Release Date: 26/09/2019
Played On: Win
Available On: Win
Time Played: 7h 49m
Progress: Completed a number of runs / exhausted available content
Developer: Pajama Llama Games
Publisher: Kongregate
I'm always in two minds about whether or not I should write about Early Access games, especially before they are finished. Part of me feels like it's a bit unfair to assess something that's in the process of being made, but a much bigger part of me says that if you're selling a promise, you're open for business. Besides, it's not as if I'm going to be playing anymore Flotsam anyway - just be warned that this game may change a lot by the time it eventually gets released.
Don't get me wrong though, I don't have a problem with Flotsam itself, and I've been very satisfied with my purchase and have enjoyed my time with the game. I just want to make it incredibly clear that I'm talking about an unfinished product, so that anyone reading this can make decisions accordingly. The upside of me writing about an Early Access game is that I probably wouldn't even bother if it was a hot mess of garbage. Seeing as this post is already up and available to read, you can safely assume that I didn't hate this game, despite it being incomplete.
At its core, Flotsam is a cross between a city-building resource management survival game, and something more like FTL: Faster Than Light. Actually, the latter comparison is only relevant as you choose the path you will take by selecting nodes on a map, each of which offers different resources and opportunities. The main bulk of the game is spent gathering resources, building facilities, and ensuring that your small population of survivors don't perish.
The name kind of sums it up, as you find yourself in a world where just about everything is under water. Aside from a few small island outcrops and man-made structures, there's nothing but water as far as the eye can see. Some kind of catastrophe has hit the earth, but we're never really told a lot of lore of back-story. In fact the most obvious indicator of change is that beneath the surface roam large whales with mutated features, like giant protruding teeth.
However, the setting and lore are far from the point of Flotsam, and perhaps those are some features that will come at a later date. When I played the game, there was nothing more than the mechanical gameplay available, which thankfully ended up being a compelling loop in itself.
In the beginning you have nothing more than a few survivors and a platform floating on the water. In the surrounding area you quickly see collections of junk that's ready for the taking - random "flotsam" if you will. What's more, there are islands further out and places of interest to explore. After taking in the rather fetching scenery, it's time to assign some survivors with things to do and jobs to perform.
This is where the real meat of Flotsam lies, as it shares the same management and colony survival themes as a game like Rimworld. Each survivor has certain pros and cons that will change the way they work and what resources they need to continue surviving. For example, you might have one survivor who is great at moving quickly, but they get thirsty more often so need twice as much water. It's a fairly recognisable system that feeds directly into the jobs panel where you can assign each survivor a job that hopefully plays on their strengths and helps alleviate their weaknesses.
Speaking of jobs, there are a few key tasks that always need to be taken care of. Gathering resources is perhaps the most important, as you need members of the colony to head out and gather the plastic, wood, metal, and food from the waters that surround your floating society. At first you must build platforms to store goods, and boats with which to travel further and reach those distant goodies. Later on you get the chance to build more complex machinery and buildings, such as recycling centres, or water purifiers.
The floating settlement itself, always requires material goods in order to expand and develop, however the real demand is for the food and water that your survivors need to live. Turns out that living on a floating platform made of scrap means that you're going to have a hard time finding fresh water to drink. In fact, in the early game, the only fresh water you have access to is whatever you manage to scavenge from wrecks and old water towers. It takes a hot minute before you're able to start harvesting rainwater and/or purifying the saltwater that surrounds you.
Food is a different matter, as each location you end up in features a number of different fishing spots where survivors can go to fill their boats with tasty seafood. When they bring the bounty back to base, it's just a matter of drying the fish in the sun, or cooking it up into a delicious meal that provides a little more sustenance. The downside being that in order to cook meals and make more efficient nutrition for your survivors, you need to burn wood.
Gathering wood kind of seems easy at first, as you can see it floating about on the water and obtaining it is as simple as sending your survivors out to pick it up. Although, when they get back to base, all that wood is soaked and needs to be hung in the sun to dry before it can be used for anything productive. Then some of that wood needs to be used to build structures and expand the base, while some of it needs to be chopped up and turned into firewood to stoke water purifiers and cook food.
