Ever wanted to kick someone out of your settlement because they were being annoying despite you doing your best to ensure their survival? There’s an easy solution for that now in Against the Storm, because some shady figures have been fluttering around: Bats.
Like the other citizens you can attract to your settlements in the roguelike city-builder, the group available with the Nightwatchers DLC is a happy marriage of mechanics and theme. If there is an animal that practically screams ‘Goth’ at you, it’s the little gray flyers hanging upside down from roofs and caverns, silently watching.
Correspondingly, Eremite Games has given new and existing Bat-associated buildings a Gothic twist, adding dark, spiky spires and steampunk pipes to the skylines of your settlements, which are true hotpots of architectural styles at this point. In my mind, I can practically hear the Frogs complaining about the Bats’ spires casting shadows on the roof pools of their houses.
The Bats are gloomy folks: Obsessed with metallurgy, they excel at mining and smithing, holed up in dark, smoky places all day. They also care a great deal about what others think of them — so much so that this enhances their ability to survive under terrible conditions. Spite can be a powerful motivation and the Bats are masters of it. They demand that others live up to their own high standards as well, and so you can use the Manorial Court to exile the loud, annoying, and slacking citizens, leaving only the toughened, productive core of the citizen body.
This is a fairly useful tool, but demands caution — you don’t want to overdo it and suddenly run out of citizens, triggering a self-inflicted death spiral. That’s the trap of all the spite the Bats feel.
Bats are especially useful in the new Rocky Ravine biome, where the trees are made of rock and you’ll therefore have a surplus of minerals to work with — which you’ll need, because trade at the Black Market isn’t cheap and other resources are scarce in these lands. Anyone enjoying a bit of additional pressure and challenge will greatly appreciate these areas. Just don’t forget to pay your debts on time, otherwise things get less pleasant.
However, my personal favorite new environment in this expansion are the Bamboo Flats, where the adorable Fluffbeak lives.
As you expand across the map, you can provide food, drink, and warmth to this wild creature, which in turn produces valuable fertilizer for you and makes your citizens happy simply by being its cute, fluffy self and playing the village mascot — even the Bats can smile a little around these fellows. It’s a unique mechanic that sets this biome apart from others, spicing up the gameplay loop with some fresh, rewarding elements that still feel very much like Against the Storm.
Making biomes more unique and mechanically interesting has been the big strength of both Keepers of the Stone and Nightwatchers, so I’m glad to see the developer continue pursuing this direction.
Eremite also thought of some cool world events to accompany this expansion. For example, there is this new beast, the Grazer, which snatches up trees on the map and inadvertently kicks off Glade Events to put you under unexpected pressure, or maybe a group of criminals might take your entire settlement hostage. Coming with these events are great rewards, such as the Rainpunk Shredder – a powerful woodcutting tool – or the mining automaton.
These additions come alongside three world map modifiers, three Legendary Cornerstones, 16 Deeds, and six decorations, which can all be unlocked in the Smoldering City.
It’s also worth noting that the Commons Update, which launches alongside the expansion for free, will bring quite a few changes to the game. With yet another new species joining the fray, managing service needs is getting quite difficult indeed — and with the new Commons upgrade available at the Smoldering City, things can be made much simpler, as the Hearth can fulfill any service needs without players needing to construct tons of specialized buildings.
Players might also note that some buildings’ shapes have changed, allowing for some tight, Tetris-esque layouts and providing space for a couple of decorations to be seamlessly slotted into the cityscape. This is a small, yet very satisfying change.
What Nightwatchers doesn’t have in store is an abundance of additional resources, goods, and production chains — and I’m unsure about my feelings on that. Generally, more stuff to gather and produce is always satisfying in a city-builder, so in a way it’s regrettable that the DLC goes without addressing that. On the other hand, Against the Storm already feels full. Unlike the majority of city-builders, it’s not designed to have you work on a single settlement for hours, so there needs to be a limit to how complex and diverse production chains can get. Eremite seems well aware of that fact and so I’m also somewhat glad about the decision not to risk overloading the game, which might well ruin its delicate balance.
Altogether, Eremite Games learned a lot from the slightly controversial Keepers of the Stone — the content offered in Nightwatchers is not only great, this time there’s plenty of it: Redemption complete. Can we get, like, armadillos next?
Against the Storm: Nightwatchers review. 8. City-Builder. PC. Against the Storm: Nightwatchers
Leave a Reply