by theygamesOnce you find yourself at the wheel of an excellent city builder, you best believe you’re going to sink dozens of hours into it. The gratifying loop of expanding your settlement and the pressure of keeping things running smoothly can be intoxicating. Well, here’s a new name to keep tabs on: TerraStorm. The game has just been announced, and is still in the very early stages with a Kickstarter campaign, but what I’ve seen and heard so far ticks all the city builder boxes.
TerraStorm is set on Earth in an alternate, post-World War 2 timeline, and you are the architect of an ambitious project to build huge towers that will be sanctuaries for survivors of a global disaster. While the time period and setting are different, the premise certainly reminds be of one of the best city building games around, Frostpunk. In this alternate history, Nazi Germany discovered a powerful resource called Viribus, which it used to wipe out most of humanity. While they used it as a weapon, you will use it to power and construct your settlement.
These towers are big, by the way – “each floor is as big as a few small cities” – but the amount of build space you have is still limited. So, once you hit maximum capacity, it’s time to start constructing more of them. The post-disaster world around you needs to be explored to find the perfect location for your next tower, so send expeditions out to scout potential building sites. They may also encounter factions of survivors and find old pre-war artifacts.
It’s advised that each tower you build specializes in a certain area and is based in different regions – each region has specific resources that others may lack, so it’s important to spread your reach as far as you can.
On top of all the excellent-looking construction and city building elements, you’ll also have to manage the happiness and productivity of your settlement by ensuring they have all the essentials they need to live and making the right choices when problems arise.
You’re not the only architect erecting towers either, and there is a faction system that lets you build relationships with other architects and trade with them. However, make the wrong moves with them, and you could find yourself embroiled in a bitter rivalry.
As you can see, there is a lot going on in TerraStorm. The ambitious project is still in very early development, and if you like what you see as much as I am, you can support it over on Kickstarter here.
While it has no release date yet, a free TerraStorm demo will be coming to Steam later this year.
Until then, check out some similar experiences by consulting our lists of the best god games and best management games.
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