The Flame In The Flood

A fun survival game with a phenomenal soundtrack and art style. Great experience to sink 5-10 hours into, but it doesn’t have much replayability so I wouldn’t really categorize it as a roguelike. Definitely recommend if you can get it cheap (I got it in a $1 humble bundle).
There’s some really great aspects to this game. The soundtrack, art style, and atmosphere are fantastic. Your first encounters with a wolf or bear are genuinely scary. Rafting down the river is a unique mechanic that, while unforgiving, is exciting and feels fair.
Unfortunately, the game does feel pretty clunky. The bow is buggy half the time. You also can’t move while using it, which renders it useless if you’re up against multiple enemies. Combat with wolves usually consists of running away to the dock where the game arbitrarily decides they won’t attack you. You can craft either one of an item or the maximum possible given the materials in your inventory, but you can’t craft a specific amount? Crow feathers fall out of reach half the time.
It’s a shame the devs didn’t iron out these kinks because they feel like easy fixes. Especially given that they nailed some of the hardest aspects of designing the game like soundtrack and atmosphere. All in all though, these are pretty minor issues and don’t take too much away from the game.
My only real gripe is that this game shouldn’t be branded as a roguelike. Enemies are limited to four different types. Attacking enemies isn’t particularly fun after the first encounter and always pans out the same way. There’s only a few items, and a clear linear progression in terms of gear and crafting. You can’t exactly boot up a new game and try out a new playstyle.
Overall, a great little survival experience as long as you go into it expecting a short campaign rather than a roguelike with infinite replayability.

I adore this game. It's compact, it respects your intelligence and it's challenging. The premise is tidy; you're traveler named Scout, you have a dog called Aesop and your method of transport is raft that you steer down a treacherous river while Mother Nature throws everything and the kitchensink at you.
Scout isn't a combatant, but she knows how to set traps and how to poison meat. Use the poisoned meat on wolves, box-traps on rabbitholes and speartraps on boars (need 1 speartrap) and bears (need 4 speartraps to bring a bear down!). Meat serves as food (Make jerky when possible and store it on Aesop!) and as a weapon against wolves when poisoned.
Scout is always on the look-out for resources and you'll have a use for everything that you find, ranging from mullberries to nuts&bolts and everyting in between. It's the only game that I have where I cheer when I find a glass jar.
Collect enough resources to upgrade Scout's raft into a floating luxury condo but don't sit on resources thinking that you'll need it later; rushing raft upgrades makes Scout's life (and yours) much easier. The same goes for crafting warm clothes. Don't hoard the hides. Craft pouches to carry more resources and craft clothes to stay warm.
Aesop is the game's meta-progress, store truly important stuff that want to carry over from run to run on Aesop. Stuff like jerky, medicines and stitching-kits come to mind as important. And glass jars! Aesop will happily safeguard your precious jars from run to run.
Some crafting recipes seem to be wasteful however. Water-filters come to mind and snare-traps. If you have a jar you can collect rainwater. It rains often enough to make water-filters pointless. Even if you only have one jar, you're good. Snare-traps are trumped by box-traps, simply because a box-trap can be used twice...
Graphically the game is beautiful despite it's low-poly look and nicely scales to resolutions like 2560X1080. Not too shabby considering that developers like Bethesda and Bioware can't seem to figure out the mysteries of 2560X1080.
Now for the elephant in the room: The Flame in the Flood's emergent story-telling is 1:1 locked away in a hamfisted AI that will decide that your run is over either at the start or a ways in by merely starving you of resources. I have been on doomed runs because no matter where I went cattails weren't present. Without cattails you can't craft rope and without rope you can't make traps and without traps you can't kill animals and with animals you can't craft warm clothes or keep a full belly which leads to Scout dying. The worst thing is not finding flint, even in the places where Scout's supposed to find flint. Game knowledge will see you through it as there are ways to mitigate the RNG. Aesop acting as meta-progression is one thing, the other thing is that on campingrounds you can collect little tasks that yield rewards that can also be collected at campingrounds. The tasks all revolve around just playing the game and yield rewards like multiple jerkies for killing a bear, or two medicines for purposefully breaking a limb.
