Against the Storm is the best management game I have ever played, and yes, this statement includes the masterpiece Caesar III (1998) which had until now single-handedly satisfied by city builder cravings for twenty years. It's also a game I kind of struggle to talk about, because there is A Lot going on in here, but I'll try.
So the premise: in a world plagued with constant storms, you are sent by the queen to form small colonies to bring ressources to the main city. So first of all, props for very creative worldbuilding, that's not something I'm used to seeing in management games. Second of all, that means that unlike most management games, your goal won't be productivity or a set population level or anything: it's going to be reputation. You gain reputation by doing missions for the queen, sending shit back to the city, or having very happy citizens. Likewise, your biggest problem is not going to starvation or money; it will be the queen's patience. You are essentially on a time limit; if the queen's patience runs out, it's game over. Though, there are ways to extend her patience, so worry about it in moderation.
Okay that's cool, I hear you say, we've got the goals layed out and all. But how does this play like. It IS a city builder, is it not?
Well, yes, but you might have noticed the "roguelike" tag on the steam page as well. So first thing first: it's a city builder with no research tree. Whenever comes the time to unlock a new building, you get to pick one in a selection of 3-4, and that's it. Not what you wanted? Tough luck! Deal with it. Personally, I like this a lot (I praised Spellcaster University for the same reason) because that means I can't play the same way every game. I have to make do with what I have, whether I like it or not. It's a mechanic I've never used before and I don't know how it works? Well, time to learn how to use it! You ain't got no choice in the matter. I know it's not for everyone, but personally, I'm balling.
That's the main thing that sets the game apart from other city builders. Aside from that, you've got the classics; provide food & warmth to your citizens, or they will Fucking Die. Provide to extra demands (such as shelter or complex food) to make them happy, which will increase your reputation. Every in-game years, a bad storm comes in with massive debuffs, so try to survive that.
The strongest point of this game, in my opinion, is how gradual the difficulty is. The game features a lot of mechanics, but on the lowest level difficulty settings, you basically don't have to worry about any of that. So you can focus on learning the basics, food-shelter-warmth and such. When you stat winning too easily and get too cocky about it, you can move to the next one, where whoops! Suddenly just giving people basic food isn't enough to increase your reputation. So you have to add more tricks to your deck. I can't count the amount of times I thought "oh this specific mechanic seems useless/too complicated/I don't wanna use it," and now I'm on one of the hardest difficulty settings, and guess what suckers, you WILL use it. But that's only possible because the game was so generous in giving me time & space to learn the basic & medium shit first. That is really cool, especially since a lot of management games are either "very basic mechanics the whole way through" (the colonists) or "fuck you learn 397360 things at once if you can't juggle them all immediately you die" (Surviving Mars)
So yeah! It's a good game. Basics simple enough to be understoodd quickly, and difficulty generous enough for you to get the other mechanics at your own pace. I didn't have to look up any steam guide at all for this, can you believe it? God fucking bless. You should go check it out, it's got my seal of approval.