When I was a child I won a Lego building competition. In fact, both I and one of my brothers each won the prize in our respective age categories. This crowning family achievement was the culmination of months (years?) spent building in our bedrooms at the weekend and then comparing results. We’d pick a theme (maybe an interstellar mining ship, perhaps an oil rig, or what about some kind of construction vehicle?), drag our heavy brick-filled tubs out of the wardrobe, and spend the next few hours bending rigid plastic to our will. The scale of these models, based at least on my hazy memory of that long-past era, was magnificent – ambitious to the point that we would have to visit each other’s rooms to survey the builds because they were simply too big and structurally unsound to carry.
I learned a great deal about load-bearing mechanics, and as the oldest sibling dished out (often unsolicited) advice on how my younger brothers could improve their builds. What can I say? I like building things, which has set me up well for All Will Fall’s intriguing meld of physics-based city construction with Frostpunkian survival and community management. Luckily for my brothers, I wasn’t also in charge of rationing their food.
I say this because the sailors and engineers in my shipwrecked colony are grumpy with me. I’ve upped my workers’ food consumption allowance to two units per day, rather than the one that everyone else gets, in order to benefit from their increased carrying capacity and walking speed. We’re not producing enough food to extend this generosity to all professions, and I need a focused labour force to rebuild the houses I’ve just torn down – it turns out my epic shanty high rise, while spectacularly efficient footprint-wise, was a little too spicy for the game’s physics engine. To top it all off, a bunch of new survivors have just arrived in another boat and they’re going to want feeding, too. At this rate we may need to turn to cannibalism. It’s feeling increasingly less likely that I’m going to win any prizes this time around.
A cheery wave
All Will Fall’s blend of providing for your citizens while carefully constructing load-bearing structures feels fresh, and combined with its flooded post-apocalyptic setting makes for a unique set of challenges. It should be noted though, that while the Frostpunk comparisons are accurate up to a point, All Will Fall is a much friendlier and more accessible experience – a difference reflected in the game’s breezy atmosphere and more playful structure. Sure, you might have to serve up a few survivors as food if the storage shelves start to look a little bare, or quash an argument over who should represent the people at the cost of fealty from other groups, but even when people are dying it nevers feels as bleak or as desperate as 11 Bit Studios’ stark masterpieces.
That’s partly down to the cheerfully sarcastic Australian voice acting, along with a brighter colour palette, but mostly because it’s much easier to come back from bad decisions. Resources are scarce but not punishingly so, an overextension of your settlement can be quickly scaled back and materials recovered, and the community and survival decisions that you face – while entertaining – rarely have any genuine lasting consequences. Sure, you might end up with a different ratio of specialities in your community, but many of the available jobs – whether that’s operating fishing huts, fresh-water boilers, landlording a bar, or running in a human-sized hamster wheel to generate electricity – can be undertaken by anyone. You might lose access to a useful perk (increased production output from a workplace for each assigned engineer, for example) but it’s simple enough to hit fast forward and accrue what you need that way instead.
Perks are unlocked by increasing citizens’ happiness, and there are six primary factors that feed into this. The amount of food and water that they’re allowed to consume is, of course, a major mood modifier, and striking a balance between generosity and production output is a continual juggling act. This becomes especially true as more survivors wash up at your settlement, but you’re at liberty to turn them away, make them pay for the privilege of joining you, or take their stuff by force and then tell them to bugger off if you fancy. Shelter is also critical, and survivors will eventually succumb to tiredness and the elements if left unhoused. While a warm bed is indisputably nice, people will be even happier if you pop a roof or decorations on their shack. It’s down to your leadership style as to whether you go with hanging baskets or hanging corpses, however.
Survivors’ sense of loyalty towards you also factors into their sense of wellbeing, affected by whether the decisions you make benefit or disadvantage their group – there are also more general policies that come into effect later on, such as using human waste for fertiliser or whether people are allowed to have breakfast before work. On the less serious end of the scale are leisure activities – you can build a range of social buildings including a modest bench, the aforementioned bar, and even a fighting ring should your tastes in entertainment lean towards the bloodthirsty. Finally, once things are going really well, good old-fashioned materialism comes to bear via their access to the luxury of ‘goods’ (discovered, washed up, or manufactured). Once a group is happy enough, you’ll also unlock leaders who proffer further bonuses – for example, an expert engineer that bestows +15% work efficiency to all water collection structures, and a further +1.0 production bonus for electric desalinators specifically.
H arrrrghhhh
Like many managers, you’ll be beset with appeals for recognition, suggestions of what to focus on next, and requests for career changes. You can embrace or deny these as you see fit, but you’ll lose loyalty or be forced to spend your influence if you regularly choose the latter path. Other events to deal with include stock theft, seagull attacks, visiting traders, and industrial accidents. You can elect to steal from traders, but they’ll visit less frequently if you do, while a worker with a broken leg could be treated with precious supplies, or the injured party could conveniently disappear at more or less the same time that your food stores are mysteriously bolstered. Harper may have been a clumsy whiner, but it turns out that he was a tasty clumsy whiner.
In order to construct somewhere to cook Harpe… I mean, err, rebuild society, resources must be scavenged. But because all that remains of civilisation are the tops of crumbling buildings you’ll need to build stable pathways or boats to reach them. Piles of wood, metal, junk, and other useful stuff are dotted around the structures, and also float past in the sea. As the tide rises and falls, more resources are temporarily exposed on slippery, algae-covered levels of the building. Have at them while the tide’s low, but be sure to recall your people before it rises again to avoid any of them getting washed away. Over time, the sea level gradually recedes, revealing ever more of the map and providing additional space for your settlement.
Build you up
Using a range of basic blocks, arches, and panels it’s possible to build pleasingly elaborate bridges, stairways, ladders, and platforms as your little society fans out. You’ll have to pay attention to the game’s interpretation of physics, however, as anything you build requires proper support to stay standing. While the pre-release trailers show vast collapsing structures, and buildings plopped onto brittle foundations with instantaneously disastrous results, in reality you’re provided with a generous warning timer counting down the hours (in some cases a day or so) until your design fails.
As a result, it’s pretty difficult to have an absolute ‘mare because you have so much time to make changes – indeed, I didn’t experience a single collapse in my first scenario playthrough, despite my lofty architectural ambitions and some pretty violent ‘junknados’ – and only the crumbling city scenario, which introduces quakes, will drum up any real emergencies. This means that All Will Fall is far from the high-stress game of life-and-death Jenga that the trailers suggest it to be, but that’s no bad thing – iterating and expanding your settlement is more than entertaining enough.
Other available scenarios include: a tropical island with lots of trees; Rogue Lake City, which exchanges your research tree for random technologies acquired from traders; and my favourite (and perhaps most challenging) scenario, Broken Tanker, in which you must rebuild a beleaguered vessel and sail it to various points of interest to gather resources. There are various win conditions to aim for in any game, and you can continue to fettle your construction indefinitely if you’re not ready to leave.
While it might not always feel evenly weighted, developer All Parts Connected has created an engaging, charismatic survival city builder that offers much. You won’t be wringing your hands over whether to be caring or cruel, listen to your people’s preferences, or worry too much about the specific advantages and disadvantages of switching between group leaders, and in this sense the management aspect of the game may feel a little lightweight to some. It does allow for freewheeling experimentation, however, and that pairs well with the thoroughly enjoyable building component. The challenge of reaching the resources you need, balancing production chains, and just making cool spaces for survivors to inhabit is gratifying enough on its own, and more than enough to transport me back to those heady Lego days.
