Here Comes The Swarm review: Zoning approval, pending extermination

The big picture

Most settlement games eventually present a problem with the neighbors. They're noisy, they're expanding, or they've built something ugly across the river. Here Comes The Swarm skips the mediation stage. The neighbors are an enormous hostile hive, and their preferred community improvement is removing your community. Suddenly, the wall budget seems less extravagant.

CableHook Games' survival RTS entered Early Access on March 5, 2026 for Windows. It combines settlement management, defensive warfare, divine assistance and progression between outings. The interesting tension is between ordinary civic responsibilities and extraordinary extermination pressure. Your population still needs feeding and looking after, even when the local ecosystem has scheduled a mass visit without booking a table.

The wall is not the whole plan

There is a pleasingly cruel relationship between growth and safety in this premise. More production and more development can strengthen the settlement, but those ambitions must coexist with the immediate need to hold the line. Resources directed toward tomorrow aren't automatically helping with the creatures arriving today.

That is where survival strategy earns its interest. A defensive structure is part of an economy, not an apology you place after neglecting one. Training units and supporting the population belong to the same chain of decisions. The swarm may be blunt about what it wants, but responding to it needn't be.

The pause function changes the character of that pressure without erasing it. Stopping the clock lets you consider the situation; it doesn't retroactively buy the resources you failed to gather. There is still accountability, just with fewer opportunities to blame the mouse. Occasionally the terrible plan really did come from management.

The gods have diversified their portfolios

Divine powers provide another layer of specialization. Different deities and blessings can steer a settlement toward different priorities, making the supernatural part of the strategic identity rather than merely a large emergency button. Choosing a patron is therefore also choosing what kind of problems you'd like your economy and army to solve.

The June 18 major update added Yangwu, an economy-focused deity whose approach is to make the settlement wealthier and more productive. His workshop supports nearby production, while his broader blessings connect economic development to survival. It is a charmingly practical theological position: faith is important, but have you considered improving output?

That gives the roster an appealing wrinkle. Divine help doesn't have to mean a spectacular attack. A better-supported production base can be a statement of intent too. The joke is obvious, but the strategic distinction is useful: sometimes the answer to a monstrous invasion is a god who understands accounting.

Another expedition, another questionable business trip

The expedition map adds variation through blessings, empowered enemies and decisions that shape the outing. Rather than treating every session as the same defensive exercise, it supplies changing circumstances around the settlement-building core. The appeal is adaptation: a preferred approach has to coexist with what the expedition actually offers.

Arcane essences and the Arcanum extend that idea into progression. Unlocking nodes opens additional boons and ways to tailor the game. There are therefore decisions within a settlement and decisions about the tools you'll bring to later attempts. Surviving is satisfying as an objective; changing how you try to survive gives the structure more room.

The potential drawback is inherent in that loop. Players who want each strategic contest to begin from an entirely level, self-contained starting point may be less interested in progression outside the immediate battle. Here, building up your options is part of the attraction. The swarm apparently has infinite relatives; you get a development plan.

Panic with a planning permission

Early Access remains an important part of the package. The game is still developing, and a roadmap should never be mistaken for content already delivered. Its present identity is strongest as a combination of survival defense, settlement management, expedition variation and build-shaping progression. Those systems already give the settlement several competing priorities, none of which become less urgent when a wall starts looking optional.

Here Comes The Swarm has a clear audience: players who enjoy making an economy work under pressure, want meaningful choices beyond stacking walls, and appreciate being allowed to pause before the disaster becomes permanent. Its mixture of civic responsibility and extravagant menace has an amusing logic of its own. Keep everyone fed, keep production moving, and please stop describing the screaming mass outside as “foot traffic.”