Against the Storm Review Available Day Early For Patrons! (Patreon)

It's been a hot minute since I could post a video, but here we are at last! Against the Storm started as a quarterly wrapup contender, but was 1. way too long to feature there, and 2. way too awesome to just write a paragraph about. So it got promoted to full review status!

I haven't been shy about my love of crunchier technical game genres like city builders, but whenever I find an accessible one to show off on the channel, they tend to lose a little bit of that crunch. Not so with Against the Storm, a moody mashup of city builders and roguelikes that plays almost beat for beat like Anno, ditching much of the game's complexity while somehow still maintaining its depth. This game is phenomenal.

Apologies this one took so long. I'm sure many are looking at the recent advent of streaming as a primary reason behind the delay, and it certainly did contribute, as I spent a full week setting it up instead of actually making the next video, but I did also get probably-covid that set me back a fair bit, this started as a quarterly wrapup game, so I have a whole 'nother video already started on, and I've been moving towards a more video essay-style video with this one, which meant a whole bunch of additional work recording other games, playing this one far more than just five hours, and a lot, lot more writing. There are a lot of one-off reasons why this one took so long to come out, so hopefully this won't be the rhythm of releases moving forward! We'll see how things go from here. If it still takes me a month to get something out, I'll probably dial back the streaming a bit.

Coming up in the next day or two, it's a rather belated reading list. After that, the already-started quarterly wrapup is also on the horizon. The first Time-Strapped Gamer's Guide is still a few months out, but the finish line is slowly coming into sight, so please look forward to that, as well!