Travel the river by craft in search of locations to explore. Collect supplies to stay fed, hydrated, warm and healthy. Rest when possible to regain energy. Take shelter to escape rain during the storms. Kindle fires to warm yourself when cold or wet. Additional crafting possibilities are available at campfires. Access your inventory to use items, manage equipment, monitor your condition, and craft supplies. Survive the wilds as long as possible…
The Flame in the Flood is an indie survival game that takes a different approach on the survival game genre. Your goal is still to survive and explore to find things and craft things to help you with surviving like you do in almost every game in the genre but because you travel a big river by raft, this shakes things up. This might look like a minor difference in the beginning until you realize that you can never travel back to previous locations, so making the right decision on whether you stop on a location or not can be a crucial factor on how long you will survive in this game.
Like in most survival game you have 4 needs that need to be fulfilled: food, water, body temperature and sleep. If one of these needs gets low, you’re very likely to die very fast if you don’t do anything about it. Besides the needs there are a few conditions you can suffer from. From getting a cold after staying to long in the rain to getting an infection from a bear attack to breaking your leg… Almost everything is possible and you will need to handle these conditions with the right tools to stop them from affecting your basic needs.
Traveling the river you have to navigate the river and avoid collisions to keep your raft from sinking so be very careful. You will inevitably hit the raft a few times so after a while you will need to repair your raft. The rafting itself is not that hard once you get used to it but the hard part is deciding where your next stop will be.
Your decision-making is very important throughout the whole game. You only see a stop when it’s very close to you and very often you have to choose between different stops. There are camp places, churches, abandoned hospitals and many more. Each location has its specific features and has certain items that you can often find at that specific location, for example a camp place always has a campfire and a farm has a lot of wild animals you can hunt. The places are very small and the supply at each stop is very limited so it won’t be long until you are traveling further on your raft.
The only bad thing about this game is the crafting and your backpack that often feels very awkward to use. It’s a survival game so your items are very important and when you are in a situation where you need an item very quick it can be very frustrating with al the menus you have to go through while the time in-game still goes on. There is a quick select option that is slightly better but still, it’s not how it needs to be.
I really like The Flame in the Flood, not for the gameplay although it is very good but I love this game for the style and soundtrack that results in a beautiful atmosphere that almost gives the post apocalyptic America vibe.
Verdict:
The Flame in the Flood is a one of the best survival games I every played. It is very hard, in the beginning, you really need to make the right decisions and you need to know which items are important and which are not worth investing your time in. But after you learn all that, it’s such a cool game with a beautiful art style and an amazing soundtrack from Chuck Ragan (from Hot Water Music) the truly does this game justice.
