The latest survival city-builder is here and this one is utilizing an apocalyptic world as your playground. Vile Monarch and Ravenscourt are releasing Floodland, a society survival game set in a world destroyed by climate change. What makes this one stand out from the others is how they break up the learning process to unlock new technologies and the sheer fact that the world is flooded so getting around isn’t exactly easy. While this game proves to be challenging, it is a lot of fun as well.

Story

Around the year 2092, a cataclysmic event, simply referred to as ‘The Event’ by the survivors, has flooded the world and destroyed society as we know it. Now, with a few groups joining together and forming their own clans with their own mindsets and priorities, it is time to start forming civilization once more. You won’t be able to do it alone, so be prepared to work with others as you find a way to restore the world to how you once remembered it could be.

Gameplay

When you load up for your first playthrough, definitely make sure you go through the prologue even if you have the tutorials off. The prologue will give you a good sense of how to play the game as it runs you through all of the basics. It does end before you see all the aspects of the game, but you will be able to navigate the HUD well enough from there.

The basics you need to understand is that your camp radius is based on the location of your storage centers. The bigger the center, the bigger the radius, and if you want to explore further into the world - claiming more of the land you are on - then you will need to set up more than one storage center. Each center can hold a number of workers, which you will need to always have some in there as they transfer goods around and get new buildings built. Along with the storage center, you need to think of your necessities and build various buildings to gather water and food. I STRONGLY suggest getting a shellfish section built as one of your first food-gathering options. I originally tried to focus on fishing and foraging, but these tend to run low on supplies after some time, but the shellfish areas can just keep collecting and aren’t affected by fishing-based events.

Once you have food, water, shelter, and the storage area built, you will want to focus on exploration. The starting area of the game will always be the same, so go ahead and search the yachts, empty buildings, and get to that radio tower. Here you will start reaching out for different things, such as more people. There is a quest line that will somewhat guide you on what to work on next and that is honestly helpful so you can maintain a main goal focus, but survival is more important so ensure your people are set up and thriving enough before continuing.

Before long you will have a Study which will be where you can start earning knowledge points. These knowledge points are used to unlock technologies and they are separated by type. Starting with rubbish, you will follow the wheel all the way until you get to concrete. Every time you unlock a section, a new assortment of building types will be unlocked. Of course, you also need to have certain buildings unlocked in order to get other items. My suggestion is to focus on basic survival and well-being while getting your growth and exploration sections filled out a bit more. Once you start settling in more sections of the map, the only way to get people over there will be with Piers and you will need boats to travel the majority of the map, so focus on getting to that point.

Random events will happen within your people that range from deaths to requests from the people. You will need to make the decision for them, but it may not always be a popular decision. Remember, it takes a real leader to say ‘No’ to a want in order to suffice a need. Along with these decisions, you will need to start establishing laws for the people to follow. Some of these laws will be permanent while others are temporary. In order to unlock the Reputation points to put laws in place, you will need to work on your recreation sections as well, so when you unlock them make sure you set up a Canteen and Bonfire within the main living areas.

The radio tower will be a bit asset to the society you are building. While you can use it to make transmissions out to find specific items, it is also what you use to send out explorations. Explorations are how you discover more of the world and find new places to settle down. One of your big quest goals will be to find the power plant, so if you don’t know what to send your people out to do then that would be a good start. Of course, when you look around the map you haven’t traveled yet, it will be covered in a dense fog. While you can’t really see in the fog, large structures do stick out above the fog making it easy to spot significant areas. Plus, you don’t need to see in the fog to see if you can explore the area; you just need to find a plot of solid ground to send them to. Other than sending out the crew, the transmissions you send out will reveal certain areas and remove the fog from the immediate building locations.

As you explore the world and search various buildings, you will find a number of interesting searches. This could range from a unique moment to finding a significant piece of lore on a torn newspaper to my favorite, finding more survivors to join you. You will need as many people as you can get because there is a lot of work to be done. However, with new people and explorations to lands unknown comes the risk of getting sick. Make sure you have medical tents, at the least, in order to keep the epidemic diseases at bay. If push comes to shove, you can set into law social distancing, a mask mandate, or even a full lockdown - which is a harsh call, but sometimes necessary.

Audio and Visual

At first, I didn’t really take note of the music as it seemed like just a solid looping background track playing while I played, but the more time went on the more I noticed it. While the sound effects for the game are fitting and a bit basic, this game’s music track is an example of perfect for the environment they built. Given the apocalyptic theme and the goal of rebuilding society, there is a certain music style that we have become accustomed to even if we haven’t noticed it. Their sound producer knew this and made a wonderful track that fits the environment perfectly while adding a bit of flare that gives it more of a relaxed tone.

Then there is the visual aspect of the game which gives a great look at the overworld. With the option to move the camera to any angle you want and zoom in or out within a good range, you can get a good look at everything in the environment. Buildings all have a very distinct look to them, including the difference between the lower and upper tiers of building types, the massive fog that hides the world until you explore it is a nice touch, and I like that they put more effort into making the world itself look properly destroyed instead of trying to fit in minor details like making all the little people models look good or adding assets that just aren’t needed.

Replayability

At first, I thought the factor that you can pick a different clan to play as would be a replayability factor, but since you end up with people from all of the clans, this ended up making the factor seem useless. However, there are a few different difficulties to choose from and the exploration part of the map is randomized, which gives a good reason to play again. Keep in mind that the starting area and quest line will be the same for each playthrough, but the location of key places and items are not.

In short, if you want to make the game more challenging or try some different society-building styles, then there is replayability - especially with the randomized world.

What It Could Have Done Better

When I did my first impression of the game, I was actually really excited to see the different clan options. I was really hoping that this would break down the type of society that I would end up building and have the citizens react to decisions, laws, and problem-solving answers according to the clan’s beliefs. While this is a factor, it isn’t long before you end up with different clans in your society and I just wish there was an option to keep it under one mindset instead.

The tutorial does a good job of getting you started, but it seemed like some of the knowledge I gained went to waste. For example, the stilted roads were something I was hoping to use to connect the different lands, but it turned out that I can’t use them for that. I ended up being at a loss for what they were for, other than some aesthetic purpose, and found it to have been a waste of knowledge points. Maybe a little video or example image of the new knowledge in use would help give a better idea of what it is for.

Once you start opening up a bunch of the map, saving the game starts to take a lot longer every time. Since the game auto-saves every so often, this led to a hard pause every now and then. This honestly got pretty frustrating pretty quickly, but it is also understandable as more assets are loaded in.

Verdict

Floodland is a memorable city-builder with a true survival challenge! Rebuilding society is a concept that many have imagined, but doing it brings so many challenges with it. They did a great job making the game really feel like you were trying to work with restless people to constantly get more and more work done. I like that there really is no ‘one true way’ to play and win, but rather a reliance on your ability to put the right priorities in place to keep the people moving forward. Not to mention having a quest line to follow and giving me an ultimate goal was just a great touch that kept the game from feeling like just another sandbox city-builder. This is definitely a game I would recommend to those looking for a challenge because even on the lowest difficulty, this won’t be an easy-going task.

Floodland is set to release tomorrow, November 15th, on PC via Steam.