The further Scout travels down the river, the more dangerous the wildlife gets and the colder the climate becomes. That's where the glaring flaw of the game's RNG comes into play. Once you know what you're doing and the wildlife isn't a huge problem anymore and navigating the river is a matter of knowing what and what not to do, you'll be able to recognize quite early if you're on a doomed run or if you're actually able to match or go beyond your previous record. This fact might kill the fun for some people.
I find the game, despite its flawed RNG, nevertheless compelling which is helped by its presentation and atmosphere, heightened by the musical score. The music in this game is far better than it has a right to be. Find the OST on Spotify, I can heartily recommend it.
The Flame and the Flood is hard to defend as a thumbs up, but I give it a thumbs up anyway. If only because it's a survival game that is a) finished and b) you don't have to punch trees.

This game is a hidden gem.
Why Is It Not Popular?
For some reason this game didn't get popular. It's been on sale, bundled, and apparently even free at some point. Basically, you'll be able to get this quite cheap if you want.
I have no idea why this didn't get the recognition it deserves. It's well made, polished, balanced, strategic, beautiful, and fun. This actually really discourages me as a game dev, because this team clearly did an amazing job, and produced a great game, and yet, it still didn't "make it". I imagine they lost money on this, just because no YouTubers jumped on it or something, which is really really sad, because it's a good game.
Gameplay
Many survival games have very confusing mechanics, and a lot to learn right at the beginning. It's a bit overwhelming, and it takes a long time just to get used to what's even going on. This game is a great balance of having good strategic mechanics, while at the same time keeping it simple. The concepts are very easy to learn, and you feel like you're actually playing the game right from the beginning, rather than just learning it.
It's your basic idea of hunger, thirst, temperature, and fatigue. You can also get many different status afflictions (snake bite, food poisoning, wet, etc.). Balancing the risk/reward in many situations makes the game strategic, and the fact that it's real-time makes it more action oriented (rather than turn-based type games). It's a really good balance, and an enjoyable gameplay experience. The part that's different is that you're taking a raft down a river, and stopping at places to get resources, in order to survive longer. It's rogue-like in the sense that the locations are randomly generated with loot. If you play endless, you get even more RNG, making for a unique experience every time you start a new voyage, never knowing what will come around the next corner. It's also quite scary early on, because you don't know if you'll run into something you can't handle.
The Items
Lots of survival games also have TONS of items, to the point it gets bogged down. You don't know what to keep or what to toss, there's actually too many things to obtain, and too many things to craft. This game, again, keeps it simple, while still allowing for depth. There's a good amount of items, so that you still do have to make those strategic decisions of inventory management, but it's done in a way that I can actually predict what I'll need, and make good decisions, rather than arbitrary ones.
There's a good amount of recipes, but not too many. I actually know what all the items do, so I can judge whether I'll need them. It took a little bit to remember what does what, but it wasn't bad at all. Other games have sooo many recipes, I have to look up a wiki article every time I need to make a decision. With this game, there's enough variety that it's interesting, but not so much that it's overwhelming.
TLDR
It's simple, but elegant. The art is unique. It's strategic, but action. It's quite a basic concept, but done with enough openness that it creates a really good experience. I have no idea why this didn't take off better, because I was able to get into it immediately, have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and it has quite a bit of replay value.

Generally when the world ends in video games, the outgoing society leaves behind a bunch of cool stuff to play with. Whether it be laser guns and power armor or enchanted relics of the apocalypse, there’s something to make your survivor’s guilt that much more bearable. Not so in The Flame in the Flood, a low-tech, backwoodsy take on survival after the end. It’s got more than enough style to make up for it, along with some unique gameplay hooks, but not quite enough to really spice up your wilderness odyssey for long.
An unspoken cataclysm has effectively ended the world, and rural America is definitely not the place you want to be when that happens. The rivers have risen, the weather’s turned vicious, and what critters remain are desperate for a meal. With little more than a faithful dog and a rickety raft to your name, your mission is to chase the hope of some vestige of society left where you can live out your life in peace and comfort. As you journey downriver you’ll learn a little more here and there about what remains of the world you knew, and also just how brutal the new natural order can be.
