Games Xtreme joins Scout as she braves the river, in the Flame in the Flood.
Just one more camp!
I've always had a curious relationship with survival style games, especially those with rogue-like or rogue-lite elements. Don't Starve for example, never could quite get to grips with it, even though it's a pretty fantastic game and comes from a developer I really like. Hint, Mark of the Ninja owned, more please!
This aside, the Flame in the Flood is one of those rare survival rogue-like games that I actually really enjoy. I'm not sure that it's a Must Buy, because the genre isn't for everyone and well, it can get frustrating pretty quickly. The lovely folks at Xbox sent us a code for it and I've been playing it around a week.
The River
Say hi to Scout, and her dog Aesop. The protagonists of our little adventure, set in a future where a massive flood has swept away a lot of civilisation and left a ruin of flotsam and jetsam. The river is also a character, a brutal master which can turn against you in an instant. One moment you're gently coasting down the various paths through the water, next you're battling against the unforgiving White Water Rapids and being nearly smashed to bits on a rock, shoreline, or wreck of a car.
The river is procedurally generated, all the twists, turns, and camps are randomly created and there are around 10 regions to explore as you make your way on and on. You can't go back, so you're always floating downriver toward your quest, next camp, or marina.
You have a massive menu of stuff you can craft, since crafting is core to the game, but there's no base to set up and maintain, your raft is your lifeline and you can upgrade it - providing you can get the schematics and parts. A fully upgraded raft is something else, but you're likely to take a long time to get to that point - but you can use it to sleep on, purify water, and of course make it more durable and controllable.
Survive or Die
Survival is the name of the game, you have to monitor your character's health (you can get sick, diseased, and wounded). Scout's hunger, thirst, fatigue, and body temperature all play into the survival aspect of the game, and being out in inclement weather may be awesome for getting a supply of fresh water from the rain (as long as you have a jar), but you'll also get cold if you're not wearing the right clothes - and at the start, you're ill equipped to remain outdoors in the cold for long.
You'll constantly be making decisions like this as you progress down the river, do you use the stuff you collected to make a stitching kit so you can have warmer clothes, after you've hunted down, killed and skinned enough rabbits to make a hat (for example). Or do you use it for something else, something equally as important, but leave yourself badly equipped for cold and wet.
You have a limited backpack to begin with, you can store stuff on Aesop, and on the raft, but again you'll be making choices on what you really need to survive. You'll need food and drink at the very least, perhaps a trap or two for the pesky critters, and even something a little more powerful to deal with predators which pop up.
Scout isn't really a fighter, later you can make a bow and arrows, but to begin with you're left with your stick - which can shoo away wolves, and pesky ravens (who are like feathered alarms).
Gameplay is simple enough, no need for complex systems, yet it's also rewarding and deep enough to keep you occupied as you plan your next possible crafting upgrade to take you further down the river. Tools, clothes, medicine, and more are all important.
You can also scavenge and you might be lucky and find a few odds and ends you need from wrecks, old buildings and shelters (the latter can also be used as a makeshift camp for the night).
Remember that everything you find is randomly generated too. The good news is that when you dock - you get an inkling of what you might find at a particular site.
There's also NPCs which might help/hinder you on your journey.
So to recap, it's got crafting, wound management, illnesses, survival traits and day/night cycles, with weather to keep you on your toes. You can pick up little side quests from caches, and there's a quest line to follow as you go down the river. There's wild animal attacks, boars and wolves, as well as pesky ravens to contend with.
You will DIE, a lot. Kind of like Dark Souls, you'll die and you'll learn from that death. It's rare that the game really throws something so mean at you, you can't escape it. If you do die, on the easier difficulty then you'll pop back to a checkpoint on the river with your gear intact (mostly). Anything you really want to keep, throw it on Aesop and you'll at least have some small sundries for your next run.
Play on the hardest mode and if you die, you lose everything and return to the start of the river - resources are harder to find, and things are generally much tougher - you've been warned!
When you die you'll get a summary of the river journey, important events on your timeline and how you died, or were wounded. You'll also get the chance to choose a checkpoint to go back to, if you're playing on the easier mode.
Kick Ass Soundtrack
Chuck Ragan is the musician behind the soundtrack to the game, he wrote the songs and the music which accompany your journey. It's great stuff, rambling man/county style and fits perfectly since all the songs are actually about the game, rather than shoehorned into it. Chuck is also a great singer with a gravelly voice and a really smooth tone.
You can grab the soundtrack independent of the game too. Molasses Flood have done a sweet job integrating the tracks into the game.
Neat Aesthetic
The game does a really great job on the atmosphere of the drowned world, showing the flood's damage against the environment and the impact on people's lives. Sections of the river camps are made up of wrecked cars, school buses and homes which have been dragged downstream by the powerful waters. It's great stuff and really brings the game to life.
A fresh take on the genre
With its quirky art style, gorgeous cartoon world and brutally honest survival play, the game has delivered on what it promised and the developer Molasses Flood are promising to implement fixes and updates requested by the community too, things to polish the game even further. Scout's trip down the river isn't an easy one, but you learn little by little and get a little further.
The graphics, the animations, the whole aesthetic just combine to make a really entertaining game. Through my week with it, no bugs reared their ugly heads, and there were no crashes or issues with the frame-rate on the Xbox One.
It's not a genre that everyone likes, and certainly not a game for everyone. It's frustrating when you make a mistake and like Dark Souls, die just before you reach an important juncture or checkpoint, but it is what it is, and games like this never really hold your hand.
Good stuff.
It's a game we heartily recommend, but not really a Must Buy. Don't take it that it's not a great game, it's just not for everyone!