Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Against the Storm
Update Sneak Peek (& How To Prepare)
Greetings, Viceroys!
The first content update on Steam is coming tomorrow (November 10, sometime around 2 pm - 4 pm UTC). Let’s get ready!
In this article, we share a couple of tips on how to prepare for updates and what you can expect from the Royal Archeologist Update.
How to prepare for the Update
We release new content Updates every two weeks on Thursdays around 2 pm - 4 pm UTC. As we make multiple changes to the game’s systems, balance, and content, the game needs to force-finish any settlements that are in progress when you download the update. This aims to prevent various game-breaking bugs that could occur otherwise.
IMPORTANT: If you have a settlement in progress, it will have to be force-finished when you download the Update. You will be reimbursed with Citadel Resources but you will have to start a new settlement. Your meta progress (that is: Experience, Level, completed Deeds, unlocked Upgrades, Citadel Resources, etc.) will remain intact.
In the main menu, under the “Play” button, there’s a countdown to upcoming Updates. Please finish your current settlement before the update day if you don’t want it to be completed automatically.
How saves work in Against the Storm
We did our best to ensure that the Early Access program is as convenient for the players as possible.
The game keeps separate save files (and their backups) for different layers of the game:
Current settlement
Current World Map cycle
Meta progress
No update will ever erase your meta progress - you will keep your experience and Citadel Resources across every update and the full launch. If we change specific Smoldering City Upgrades or remove them, you will get the invested resources back and be able to spend them on other Upgrades.
Your current World Map cycle (the distribution of your settlements on the World Map, other Factions’ settlements, chests, modifiers, etc.) is unlikely to be reset often.
However, your current settlement will have to be force-finished every two weeks when we release new updates. In return, you will be reimbursed with Citadel Resources which you’d normally get for the settlement.
Royal Archeologist Update sneak peek
We’re happy to unveil that Scarlet Orchard is getting a new look and its unique biome mechanic!
From now on, the Scarlet Orchard will be a region revolving around archaeology and exploration. When settling there, expect to stumble upon ancient excavation sites - big multi-stage events that require a lot of work and resources to be completed, but also give special and generous rewards. To help you find them, you can use a new upgradeable building that is only accessible in this biome - the Archaeologist’s Office.
Additionally, you can expect many improvements and fixes, many of which were directly inspired by your feedback and reports. Here are some examples:
We’re merging the Embarkation Range and Citadel Vision upgrades into one. Embarkation Range will allow players to move one field further, as well as see more of the map at the beginning of the cycle.
We’re adding an option to copy existing buildings. Simply press Shift when hovering over a building.
We’re adding an option to rotate buildings on the spot (for free). Simply press the rotation hotkey (R by default) when hovering over a building. The building must be moveable to perform this action.
We’re adding a warning pop-up when a player decides to continue playing after a game has already been won. This warning occurs only once and informs the player that they won’t get additional experience points, citadel resources, or deeds.
We’re adding an option to the settings menu to turn off screen fog.
And many many more.
We’ll share the full changelog and our update notes tomorrow.
We’re extremely grateful for your warm reception of Against the Storm - your support and love are highly appreciated.
We’re doing our best to keep up with all the messages we receive and to respond whenever possible. We also decided to prepare an FAQ to keep answers in one place.
You can find the FAQ thread (which will be updated as more questions appear) here:
We will also present you the opportunity to ask us some questions during a live stream which we’ll host on our Twitch channel on November 9 at 4 pm UTC (8:00 am PT / 5:00 pm CET). What are the origins of the game? What’s our favorite Polish food? Wait, you guys are from Poland? All these and other questions will be answered, so come hang out with us!
You can also expect a little sneak peek of the upcoming update which we’ll release on November 10 (make sure to finish your settlement before the update goes live!).
We just released a small hotfix addressing a few issues that cropped up after the game’s release. The changes are now available in the Early Access version and the demo.
Changelog:
Fixed a bug with some leveling rewards being incorrectly unlocked when earning experience points through Deeds.