The Flame in the Flood has two key components to it, the rafting and the scavenging. Aboard your little scrap dinghy you’ll have to navigate down a grand river of flood waters, avoiding outcroppings, buildings, and flotsam. It’s not the easiest thing to control, especially fighting currents from the odd half-profile camera view, but you do have a sort of dodge and you can upgrade your raft with a motor later. On your way down the river you’ll see docks marked with icons for the kinds of locations there are. These spots are where you’ll scavenge for supplies, do your crafting, and probably die.
Scavenging puts you in an overhead third-person view of your survivor and their pup, scrambling around a small area in search of crafting materials. We’re not talking power cores or circuit boards here, we’re looking for saplings, flint, and feathers to make arrows one at a time. The items you turn up here are aggressively pragmatic, owing to the desperate situation you find yourself in. Cattails and rags form the basis of much of your gear, and some of the most valuable finds are jars and handfuls of screws. Each location is themed around certain pickups, like alcohol and rags at liquor stores or flint and charcoal at campsites.
What you do with these finds is manage your four needs for food, water, warmth, and sleep. You’ve got some variety for each, scavenging berries or ensnaring bunnies, purifying river water or tracking down old pumps, crafting clothes or traveling only during warm, dry weather, and sleeping wherever you find old cars or buildings. Other items are used to build crafting tools, simple weapons like gas bombs or bows, or upgrade your raft with shelter or a stove. Most of the goods you find are pretty constant throughout the game, with only pelts from animals being more limited early on.
There’s no shortage of threats to life and limb beyond the elements, either. Anything bigger than a bunny is going to be out for blood, and you’ll need to be ready for their desperate assaults. Combat is not a focus of The Flame in the Flood, as you’ll notice several options for traps but only the bow for direct attacks. This means unless you’re lousy with spear traps, most critters will be running you off once they make themselves known. Being attacked isn’t immediately fatal but you need medical resources to alleviate cuts and bites before they get infected and kill you, so being prepared is once again key.
I’ve just described a sort of cross between The Long Dark and Huckleberry Finn, and indeed the game captures that unique magic of both. The survival elements challenge you to juggle risk and reward and give that thrill of finding just what you need right when you need it. The unique art style combines vibrant colors with large, bold shapes to give the game an earthy, folksy feel. Nothing is quite as effective as the bluegrass soundtrack though, the perfect accompaniment to this rough and melancholy journey. There’s a boatload of personality in the presentation, despite the game being very light on dialog and text in general.
It would be a perfect treatment of the concept, if not for the issue of scope. The campaign in The Flame in the Flood takes you across ten regions, most of them spanning many miles of river and well over a dozen points of interest. At each of these points you’re pretty much going to be doing the same things, scavenging for the same supplies, crafting the same items, and filling the same needs. Without major differences between the landings, between the items you find and the creatures you face, the game threatens to get repetitive in a hurry. And it’s not a short game, either. The campaign took me nearly six hours to finish once, and the only other game mode is literally endless.
The Long Dark gets by on having a vast and varied world to explore, and plenty of things to do to survive. The Flame in the Flood gets halfway there, with a vast world and some survival options, but never gets enough variety in there to keep it compelling. As much as I adore the atmosphere and environments and strategy of survival, I really had to push myself to finish the thing before shelving it. It’s totally worth it by the way, because the ending is a perfect mix of somber and uplifting, but it’s a hell of a journey to get there. That’s probably by design, and while the design certainly isn’t perfect, it’s good enough to experience at least once.
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Well I enjoyed my time enough to bother writing out my opinions. That says something. Anyway, here's the pros/cons.
Pros-
Wonderful sound track, although the guy who sings isn't amazing. The overall feel and style of the game is unique and fun to look at.
The first few times where you die before you reach the end are very interesting whilest you figure out the game.
Interesting world design with every first time being very exciting (such as the first time you see a bear or get to the wasteland).
Neat little ending that left me with a smile and satisfied with the run through the game.
Cons-
Low replay value. Unless you really enjoyed your first run through the isn't much reason to keep playing after beating it.
