The Flame in the Flood

You play as a young woman, called Scout, who travels down the river with her trusty dog, Aesop. They’re looking for the others, who have all mysteriously disappeared. On their journey, they must visit the islands along the river to retrieve whatever one needs to survive. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. There’s always a shadow of danger hanging over these island. There are wolves, boars, bears and other things that can easily lead to Scout’s death. On some of the islands there are stranded people, who’ll try to help Scout on her journey or who’ll try to help themselves. The gameplay itself is what you would expect form a survival rogue-lite, but it's done well. You craft items and try to store them. Of course there’s never enough room for the things you want to keep and nothing lasts forever (meat spoils and tools break eventually). Because of that Scout’s constantly on the move. What sets The Flame and Flood apart from similar games is the river. The river can be mean and the raft is hard to steer and can break. Besides that the raft doesn’t offer any shelter. The nights are cold and the rain can hold on for hours. You can choose to steer the raft to an island with wildlife, but you can also choose to skip that island and look for something saver, like a campsite. However, if you travel past an island or if you flee from one in a hurry, you can’t go back to it. Like with any river this river also only runs in one direction and that's what makes it extra challenging and fun. Overall I really loved the game, but I sometimes did get a bit annoyed that some of the buildings would block the view. This resulted several times in that I let Scout step on a snake or in the claws of a wolf. Aesop will bark whenever he sees something fishy, but that still doesn´t tell you where that something fishy exactly is. My other complaint is that there still are a lot of bugs in the game. Sometimes a song loops forever or the sound of the roaring river won´t stop. Overall these are nuisances, like real bugs on a camping trip. However, the game crashed a couple of times too, although that could be caused by my pc (it's terribly old n' dusty). So, don’t let that last one scare you off too much. With that out of the way, I’d have to say that The Flame and the Flood is a great game. There´s a ton of character in Scout, Aesop and the weird people you’ll meet, and even more in the wildlife, the islands and the river. The art style reminds me a lot of the comics and cartoons I used to read and watch when I was a kid. The musical score fits the game perfectly and gives it that little bit extra. The game has a high replay value, because of the randomly generated islands, and the gameplay will keep you going for hours. I have been playing this game now for almost forty hours (first on Steam Early Access) and I’m still enjoying it. The only real complaint I have (again) is about the bugs, but hopefully The Molasses Flood will fix that soon.

I really wanted to like the Flame in the Flood. The music is fantastic and immersive, the setting and concept are interesting, and I love survival games. Despite framerate and quirky input issues (Mac), the game charmed me enough to make maybe a dozen runs before regretfully concluding that I was not having fun. Maybe I just wasn't getting it, but here are some of the things that irked me: - Food. The hunger bar ticks down so fast that the game feels like a time trial to get from snack to snack, but of course, you have no idea where the next snack is. I like taking my time in games, but that didn't seem to be an option because of how fast your hunger ticks away. I died once because my hunger bar was at about 20% when I got on the river. I couldn't manage to steer and manage my inventory at the same time, so I starved to death with a pack full of food when the hunger bar hit 0 on the water. - Speaking of, the game doesn't pause when menus and dialogs are open. That created alot of very frustrating circumstances, often involving dying of hunger/thirst because I couldn't navigate the menu quickly enough, or being gored by a boar because I was fumbling to close a dialog. - There are lots of procedurally generated quests that I never actually got to do because they didn't match any of the procedurally generated areas that I encountered. - I actually thought it was cool how illnesses work: Start off fine; If you don't treat them, they get worse and make your life harder, and eventually kill you. In practice though, there aren't enough opportunities to actually deal with your illnesses at ALL, so an illness is a death sentence with a 15 minute delay. - The rafting part is actually really cool, but sometimes the controls just do the wrong thing. I'm not talking about rapids and currents-- That part seems to work pretty well-- I'm talking about my controls not responding to input. Overall, I thought TFITF was almost good, but it just got too much wrong to be fun.

May be the most frustrated I've ever been trying to play a game. So why even 3 stars??? Because despite the frustration (enough for me to quit and consider not purchasing from this company again) you can tell there is a pretty decent survival test in there and it's been done quite well with some really interesting game mechanics. Of course, this "taste" of goodness makes the frustration of it that more worse, but I can't give it 1 star or even 2 when I see the makings of a very good game under the frustration. My frustration? No manual, almost no guidance whatsoever. Now don't get me wrong, I hate, and I mean HATE the manner in which games have ditched manuals and gone to hand holding tutorials to get you started. I hate those. But what's worse? No manual and almost no guidance whatsoever. You will die. You will die a multiple of times (true of all survival games) but you will die at least a dozen or three times simply because it's not clear what you're supposed to be doing. If you like a good survival game and don't care that you're going to be frustrated the first hour because of the lack of any manual or guidance, then go for it. As I said, I think there's a very good game under here. But if you're like me, and your time is valuable, and you'd rather read 15 minutes of material than spend an hour of trial and error, then you may want to try another title.

The survival genre is being overrun by zombies. Yuck! The Flame in the Flood does things differently by introducing a brand new game mechanic to the genre. The river mechanic is a fresh and unique approach to the otherwise bland survival genre. By August 2017 the game is properly patched and well balanced. It's a lot more forgiving than it used to be, ressources aren't as scarce, rainy weather isn't as frequent and not every stop along the way is occupied by wolfs or boars. It still takes a while to become familiar with the game and new players will propably still die a few times before getting the hang out of it. Steering your raft down the river feels generally believable but can be a little frustrating at times. Despite the occasional hickups and resulting damages on your raft, the river is what sets The Flame in the Flood apart from all the other survival games out there. The Molasses Flood truly excelled at creating a beautiful atmosphere with it's unique art style and and fitting country / folk soundtrack. Both story and endless mode will keep you entertained for months and I'm sure memories of paddling into sunrise on one of the slower sidearms will leave a smile on your face. Also there are no zombies, which is a rare thing to have these days. Highly recommended!