Fixed a bug with the Corsair iCUE RGB implementation not changing states correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused empty tooltips to appear when hovering over recipe stars in building panels and the Atlas.
Fixed an issue with search bars not accepting accent letters and special characters.
Fixed an issue with the game reacting to keybinds when writing a report in the feedback panel.
Fixed a bug with incorrect popup order when attacking the Hooded Trickster trader.
Fixed a bug with the Hooded Trickster trader only having 3 Mystery Boxes on sale, even if the player has Citadel Upgrades increasing the trader merchandise amount.
Fixed a mistranslation in Portuguese (“Colônia Concluída!”).
Fixed a few typos in the Atlas (like in the description of the First Dawn Company).
Improved the wording of some Glade Event effects (like Fishmen Rituals).
Rebalanced the Gathering Tools perk. It now giver 6 Packs of Provisions per glade (instead of 3).
Please make sure your game is updated to version Early Access 0.36.14R.
We are immensely grateful for your prompt and detailed reports. We also want to thank you for such a positive reception of Against the Storm!
If you've already picked up the game and have been playing it, we’d be grateful if you left a Steam review. Every opinion matters!
We read all your posts and you can expect the first batch of community-inspired changes to be added to the game on November 10. Stay tuned!
Rebuild a fallen world in the face of never-ending storms - Against the Storm is AVAILABLE NOW in Steam Early Access!
About Against the Storm
You are the Viceroy – a leader charged by the Scorched Queen to reclaim the wilderness and discover lost riches for the Smoldering City, civilization’s last bastion against the Blightstorm that destroyed the old world. Unlike most survival city builders where your focus is on a single city, in Against the Storm you must build a vast, prosperous network of settlements populated by diverse fantasy races, each with their own specializations and needs.
But the wilderness holds many hidden dangers, and never-ending storms will batter your population into submission. If your settlements should fall, then the expedition may end – but not the game. Against the Storm is a roguelite city builder, meaning you will carry forward the resources, upgrades, and experience of your past expeditions each time you set off for a new journey into the wild.
Early Access
We estimate the Early Access programme to last for approximately 6 months (subject to change). During that time, we are committed to delivering bi-weekly updates with new content, improvements, balance changes, and fixes.
We prepared a roadmap which outlines our plans for the upcoming features:
We work on Against the Storm in the spirit of community-driven development, so we provide you with multiple tools to influence and monitor the development:
We read all your feedback and reserve significant amount of development time to work on things that matter to you. We hope you’ll join us on this exciting journey!
We just updated the demo with a new building, improvements, and fixes. We're grateful for all your suggestions and reports!
All the changes will also be included in the Early Access version.
CHANGELOG
Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by the community.
Balance
⚡ The Rain Mill blueprint is now available from level 1 instead of level 6. This change was mainly implemented to help with Flour availability in the early stages of the game.
⚡ Settler difficulty now requires 12 Reputation Points instead of 14.
⚡ Orders requiring the player to have a specific building or to produce goods in it now also take restored haunted ruins into account.
⚡ Added fertile soil to some starting Glades.
⚡ Removed the Aura of Despair Forest Mystery.
Added Copper Ore as a possible ingredient in two recipes: Pigment and Pack of Building Materials.
Slightly increased the trade value of Copper Bars.
Lowered the speed increase of Paved Roads from 20% to 15%.
Increased the variety of starting Glades.
Lowered the price of the Monastery of the Vigilant Flame Level 1 upgrade from 12 to 10 Food Stockpiles.
UX/UI improvements
⚡ Improved how trade value is shown in the Trading Panel.
Goods offered by traders now show their full value, including the trader’s margin.
Resource tooltips in the Trading Panel now also display the price of the entire stack.
Improved the rounding of trading values and fixed numerous issues.
⚡ Added short descriptions in the Embark View for Settler and Pioneer difficulty levels.
⚡ Added advice messages to all difficulty tooltips. These additional descriptions are meant to help players in deciding which difficulty levels are best suited for them.
⚡ Added a “show all” checkbox in the Recipes Panel. Selecting it will show all recipes in the game, not just the ones the player has access to in a given run.
