As We Descend Delves Deeper into Frostpunk-inspired Games with Intricate Card Strategy and Narrative Depth

Years ago I wrote a piece about what I presumptuously defined as the “emerging” subgenre of city games that respond to the climate crisis, with its attendant catastrophes of unchecked capitalism and resurgent fascism. Today, it feels dangerously like that subgenre is “sub” no longer.

We are engulfed in strategy sims where society is the rind between the formless terrors without and the only-human abusers within. The geography is clogged by Last Cities and Final Bastions Of Humanity, all of them awkwardly avoiding eye contact, like the prophets that line the alleyways of Life Of Brian. I guess it’s in keeping with the “unchecked capitalism” bit that apocalypse fantasies have become a thriving business. I hope that’s not my fault. On the brighter side, roguelike deckbuilder As We Descend is quite fun, combining moderately baroque turn-based combat with tales of Vernian dystopia. Here’s Wot I Think of the demo.

In As We Descend, you dutifully take custody of another Terminal Metropolis, a crenellated steampunk diorama that huddles Frostpunk-style around a light source – not a coal generator, in this case, but an enormous golden hologram, which is possibly the god of the draconian theocracy you’ll have to wrangle with as the latest, unwilling First Ranger.

For reasons currently unclear to me, your city is also a huge circular drill that is tunnelling to the centre of the Earth. On each level, you spend turns playing cards to access facilities and stories within the city. You’ll also send expeditions into the surrounding caverns to recover technologies such as reactor rods, used to power the forcefields that safeguard your city’s descent.

The local wildlife don’t take kindly to this. That wouldn’t be a problem if they were all roundworms and bacteria, but as with Anoxia Station, As We Descend has a nasty case of the megafauna. Enemies range in scale and threat level from gristle-filled balloons to massive, skinless Skeletors. Against these foes you shall pitch Age Of Sigmar-esque battalions of fragile arbalests, iron-palmed monks, tanks with tower shields, and clockwork soldiers, unlocked from run to run.

Battles see you distributing your units between two radial zones, while a smaller version of the big golden hologram slings ability cards from the rear. Units in the front zone auto-attack enemies between turns, but are naturally exposed to greater harm. The game’s card alchemy feels appropriately compressed and dicey. There are cards that tether stat boosts to moving between zones, cards that cause units to “fixate”, inflicting extra damage on a selected foe, while losing the ability to target others, and barrier cards to stave off unit wipes. All of which is powered by faith generated by your citizens, as long as you carry on completing quests for them.

I lost plenty of units in the demo – there’s a nice sense of being fundamentally outmatched, and the longer you linger on a level, the more you’re provoking a chonkier predator to attack your city directly. During my first run, my dystopaville fell to a crablike rhino that had the bad form to materialise after a series of expeditions, with all of my units at half-strength.

I’m wooed but not wowed by As We Descend’s strategy-tactics sandwich. What lures me more is the glowering enigma of the city itself, whose art deco crevices teem with small, branching stories involving supercilious overseers and buff blacksmiths and the like. There’s an agreeable stink of medieval politicking. Yes, humans are probably the real monsters here. Read more and find the demo on Steam – the full game’s out on 27th March.