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6About The Flame in the Flood
A rogue-like river journey through the backwaters of a forgotten post-societal America. Forage, craft, evade predators. From the Art Director of BioShock and a team of veterans of the BioShock, Halo, Guitar Hero and Rock Band series comes The Flame in the Flood. Travel by foot and by raft down a procedurally-generated river as you scrounge for resources, craft tools, remedy afflictions, evade the vicious wildlife, and most importantly, stay ahead of the coming rains.
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Player reviews
Very beautiful but poorly designed
Very beautiful but poorly designed. This game shines in terms of art and music. It does a great job of conjuring an environment not commonly explored by videogames. The result is beautifully atmospheric. It is a shame therefore that the gameplay is so uninspiring. It's all about inventory management and crafting following set out rules. There is little to no room for creatively organic play. It is entirely a mechanical process of "to solve problem A get items B and C from location D and craft them to make item E ..." This could be OK in a more forgiving game, but it wants to be a roguelike, survival game. So you end up restarting a lot and working through the same sequence of early crafting processes -- get flint to build a knife and a hammer, build a trap, catch a rabbit, skin the rabbit, etc ... Most good roguelikes (e.g. Nethack, Spelunky) are built around fine-grained mechanics which interact with one another in interesting ways, so the random level generation creates a wide variety of novel situations. TFITF doesn't have that kind of granularity or organic interaction. Each location is basically a big random loot-drop, perhaps with an enemy guarding it. On the top of all this, there are a bunch of bad UI design decisions. For a game that is mostly about inventory management, the inventory UI is cumbersome. E.g. you can't access your inventory while looting a container. So if your inventory is nearly full, you'll find yourself clicking back and forth between the inventory screen and the looting screen. Likewise when you are crafting. I really wanted to like this game. I keep coming back to it to give it another go, and each time I am disappointed.
- Graphics3.5
- Gameplay2.5
- Story2.5
- Value3.0
Great ideas, rough execution
This could have been a really good and enjoyable game, if it wasn't for the random and unfair parts which you just cannot avoid. I don't have a problem with punishing games, but after a while you'll just be in a constant hurry to fullfil your characters needs and as items spawn randomly throughout the islands, it's nothing but a matter of luck if you survive or not. I feel that because of that you miss out on the interesting features this game has to offer, as there is never time to wander around or plan your next move. You'll also spend a lot of time in the menus (managing inventory, crafting etc.). I usually like that sort of gameplay, but as the ingame time doesn't stop while browsing the menu/inventory you'll spend your time rushing through things and eventually making a mistake caused by lack of time which leads to your characters death. Like I said before, I wish the game wouldn't be so hectic (and still be challenging), but the way it is designed just wasn't for me and because of that I can't recommend it.
- Graphics2.5
- Gameplay3.0
- Story3.0
- Value2.5
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