⚡ Added a reset button to the Recipes Panel.
⚡ Clicking on a produced good in a building now opens the Recipe Panel in “product mode”, instead of “ingredient mode”.
⚡ Improved some aspects of the tutorial experience.
Changed the wording in the “complete orders” alert.
Improved objective text in Orders requiring the player to change ingredients in recipes.
Reshuffled some Cornerstone choices in the tutorial.
Disabled settings in Woodcutters’ Camps for the duration of the tutorial.
⚡ Improved the wording in the description for the Looming Darkness effect.
⚡ Added an option to change the settings in all Woodcutters’ Camp at once by holding Shift when clicking a checkbox in the building’s UI.
⚡ Rearranged need icons in the species panel. The order is now: basic housing > advanced housing > food > clothing > services.
⚡ Improved the look and readability of some icons.
Resource Category - trade
Need - shelter
Resource - Artifacts
Completed deeds can no longer be claimed during a run. Rewards can only be acquired in the Citadel.
A tooltip with ingredient alternatives is now always shown in the tutorial when hovering over an ingredient slot in a recipe. This tooltip can be enabled in post-tutorial games in the settings menu.
Improved the “i” icon’s shape and readability in numerous places in the UI (to make it clearer that hovering over it gives the player more information).
The resolution dropdown menu will now automatically scroll down to the selected setting instead of starting from the top.
Bug fixes
⚡ Fixed a bug with level up rewards being shifted by one (players unlocked new content one level before it was shown to them).
⚡ Fixed a bug with camp workers gathering high-priority nodes outside of their camp’s radius.
⚡ Fixed a bug with % symbols in certain localizations (predominantly French).
⚡ Fixed an issue with the difficulty selection resetting after selecting the “locked” option in the demo.
⚡ Fixed a bug with workers in the Harvesters’ Camp being called Scavengers.
⚡ Fixed an issue with Citadel Resources found in chests having incorrect labels.
⚡ Fixed an issue with some villagers missing hammers in their hands when constructing new buildings.
⚡ Fixed an issue with the hunger penalty showing an incorrect max. impact value (the max. Impact for this effect is infinite).
⚡ Fixed an issue with missing texts in ruined houses found in Glades.
⚡ Fixed an issue with Wildcards not working correctly if the player obtained them by attacking a trader.
⚡ Fixed a bug with the Lightning Forest Mystery appearing in the Coral Forest biome.
⚡ Fixed a rare bug that allowed players to assign two workers into one worker slot.
⚡ Fixed a bug with woodcutters not delivering goods to the Storage when idle.
⚡ Fixed a bug with traders offering mining perks in biomes where there is no ore.
⚡ Fixed some issues with the French localization.
⚡ Fixed some grammatical errors in tooltip descriptions of species attributes.
⚡ Fixed a bug that allowed players to write letters into a limit text field.
⚡ Fixed an issue with the “salvage ruins found in glades” text being incorrectly localized into Russian.
Fixed an issue with the Trader Assault Popup being too small to fit all looted goods.
Fixed a bug with Forest Mysteries being incorrectly displayed in the biome preview for Settler difficulty.
Fixed a bug with the visual effect around the Hearth (from sacrificing) disappearing after reloading a save.
Fixed some issues with the timing of farming animations.
Fixed multiple issues with incorrect perk rarity.
Fixed an issue with the scaling of the construction cost panel in the Atlas.
Fixed a bug that made it possible to move the camera during the Blightstorm animation in the World Map.
Fixed a bug with Hearth attachments being visible on lower hub levels after reloading a save.
Other
⚡ Replaced multiple crop models and textures in multiple farms. Planted crops should now be easier to distinguish.
⚡ Lowered the volume of the “scribbling” sound effect in tutorial text boxes.
Improved the textures of the Dewberry Bush resource node.
Improved the game’s overall performance and stability, especially when playing in highly developed settlements with a lot of particle effects.
Tuned down the volume of some sounds that play when a popup appears.
Added new languages to the game: Traditional Chinese and Korean.
Improved the Simplified Chinese and Japanese localizations.
