One of our favorite city builders has sold over a million copies on Steam, and there's an expansion on the way

A fantasy city near a mountain — (Image credit: Eremite Games)

Typically when you're playing a city builder, the metropolis you're constructing is meant to last a long time. In fact, making your city last the whole game is usually the entire point of the game.

That's one of the reasons why Against the Storm stands out from the crowd. The cities you build won't last long because they simply can't. In this strange fantasy realm, a magical catastrophe has resulted in a world on the brink of annihilation from hurricanes and rainstorms, and the cities you build are doomed from the start. Managing a group of settlers who can be humans, lizards, or beavers, you'll contend with the elements and also the demands of an increasingly impatient queen as you try to gather enough resources to build your way further into the world.

We really dig it here at PC Gamer—our Against the Storm review (91%) calls it a "well-designed, charming, enthralling roguelike city builder"—and now we've got solid proof we're not the only ones enjoying it. According to developer Eremite Games and publisher Hooded Horse, Against the Storm has sold over a million copies on Steam. That's a whole lotta happy builders: it's got a rating of "Overwhelmingly Positive" on Steam with over 21,000 reviews, too.

"We find it incredibly reassuring that even such a small and relatively unknown studio like ours can thrive on Steam," said Lukasz Korzanowski, co-founder of Eremite Games. Korzanowski also credited the time Against the Storm spent in early access, communicating with players and "listening to their feedback" as a big part of the roguelike's success.

The studio isn't finished, either. Another free update to version 1.3 is in the works, and an expansion is planned for later this year that will add a new species, an additional biome, plus new buildings and events.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.