queen and on certain thresholds you will also get a blueprint of a new building.
Blueprints are the bread and butter of settlements, you only start with a handful of basic buildings that allow you to collect all types of natural resources and craft basic items but they are also very inefficient. Effiency is very important in AtS. Each type of building has a star rating depending on how efficient they are. Good ratings reduce the amount of resources to craft an item and also the time it takes. Because of this system, there are multiple buildings that can produce the same goods but with different efficiencys, which means that you are not too much reliant on RNG to craft an item you need.
The same applies to the crafting recipes too. Most crafzing recipes have alternate resources that you can select to craft them. This allows you to toggle between resources you have access to or resources you don't want to get uses. It's a good system that allows for huge felxibility in your settlement, so you can adapt to the circumstances and what resources you have aviable.
The game has 5 different fantasy races and each one has their own preferences when it comes to food, living conditions and amenities. When you provide the goods they like, they will get happyness, which is called resolve in this game. Happy citizens will eventually generate reputation for you but the more citizens and the more reputation you already have, the harder it gets for them to generate more. This means you are constantly providing for the needs they have, trying to get a good resolve value. Having negative resolve on the other hand means that citizens are unhappy with their circumstances and will eventually leave the settlement. This is best avoided because it increases the impatience of the queen faster.
Each race in the game also is good at certain works. Depending on their work station, they either generate more resources or more resolve.
Players can also attract various merchants to the settlement, which allow you to sell goods and buy resources you need. They also provide blueprints or cornerstones.
Cornerstones are passive items and these are the true game changers for your settlement. Cornerstones can have all kinds of benefits, increased production, better walking speed for workers, bigger storage for buildings and so on. It's important to get cornerstones that help directly with the industry you have planned for your settlement because they can increase the output of your buildings massively. Even a single increase in production can already make ahuge difference.

A core concept of the game is hostility. It's meant as a rising difficulty modifier that you have to manage. Hostility increases with time, citizens and each glade you open up in the woods but it decreases with your hearth and the impatience of the Queen. Hostility decreases resolve from citizens but once the storm hits, it also has various nasty effects depending on how much hostility has already accumulated. Each map you play, has different difficulty modifiers, both positive and negative. These are active during the different seasons of the game. During drizzle you have positive effects happening, during the storm, all the negative modifiers are actie and some are only active once you reached a specific amount of hostility. You can temporarily decrease hostility by burning more food in the hearth.

As the players opens up more of the map with his woodcutters, he will encounter different types of glades. Glades provide more resources but they also contain different events. Events need resources to be resolved but provide good rewards if done so. Depending on the type of glade, there are more dangerous events that, if left alone, will have consequences for your settlement, but even working on them can negatively affect you. These types of events provide however very good rewards, either in the form of a big amount of resources or by giving you a permanent buff.

The game has alot of content and I still haven't talked about everything, for example you can use rain water to boost buildings but that also has the chance to infect them. There are so many mechanics that you can play with and plan your strategy around.
And the soundtrack is so damn good. It's an atmospheric orchestral music that conveys the feeling you have while playing. During the light rain seasons you have a somber-like melody, you feel safe but than the melody begins to rise as the storm comes, it gets louder and louder, drowning out every other noise and you hear a trumpet in the background as thunder strikes. I love it when the music fits perfectly the setting and that certainly is the case here.
If you like city-builders, try out this game. It's really addicting.