I play a lot of indie games, and as one can tell from my last review and from how much time I've sunk into Rimworld, I'm particular towards colony sims. So when I got a chance to check out a game called All Will Fall, I was pretty excited to give it a go. All Will Fall is a colony/city building simulator set in a post-apocalyptic world where you attempt to survive and build a new home at sea, with various different end goals that you can achieve to win a run. I'll be sharing my thoughts on it from my experience so far, so here we go.
Visuals/Audio
I'm starting with this since I can keep it brief. The graphics and audio aren't anything particularly amazing, but the game doesn't look bad, it doesn't overtax my computer, and the UI and visuals of the game are pretty easy to parse, so they more than get the job done. I'd say they've done pretty well in this respect. One aspect of the visuals I liked quite a bit was that as tides rise and fall, areas of the map that were recently covered in water will be green as if covered in algae, which will clear over time. This gives a good visual indication of whether or not an area is safe to use normally, or only temporarily accessible due to shifting tides.
Gameplay
Now let's get into the real reasons to play this one. As I mentioned before, All Will Fall is a colony sim. You start out with a number of people on a map based on your starting scenario, of which the game has eight. Your primary goal is survival, which requires you to gather and create materials you can use to build a base, as well as maintain supplies of food and drinkable water, all of which may have multiple different ways to obtain. There may be various random events that occur, which can bring trouble, new recruits, or influence the direction you go in the game. You can gain influence from certain tasks or certain events that you can use to set different policies or influence certain events, making decisions between maintaining order and efficiency of the work that needs to be done, and the freedom and happiness of your citizens. That happiness (or lack thereof) combined with the loyalty of those citizens can also have an effect on events similarly to your influence. Sometimes you will be given multiple choices, some of which require a certain level of happiness, influence, loyalty, or certain tasks to be completed before you can select them. The basic ideas of the game what you'd expect from the genre, focusing on building up and surviving, but there are a few things that set it apart.
One thing that's different is that your citizens are split into groups based on their capabilities: Workers, Sailors, and Engineers. Basic kinds of work can be done by anyone, but there are some things that can only be done by citizens of a certain group. Gathering by a boat can only be done by sailors, only engineers can research or operate cranes, and deconstructing pieces of the map for materials can only be done by workers. Each group can have food and water ration allowances set separately, and happiness and loyalty are per group rather than per person. Each group also has a leader, who will provide bonuses to that group, and has bonuses that unlock as the group becomes happier.
The result is that depending on how you plan to build up during a run, you may either want to balance out taking care of all three groups, or focus on a specific group if their talents are more suited to your map or your base. For example, if a map doesn't have a lot of land to work with, but has plenty of floating resources, it may be a good idea to focus on sailors; or if there's a lot of vertical area but not a lot of horizontal area, it would be worth focusing on engineers so they can gather with their cranes. As you get bigger you can also attract outsiders. They have no loyalty and can't be assigned to work, but may decide to join one of the other three groups, or can be pushed to do so by building schools based around a particular group. Which route you decide to go can depend both on the particular scenario you're playing through, or just by how you want to play things, which helps keep things fresh by allowing you to take different approaches to the same problem.
The other major thing setting it apart is also the namesake of the game: the physics. Everything that you build needs to be well supported underneath, or else it risks collapsing. You can build various supports against the existing structures to expand how far you can build out, but there are limits that you have to be wary of, or else All Will Fall. I found this aspect of the game particularly interesting, since it requires you to make some creative choices about how to build, since you're limited on how much you can build in an area and where you can build depending on if the area underneath can offer adequate support. You can sometimes need quite a lot of supports if you need to build particularly far out. Collapses don't often happen immediately even if you do build without adequate support, so in some cases it may be worth creating a temporary path without putting resources into supports just to grab some resources and return. And sometimes you can think you have something adequately supported, only to realize that the sea was carrying a lot of the weight, and when the sea level drops, you may have things lose that support and fall apart, while at the same time having new, lower levels to build on, so not all is necessarily lost!
The scenarios available can be interesting, too. The first one is fairly simple and designed for learning the game, but after that they offer unique challenges, with one having you build in the limited space on an old tanker ship that you may be able to get up and running to sail to areas with more resources, one where things collapse over time and you need to try and do what you can quickly before you lose access to some materials or space (while also deciding if you want to try and save that space or let it fall apart), and one that has you purchase random research rather than having your engineers perform research, leaving you at the whims of the traders rather than being able to plan your own advancement. On top of that, the game has a sandbox mode that allows players to create their own maps and scenarios, and on launch plans to have support for the Steam Workshop so that players can share those creations.
Overall Thoughts
There's plenty more I could say about this game, but I don't want to give too much away for those who want to give it a try. It isn't a perfect game, and I've encountered some issues with the pathfinding at times, but for the most part things work well and the systems make sense. It hasn't been as overwhelming as some games of this nature can be; the starting scenario does a good job of showing you the ropes without being too rough on you right from the get go, while also not holding your hand too much and letting you face some challenge.
Overall, All Will Fall is a really solid new addition to the colony sim genre. While the game may not be everyone's cup of tea, if you're a fan of colony sims or city builders, or if you enjoy trying to rebuild after your efforts (literally) crash down around you, do not sleep on this title. I've been having an absolute blast with it so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the scenarios, and also seeing what players create and put out on the workshop. I imagine between the built in challenges and the workshop support, this game will keep me occupied for hundreds of hours. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some bridges that need supports before they fall into the sea.
VERDICT: Recommended
Reviewed on PC
Review Copy was Provided
Post a Comment