Fixed a bug with global production speed bosts showing up in farm UI panels.
Fixed a bug with the Plantation having a one-star recipe for Berries instead of a two-star recipe.
We hope you'll enjoy the new changes! If you haven't yet, please wishlist and follow Against the Storm to stay up to date with all the news:
Here’s one final announcement before we launch Against the Storm in Early Access on Steam.
We’re excited to reveal our plans for the upcoming updates. We aim to stay in Early Access for around six months and release new updates every two weeks. We’ve put together a roadmap of the upcoming content:
The roadmap is subject to change based on many factors, including community feedback. We put a special emphasis on issues and suggestions posted by players.
We provide various tools for you to influence the development and monitor its progress, such as:
We just updated the demo with new content, multiple improvements, and fixes. Thank you for playing and sharing your feedback with us!
All the changes will also be included in the Early Access version.
CHANGELOG
Changes marked with ⚡ were inspired by the community.
New content and features
⚡ Added 2 new dangerous Glade Events.
Fishmen Cave
Hidden Trader Cemetery
⚡ Added a new type of Glade Event - haunted ruins.
Right now there are 8 Haunted Ruins in the game, and they can be found in place of normal ruins in Glades.
Haunted Ruins can’t be simply rebuilt. They have a working effect tied to them, but no consequence if not taken care of.
If rebuilt, Haunted Ruins turn into a more powerful version of the building they once were (for example: they produce more, or have more housing slots).
Balance
⚡ Lowered the base food consumption rate on the lowest difficulty level - Settler. Villagers will now have a chance of eating less when on a break. This change was implemented to make the game easier and more manageable for players who are just starting out or want to have a more relaxed experience.
⚡ Removed two Forest Mystery slots (one negative and one positive) from the Settler difficulty. This change was implemented not only to smooth out the difficulty curve, but also to limit the amount of things players have to keep track of on the lowest difficulty level.
⚡ Improved map generation in the first two tutorial games to make the experience more manageable and to remove unnecessary distractors.
Slightly extended the list of goods desired by traders. Some of them would buy a very small pool of resources.
Added house ruins (species-specific housing, Big Shelter) to Glades.
UX/UI improvements
⚡ Added the option to prioritize recipes in Camps. It works exactly the same as in workshops (higher priority goods are collected first, equal priority goods are collected alternatingly).
⚡ Added the option to assign priority to resource nodes on the map.
Resource nodes can now be selected. Selecting a node opens up a UI panel on the side.
In the node UI panel, you can assign priorities and quickly select a camp to build (the UI automatically shows blueprints compatible with the selected node).
Nodes with higher priority are gathered first. After they are depleted, workers move on to lower priority nodes. Nodes with the same priority are gathered alternatingly
Recipe priority in camps takes precedence over node priority.
⚡ Cleaned up some UI elements in regards to priorities.
Recipes can be assigned priorities from 0 to 3.
Nodes and construction sites can be assigned priorities from -5 to 5.
All buttons used to assign priority are now pointing up or down (to make it clearer that a higher number is always a higher priority).
⚡ Added a trade value indicator to all goods in the game. Trade value is now also displayed in the Trade window.
⚡ Replaced multiple icons with new, more readable designs (multiple resource category icons, Plant Fiber, Parts, Bricks).
⚡ Updated the Atlas window.
Changed the layout of the window to be consistent with other popups.
Added the Break Interval attribute to the species section. You can now see how often each species takes breaks.
Added tooltips to all species attributes in the Atlas. You can now hover over attributes (like “decadent” or “demanding”), and see what they mean.
⚡ Added a highlight to the species panel when a given species is favored.
⚡ Added a special marker to ingredient slots where more than one resource is selected.
⚡ Added a tooltip for ingredient slots with multiple resources selected. The tooltip shows which goods are used in the slot. This tooltip can be turned on in the options menu (it’s off by default).
⚡ Added an option to remove workers from a worker slot through the species select radial menu. You can now click a crossed-out sign in the middle of the menu to un-assign a worker.
⚡ Added a “menu” button to the game's HUD. The ESC Menu can now be accessed without using a keyboard.
