Survival games are all the rage these days. It seems like if you want a project to get off the ground you better feature a crafting feature somewhere prominently in your pitch. The Flame in the Flood is such a game created by an all-star team from veterans BioShock, Halo, Guitar Hero, and Rockband, so there is a wealth of talent on display, and yet, some very basic issues still abound.
The Flame in the Flood is a procedurally-generated adventure, so you are going to be experiencing a new game every time you play, but as these things tend to go, every playthrough still tends to feel pretty “samey”. You play as a nameless girl in a future time where the world has been flooded much like it was in Waterword. Okay, maybe not that bad, but the setting for The Flame in the Flood is really impressive and does a great deal to draw you into the story. Unfortunately for players, this never really gets expanded upon other than small tidbits throughout the world as the story isn’t the focus here. These sort of “new every time” games are cool, but they tend to place the story secondary to the actual gameplay. You have a cool world, but if there is no defined plot, then I lack incentive to complete needless quests.
What makes this game unique is how you get from place to place down the vast river landscape. You have a raft that you can pilot downriver where you’ll have to avoid all sorts of obstacles. From time to time you will spot a dock that you can land at. These docks vary from camp locations, abandoned cities, churches, marinas, and so on. Each of these offer unique landscapes where the bulk of you gameplay will play out.
You will have to scrounge for resources, craft tools, remedy afflictions, evade/capture wildlife, and most importantly, stay ahead of the coming rains. Everything in Flame in the Flood is out to kill you on your adventure and you are going to be crafting everything to stay alive. Rains come often and will ruin your clothes slowly and give you a status effect. As your travel you will get hungry and require food, you will get thirsty and require clean water, you’ll get tired and need rest at shelter, and need a fire to help craft special items and cook food. It’s a lot to do, which is fun for those into that sort of thing, but this is were out first issues arise.
“Braided Cords are more important than food, water, and sleep.”
The UI and menu system is a mess. I know this is par for the course, but you are going to be spending most of your time shifting items around your small pack, your dog companion, and your raft. This is so tedious and limiting that the game makes it nearly impossible to get far on your first few playthroughs. You see, your dog can carry some items and when you die he will keep whatever he is carrying and pass them on to you (the next you?) on another playthough. This forces you to play over and over again to get farther, but instead of rewarding good gameplay, it forces replays to make you feel like you are actually doing something. Even with the crafting system things don’t always go as planned. There were a number of occasions where I had all the ingredients needed (even the game listed as me having them) to create something and yet couldn’t craft said item.
Death is permanent and comes quickly in The Flame in the Flood. Be prepared to be doing great when a boar comes out of nowhere and kills you, a pack of wolves jump you at a new camp, a bunch of fire ants bite you, or you get poisoned by some plant. Odds are you won’t be prepared to handle most if not all of these issues because you don’t have what you need on hand, or have stored it elsewhere. Things were so bad that the developers had to lower the difficulty during early beta testing. The game is very simplistic and I fear that the difficulty was pushed to make the game feel deeper than it really is.
The graphics on display are lovely, but again, weird issues arise while playing. For whatever reason, the game starts up in a window which is awkward, but I’ve also had the game crash out while some action was being initiated. I once even had the game freeze and then open up a new instance on top of it almost immediately. That’s fine, but the frozen game was locked and I was getting this weird frozen audio-loop that I couldn’t figure out until the Windows Task Manager told me another instance was still running in a frozen state. Still, The Flame in the Flood can look gorgeous with its exaggerated cartoon art style, even if many will find the caricatures downright scary at times. I also found myself stuck in the game’s world while rafting down the river. I’d smack into a dock and go right into the landscape with no way out.
Audio should get a five-star rating from me, but it again drops the ball at critical times. Sounds all work fine, but the real joy comes from the soundtrack as you travel downstream. The country inspired tracks are downright amazing. Well, downright amazing when they work. Too often did a music track cut off halfway through, or just never come on, letting me drift in silence. It’s a shame because I wanted to hear more and would love to pick up more work from the artist involved.
The Flame in the Flood has real potential once things get fixed and patched down the road. At the time of this review if just isn’t quite ready for primetime. There is a lot here to like, but in the end the game just feels really empty and soulless. Sure, I get a new experience every time I play, but each unique adventure is so similar that it loses it’s charm pretty quickly. I really want to like this title more as I had fun playing, (and I may at a later date) but with the convoluted and messy interface and random insta-death from something out of nowhere really kills a lot of the magic. I suppose I’ll be the odd reviewer out that isn’t in love with The Flame in the Flood, but such is life sometimes.
Pros:
+ Great art style
+ Solid music
+ Interesting ideas on display
Cons:
– Bugs abound
– Music cuts out randomly
– Overly difficult to cover for lack of gameplay
– Hope you love micromanaging!
– The interesting world they lay out is an afterthought plot wise
– Tedious
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