ALL WILL FALL Review — Waterpunk

ALL WILL FALL managed to give me something I desperately wanted but never knew: a city-builder game inspired by Waterworld.

More specifically, ALL WILL FALL is a physics-heavy colony sim where you must create a thriving civilization of distinct social groups in the ruins of a flooded world, fighting against the ever-shifting tide and the scarcity of resources in a world without dry land while trying to keep your citizens fed, happy, and socially well-adjusted.

The inspirations for ALL WILL FALL are immediately clear. Besides Waterworld, the cult classic about an apocalyptic flooding and the societies that sprang up after the fact, the game takes some mechanical inspiration from other popular city-building colony survival sims.

Mechanics inspired by Cataclismo make their way into the game through block-based, physics-heavy building. With very limited solid ground left in a world ruled by water, you will quickly see your settlements expanding outward by means of wooden struts and support beams, creating platforms with weight limits and structural integrity demands. Without proper design and execution, you can lose entire structures and even lives to a collapse; therefore, the game challenges you not only to expand but to very carefully use your limited space in the process. Would a tile be better used to grow food, or is it the future home of a load-bearing support beam?

Your placement options are further expanded, or taken away, by the ever-rising and falling tide and the gradually shifting sea level. While the sea level will slowly lower over the course of the game, revealing new hidden structures and giving you a permanent place to settle, the tide comes and goes, rising or lowering to either give you new areas to exploit or forcing you away from territory about to be submerged. I, personally, suggest you don’t build homes or important structures anywhere the tide is going to inevitably claim.

Another, far more obvious inspiration for ALL WILL FALL is Frostpunk, specifically in how ALL WILL FALL handles different community groups and its ending.

Your population in ALL WILL FALL is split into several different groups of people, each one you must manage your relationship with in a simplified version of Frostpunk‘s society mechanics. Favor your Workers over your Fishermen for specific buffs and a unique ending. While I personally haven’t seen any real consequences to pissing off a group too badly (maybe I’m just too good of a leader?), it would seem that the game is more focused on trying to keep moods high in exchange for buffs rather than trying to avoid a catastrophic mutiny.

That being said, the game still has a choice-based event system where your decisions will have consequences, albeit lighter ones. The game on the whole feels a lot like Frostpunk‘s systems toned down, delivering a more relaxed and self-aware experience as opposed to the brutally difficult catastrophe simulator it was inspired by.

I almost wish that the game’s tone was a little darker. While I certainly appreciate the fine line the game walks between its serious subject matter and a more light-hearted, humorous approach, never venturing too far in either direction, I found myself wondering what the game would be like if it fully committed to its theme. To make the comparison once more, I was left imagining what an actual Waterworld colony sim might be like.

To match the tone, the game uses something of a mix of realistic and cartoony art styles. While I am again left wondering what a more straight-played game like this would be like, I can’t argue that the style and tone doesn’t work incredibly well. The Aussie accents, somehow, make it all even better.

The biggest flaw with ALL WILL FALL, in my opinion, is that the game starts to slow down around the mid-game point. The tech tree and the list of buildable structures isn’t particularly vast, and the game has to compensate for your progress by making huge end-game projects and slowing your access to resources, particularly by creating the challenge of gathering enough wood to A. fuel your industry and B. expand into other areas to actually continue gathering resources.

I wouldn’t say it’s so much of a problem that it made me dislike the game, and in fact, it is probably necessary to keep the survival or post-apocalyptic vibe strong. It’s just that there was so little to complain about, in my opinion, that this is really the closest thing to a criticism I could find.

The issue of the mid-game slump is also compensated for by the game’s extensive list of different game modes or challenges, including a really unique one where you take your settlement on a giant oil tanker and survive on the move rather than being stationary. If that wasn’t enough, the game features extensive community modding support, and there are already some real winners available in the workshop. “Live on the bridge,” which is a mod that has you survive on the remains of a Golden Gate-esque ruined bridge, is probably my favorite so far.

ALL WILL FALL is an excellent survival colony-building game, delivering an experience I didn’t know I needed. I loved basically everything about it, and I can’t sing the game’s praises enough. The already unique and solid experience is made all the more so by extensive community modding support, and for just $30, you can undoubtedly get hundreds of hours of playtime from this new gem.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of ALL WILL FALL. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! ALL WILL FALL is available on Steam.