Against the Storm might’ve been a Game of the Year contender in 2023 if it hadn’t been released in December, when most of the lists and awards had already been distributed. But a 91 Metacritic score and 94% positive Steam reviews are nothing to sneeze at, and after multiple years of support, the devs are ready to reveal their follow-up. You might think that a similar city-building strategy game would be the safe bet, but that’s not what they want to do – instead, we’re getting a survival game set in the world of Against the Storm.
“There’s a chance we’re showing this way too early,” the devs at Eremite Games say in a Steam news post accompanying the reveal of the as-yet-untitled survival game. “We hope you won’t hold it against us if the project evolves into something very different. But keeping this under wraps has been torture. We’re still just a small, 6-person indie team, and this kind of openness feels more natural to us.”
The news is accompanied by a very brief teaser video showing a taste of the new game. In it, we see a character wielding a gun slowly approach a spooky-looking house on a hill in the middle of a stormy night. Another character soon approaches in what seems like a pretty clear tease for multiplayer.
But the devs have a “small warning” before we start to infer too much. “For many months, please keep your expectations very modest,” they warn. “The project is still in its earliest phase, full of placeholders, and nearly everything you see is subject (and likely) to change. There’s a saying circling in the gamedev industry: ‘Just make it exist first. You can make it good later.'”
The studio’s development philosophy certainly seems to have worked out for Against the Storm, which enjoyed a two-year stay in early access before its eventual 1.0 launch met with wide acclaim. It’s continued to get support and still has at least one more update on the horizon, but the devs reckon it’s time to move on.
Yet while they’re taking a risk with this genre shift, Against the Storm 2 is certainly something they’ve considered. “The idea of a sequel is something we think about often. But this time, we wanted to experiment with the survival genre and explore new facets of the Against the Storm universe.”
Whether you’re looking for best city-building games or the best survival games, we’ve got you covered.
