Review-in-Progress – All Will Fall

Oh, what a month it’s been. I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but the main point I’m getting to is that I was given a fantastic lead time for a review of All Will Fall, and I still couldn’t play enough for embargo, which is a shame because I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve been through so far.

And while I say I didn’t give it enough time, I have given it 15 hours, finished the first scenario, and have a solid grasp of the content and mechanics, it’s just I like to be a bit more thorough when it comes to the review.

So, I’m lifting a practice from Destructoid’s glory days that I’m pretty sure the site stopped using because it’s not Destructoid anymore. I’m doing a “review-in-progress” which just buys me time until I can get a real review done.

JUST LIKE THAT MEGA-HIT VIRTUAL BOY GAME

All Will Fall takes place after a Waterworld apocalypse. I assume. I’ve never seen Waterworld, but I have played the Virtual Boy game, so I understand that the idea is that there’s water everywhere. 

You lead a group of survivors as they attempt to… survive. Usually, this means making the best life possible at the tops of the crumbling skyscrapers, but this isn’t a hard rule, as one scenario has you sailing the seas on a big ol’ boat, and another deposits you on solid land.

This means that there’s a lot of vertical engineering you’ll have to do. In that way, it’s like Timberborn. One major difference is that All Will Fall is a little more detailed in its physics. If you’re using wooden supports, and you put too much weight on them, they’ll break. Crumbling structures maybe not as common or as dramatic as its name implies, but it’s something you need to watch out and account for.

BUILD UP, STUPID

Even with its emphasis on having a small footprint, All Will Fall is a survival city-builder. You have to acquire food, water, and materials in order to keep your people alive and happy. However, unlike some survival city-builders, there’s no emphasis on economy and production. Essentially, you collect wood, junk, metal, and so on as currency, which you then spend to build buildings or do research. It makes no distinction between fish and fruit, so food is food, and there are no crafting recipes to make better food.

In fact, the tech tree is quite simple. There’s certainly a lot to unlock, but it doesn’t get too fancy. A lot of it is just to allow you to exchange one currency for another, like, say, water for food. Or wood for metal, weirdly enough.

Perhaps to offset this, there’s more social management. Your people are separated into four groups; workers, engineers, fishers, and deadbeats. The happiness of each is managed separately, which means that if your economy is more tilted toward a certain industry, you can focus on making that subset of citizens happier at the expense of the others.

PLAYING FAVOURITES

There are also random events that range from new folks arriving at your settlement to citizens wanting, to change jobs, to cannibalism. These random events can be quite interesting, and often humorously written, but I feel that I didn’t experience all that many more than I did in the demo I played yonks ago. But, again, I haven’t played that far into it, so I can’t be confident that there isn’t more variation elsewhere.

Speaking of which, All Will Fall diverges from the SimCity philosophy of endless growth somewhat. The game is broken into a few scenarios, and you unlock later ones by completing goals in earlier ones. For example, to complete the first scenario, you have to build a boat.

Personally, I like progression, even when it comes to citybuilders. It’s part of why I like Against the Storm so much. I’ve only played through, like, one-and-a-half scenarios, so I can’t say how far the formula carries All Will Fall, but I’m interested to find out. I’m not sure if this all leads to a big climax, but we’ll see.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

As far as I’ve played, I’d say All Will Fall is worth checking out if you’re into the engineering-heavy survival citybuilders. Which, you should be. While I struggled to really find the time and mental capacity to get into it, when I did, I got pretty locked in. I think a big reason for that is because it gives you chaotic, vertical structures and challenges you to figure out how to turn them into functional settlements. It’s a bit unconventional in that way, and it works well.

So, I’m trying to clear my schedule to dive back in. I’ll report back when I’m far enough in that I feel confident in my appraisal. As it stands, I don’t really foresee everything suddenly falling apart.

All Will Fall releases on PC on April 3, 2026.

This review-in-progress was conducted on a digital pre-release build of the game. It was provided by the publisher’s PR.