⚡ Added a message about unlocking new hub levels in the Citadel to the Hearth UI.
⚡ Improved the objective text for Orders requiring the player to loot caches and invite new villagers.
⚡ Added an option to invert camera zoom in the settings menu.
⚡ Changed the wording in the Game Result window. It now states that you won’t get any Citadel Resources, experience points, or Deeds if you decide to continue a settlement you won.
⚡ Improved the alert system in the game’s tutorial.
The “mark trees for harvest” alert will now appear later.
The “too many trees marked” alert will now appear less often.
The “complete orders” alert will now appear after a longer time of not completing orders.
Removed the delay on alert tooltips.
Added a “click to expand category” footer to the resource category tooltip.
Perks sold by traders are now sorted by price.
Added an “achievements” filter to the Deed panel. Using it will place Deeds tied to platform achievements on top of the list.
Bug fixes
⚡ Fixed a bug with Cornerstones centered around upgrading hubs being offered to players without the correct upgrade level unlocked.
⚡ Fixed a bug with Orders centered around upgrading hubs being offered to players without the correct upgrade level unlocked.
⚡ Fixed a bug with the Parasites modifier showing an incorrect value in the tooltip.
⚡ Fixed an issue with camera panning not working correctly when holding the B key.
⚡ Fixed an issue with the navigation arrows in the building panel working in the opposite direction.
⚡ Fixed an issue with the Export Specialization perk showing an incorrect value below its icon.
⚡ Fixed a bug with the filters in the Recipe Window not clearing after clicking on a resource in a recipe in a workshop panel.
⚡ Fixed an issue with the “dangerous glades” entry on the scoreboard having an incorrect tooltip text.
⚡ Fixed multiple localization issues in Polish (a duplicated building name and incorrectly translated resource nodes).
Fixed a bug with World Map chests not displaying a tooltip when hovered over.
Fixed an issue with some Glade Event ground assets z-fighting with UI overlays (range indicators).
Fixed an issue with the solved Glade Event sound being too loud.
Fixed a bug with the World Map terrain disappearing under towns near the Smoldering City.
Fixed a bug with some tooltips being obstructed by other tooltips or the mouse cursor.
Other
Updated models and textures for a few resources and environmental assets in the game.
Roots
Grain
Clay
Vegetables
Fertile Soil
Updated farming animations for plants - idle, planting, and harvesting.
Updated the models and textures for two decorations.
Fence
Fence Corner
Added additional visual effects to workshops - a new smoke effect and sparks.
The Japanese localization is no longer considered a community translation and is now fully supported.
May the storm be gentle on you, Eremite Games
Coming to Steam in Early Access on November 1!
Greetings, Viceroys!
We’ve got some great news to share. Against the Storm will be available on Steam in Early Access on November 1!
Early Access content
Here’s what you can expect from the Early Access version’s content:
5 biomes
4 playable species
Daily Challenges
170+ Deeds (including 50 Steam Achievements)
4 basic & 20 Prestige difficulty levels
Blightrot corruption system
Trade Routes system
230+ Regular Orders & 60+ Timed Orders
250+ perks
8 traders
60+ Smoldering City Upgrades
80+ buildings & 30+ decorations
Hub Upgrades
60+ unique encounters and events (and numerous ruins)
20 World Map Modifiers
3 World Map Factions
And more!
Demo progress
We want to thank all demo players for giving Against the Storm a try and sharing all your kind words, feedback, and suggestions. We’re happy to confirm that your progress from the demo will transfer automatically to the Early Access version, so get ready to spend all that hard-earned Citadel Resources on new Upgrades!
Stay up to date
Add the game to your wishlist and follow to stay up to date with everything Against the Storm!
Come join us for Against the Storm's Next Fest stream!
A dark fantasy city builder where you must rebuild civilization in the face of apocalyptic rains. As the Queen’s Viceroy, lead humans, beavers, lizards, and harpies to reclaim the wilderness and secure a future for civilization's last survivors.
Come join us at Discord: https://discord.com/invite/2HfJGQG
