You're doomed from the start in 'merciless' survival city builder Dotage, but trying to survive the apocalypse is all part of the fun

pcgamer.com:

As a city builder enthusiast and horrible mayor I've paved the way for plenty of disasters in my cities, like neglectfully letting peasants freeze by the dozens, losing my honey fortune to a heist, and chopping down a friendly enchanted talking tree just to get an amulet.

But in new turn-based roguelike city builder Dotage, your game ending in ruin is all but assured before you've even placed your first foraging hut. The elder of your village has delivered a prophecy of doom—and predicted a bunch of smaller catastrophes that are headed your way, too. Worse still, the old coot won't shut his damn mouth about it so your industrious little peasants have to live and work in constant fear of the approaching End Times.

A looming apocalypse is quite an effective hook for a city builder. I've been playing Dotage since it launched on Steam a couple days ago, and it's pretty gripping. Assign your handful of villagers tasks like gathering food, growing crops, harvesting resources, raising livestock, and getting busy to produce more citizens, while keeping an eye on the upcoming disasters on the elder's prophetic calendar. There's not really a rush: Dotage is turn-based, so you have plenty of time to make your decisions before ending each day and advancing one step closer to the apocalypse. But there's still a sense of urgency so each research project and new building feels incredibly important.

As you can see in the trailer above, Dotage has an adorable art style, but don't let those charming looks fool you. Your villagers will have to contend with disasters like fires, fights, starvation, freezing weather, mass illnesses, and even an enormous tsunami sweeping over the entire village in one big wave. If and when you succumb to one