After a month of being ded, I was lucky enough to came back at the right time—when Humble Bundle gave the game I've been curious about for free: The Flame in the Flood, an indie game by The Molasses Flood studio, a team comprised of former BioShock series, Halo series, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band veterans.

When survival became one of the most exciting features to have in games, the genre has plenty of settings to challenge the player's survival ability, such as... in a forest full of cannibals, in space, dinosaurs planet, heavily snowy environments, war-rampaged city, underground, underwater, at sea, and this time... in a flooded post-societal America. Let's take a look what this game has to offer, sit back and enjoy your voyage.

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A Unique Setting...

Another game that uses cel-shading technique for its art style that looked pretty with the bright-coloured world that blends nicely with the atmosphere that keeps changing with the weather and the time of day. There's enough detail to keep the environment from being bland, but sadly there are some potentially great details that left not so appealing.

In The Flame in the Flood, you play as a survivor named Scout on a journey to the evacuation point the radio told her to go. Accompanied with your dog, Aesop, you'll take on a journey through a wild, rapid river that is actually the flooded civilization using a crudely crafted raft that you could upgrade into a luxurious boat for a more comfortable voyage... in the game's world standard that is. 

As you dodge rocks and floating objects on the river, you need to keep an eye out for occasional loots on them while skillfully control your raft on the rapid flow. Accompanied by Chuck Regan's alt-country musics that suited quite well with the game, the survival journey from town to town feels more intriguing. 

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Of course, you'll also visit the land—small area of lands—each provides different type of resources to gather. When you're approaching the land about -+250m away to it, its symbol will appear so you can adjust your raft and make your way across the water to get there. The challenging part is, you'll find yourself have to make a quick decision when you approach 2 or more lands quite often. The wisest decision would be to go to the one that has what you needed most at the time. 

For example, a small abandoned residential area usually has lumber, alcohol, and useful plants. However, one more crash and your raft will be screwed so you need to get to a marina ASAP, which luckily is about 40m away from the said residential area. So in favour of raft reparation, you'll have to abandon the loot from the houses. Or if you trust your manoeuvre skill, you could choose otherwise. 

Along your survival journey, the crafting system introduce you how its crafting mechanic is as easy as it is crucial.

There's (only) a handful of items you can craft, and they are useful at the right time. So with your limited inventory, you need to manage what's in your bag very carefully. 

Looking at the simple—too simple—control, I understand that this game didn't want to be complicated. It does well on the crafting, but unfortunately not so much on the gameplay, especially the character and camera control, which I'll talk about further in the next section.

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^{My first bear encounter. The fight was brutal, but it would be em-bear-assing if I gave up and ran away.}

To deal with the cold, you need to craft a warmer set of clothes. To get the material for that, you need to deal with predators. And so is how you deal with hunger. And to deal with the predators... this is another biggest challenge the game offer. You're facing pack of wolves, boar, big ass bear, and their 'stronger' types... "That's all? Hah! No problem!" ...without direct combat. "Oh.."

The game asks you to be smart in an entertaining way. With little to no ability to fight, you have to outwit let's say, a pack of wolves one by one.

It's easy, just place traps, right? Problem is, the traps are only usable for one or two times, and they're quite expensive to create in early to mid-game.

Lead them to the snakes, to your spear-trap, to your poisoned meat, or if you're unluckily lucky, lead them to a Boar King or a bear. Bow and the expensive arrows is your only mean of direct combat. Not to mention the missed shots.

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...That Needs More Polishment So Bad

For a survival game, it bothers me how the game missed one of the most important thing it should have: camera control. The Flame in the Flood put you in an isometric view, with no camera rotation, zoom in and out, whatsoever, which makes it hard to observe your surrounding and steering your raft. 

So how do you know if there are any predators around? Well, by bumping straight into them. That happened to me so many times. Once predators start chasing you, you'll have no time to place traps as it take quite long to set up. There are also some minor bugs that get annoying from time to time. I even died a couple of times thanks to the randomly auto-walk to a certain direction where I can't stop. 

There are unique encounters such as objects—the remnants of the old world—with stories to tell, and fellow remaining people that would give us useful tips. However, they are not deeply crafted, plus there's only a few of them, especially the objects, leaving these potentially enticing way of storytelling to be a rather forgettable eye-candies. 

I mentioned about missing your shots with arrows, which happens because of the line of fire indication disappear most of the time, the same thing happens with the raft direction pointer, and the cursor. While these bugs may not a big deal, still, too much minor bugs will break the immersion.

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Is it Gud?

The Flame in the Flood is an entertaining rogue-lite survival game with a really unique setting that very good in some aspects and falls short on the other. For a game that supposedly has a high replayability, the amount of contents it has to offer are just not compelling enough to make me want to go a second playthrough both on the campaign, and the Endless Mode. The second aspect that failed to pique my interest to play again is the storyline, which almost not exist. So that was enough for me. Still, it was an enjoyably punishing one-time adventure.

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OOT But IMPORTANT Addition

I'm glad I found out about this giveaway thanks to the Gamers United community that shared the link. Oh wait, we're no longer Gamers United now, the group is now rebuilt into OP Gaming (@opgaming) due to the recent sh*tstorm that happened to some people from the former group involving trust, niceness, and promises, that turns out to be a scam by the very admin of the group itself. Top 10 Anime Betrayals, guys.

So, to avoid getting yourself screwed and to spread awareness, go to these links:

• Warning: Ben Schwartz is a Scammer who owes me 2600 SBD
• Scam warning: @fatpandadesign = @getslothyy = Ben Schwartz
• Ben Schwartz: A tale from one of the people who was scammed. /Historia de una de las personas a las cuales estafó. (ENG/SPA)
• My experience. (GetSlothyy Experience - RANT + SCAMMER ALERT)

I enjoyed being in the awesome community that was Gamers United, eventhough I didn't talk much and mostly lurking like a creep. So thanks to the mods of the new OP Gaming for not simply letting the group disbanded, and everyone that help keeping the group alive. Game on!

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