By now you might have picked up that Flotsam is essentially a game all about resource management. There's a flow to production that needs to be balanced, lest you find yourself running out of that much needed resource that means the difference between having enough food and water for everyone, and running out before the day is through. Throughout the game you're tasked with constantly tweaking your assignments and schedules in order to maximise the efficiency of the supply chain.
Then consider that each location you go to, only has a finite amount of resources available at any given time. The main loop of the game starts with arriving at a location, scavenging places like buildings and small islands, gathering resources until at least one of them runs out, then moving on to the next spot. What this means is that you eventually have to start making hard choices about when to move on to a new location, and what location to head for, as each offer different opportunities.
Sometimes you may even find yourself moving on before a location has been exhausted of resources, simply because you're in desperate need for some fish, but you've already fished everything where you are. Then after moving to a new location, you find that there's only one fishing spot to gather fish from, so before you know it you're moving on again. This gets super tricky when you run out of oil to run your engine and have to rely on the wind to push you in whatever direction it decides. Relying on the wind can be a sure fire way to reach a downward spiral, as you lose a bunch of options on the location map. Perhaps you were hanging out to get to a location with a water tower for some fresh water, but you get blown in another direction and suddenly everyone's dehydrated and sick.
Juggling these different resources and how they will be used, is really what Flotsam is all about. It can get a little frustrating when you find bottlenecks in your workflow, but nutting out the problems and trying to fix them is a pretty satisfying formula. Besides, at least in the version I played, this is not a game that only wants to be played once. I restarted my colony a number of times, each one being more successful than the last because I simply knew how to structure my development and progression a little better.
I suppose that might also be the major disappointment of Flotsam as an Early Access game, as it lacks any real structure or goals. When you reach the end of the map, you loop around and start again at the beginning. If you manage to build a successful and thriving colony, you basically can loop forever and continue expanding your base until you run out of space. Hence why I mentioned that Flotsam is nothing more than mechanics and gameplay at the moment, which leaves it feeling a little undercooked.
What I'd love to see is some kind of narrative introduced, perhaps even one that gives you alternate goals and forces you to make hard decisions. It might be nice to introduce some kind of enemies as well, but at the same time I kind of like that this game doesn't have any combat or violence involved. What really needs to happen though, is an expansion of the tech tree, which can be exhausted fairly quickly, and more compelling goals and targets to reach.
I don't know what the plans are for future updates to Flotsam, but hopefully they are going to add a lot more meat onto this bone, as right now there's very little to keep you playing beyond the point of mastering its systems. After a few failed attempts, my final run in the game turned out to be a bit of cakewalk, purely because I knew what to prioritise and how to compensate for certain weaknesses and shortfalls. Once you've figured out how the game wants you to play, there's really nothing else to do but wait and hope for future updates.
Like I said at the top though, don't think I'm being too harsh on Flotsam, as the part of the game that I played was enjoyable and I feel like I definitely got my money's worth. What's more, I really enjoy the cartoony art style and brightly saturated colour palette that makes playing the game a comfortable and fun space to be in. I almost feel as though I would have enjoyed myself much less if this were a gritty and realistic looking game full of grey metal and rusty copper.
Hence why I'm happy to recommend Flotsam, even though it is still in Early Access at the time of writing this post. What I would be careful about is perhaps keeping an eye on how much more development this game is planned to receive, as there's a lot of room for improvement, but it feels like it might be just about finished anyway. Thankfully this isn't a buggy mess and it's in an enjoyably playable state, but never forget that an incomplete game is still an unfinished product and anything could happen.
Let's' just hope that all the promise and fun that exists in Flotsam's colourful presentation, will find its way into an expanded campaign and even a little bit of lore. It's always a pleasure when a developer uses the Early Access system well and rewards their players, so I have my fingers crossed that this one will turn out great. For now though, there's still enough game to play if you enjoy the kind of colony management that's on offer.