Suprisingly small amount of content. Only four kinds of animal, all of which do the same thing for you (upgrade cloths and give you food). Crafing possibilites are also limited with very few interesting and unique items to make and find.
It gets pretty darn repetative. Due to the lack of content most areas end up feeling like re-skins of previous areas just with fewer suppiles.
Few bugs about the place.
Conclusion-
It reminds me a bit of MASSIVE CHALICE. Great core gameplay with an interesting are style and theme, but desperatly lacking in depth (bit like my spelling). One of those games where if time and money wasn't an issue and it had another 6-12 months to just keep updating it could have been one of the all time great survival games.
It's memorable and fun; unfortunately nothing more.

My Playtime: 42h (100% achievement, finished the game twice and played the endless mode)
My First Playthrough: 15h
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~1 achievement).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (33 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
The Flame in the Flood is a survival game that takes place in a river. You'll take control of a raft, go from island to island, forage resources, and craft items that you need to survive. The game offers two modes: campaign and endless.
Pros:
- 2 modes
- Randomized playthrough to promote replayability
Cons:
- Too dependent on flint to make most items
- Hard to see what's going on in the background
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Should you buy this game?
Yes.
If you are looking for an easy survival game to spend in short sessions, buy this game at a sale.
In-Depth Review
Visuals
The Flame in the Flood chooses deformed models for the characters and atmospheric surroundings with a foggy effect as a background. The lighting also gives a unique look to the game depending on the time of the day - bright, yellow-ish color in the daytime, and dark, blue-ish color at nighttime.
Story
To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the story, especially since there isn't much in it. You find a dog that has a backpack and you decide to follow it out of curiosity. The story will revolve around the adventure that the dog and the main character go through, sometimes meeting new people in a desolate place that is almost impossible to live in. However, these dialogues usually tend to be brief and mostly serve as a way to either proceed with the story or present you with a freebie.
The Game
Gameplay
The Flame in the Flood is a survival game. As I said, you need to use your raft to travel between islands, foraging resources that are needed to survive. The survival part can range from your needs that can be filled just by eating food and drinking water, to finding materials to repair your raft that can down you if you crash it several times without fixing it.
Rafting is hard. You need to get used to the controls at first, and you'll hit the obstacles several times before you can master them. There is an upgrade that can make it easier to control, although it'll still prove to be a challenge whenever you go to the high waters, a lane with a faster speed. Going through the high waters will help you to finish the game faster, but crashing into any objects at such speed might prove to be dangerous. You're lucky if you just get a few damages to your raft and survive. However, in the worst case, your raft can flip, killing you in the process.
Dangers
Danger lurks on the island. The islands are the places where you can forage items, whether it's food, raft materials, or other items, but it's also the place where wild animals live. Rabbits might not pose a threat to you - you can even craft a trap and kill them for lunch if you want, but other animals will give you trouble. Crows will shout, alerting other wild animals to approach you. Boars and wolves will hunt you down until you die. Bears will maul you if you ever get close to it and its nest, which usually has items in it. Snakes will bite you and kill you within minutes if you don't treat the poison.
Understanding their attack pattern and how to avoid their attacks will be the key to survival, as well as your decision whether to approach them or not. There is a way to either distract or kill them, of course, although doing so will require some resources that you either don't have or can't afford to waste.
The game might be hard at first, but once you know the basics, it becomes repetitive. Threats won't feel as difficult as long as you have items that can mitigate them. Traps can be easily made as long as you explore everything. Controlling the raft becomes easier with time, and other threatening factors, which are usually determined by RNG, won't feel as hard as it is, especially once you realized that you can return to the main menu to reload your save to prevent your death. Dying will force you to restart from the checkpoint if you play the campaign mode, or start from scratch if you play the endless mode, but all items in your dog's bag will be carried over to your next playthrough.
Combat
Combat is passive. You'll be using traps most of the time to kill any threats. You can craft other items such as bows for the same purpose, but I found it to be cost-ineffective. First of all, crafting the arrows requires flint, which is a rare resource. For reference, I used all of my flints during my first campaign run and had to play halfway through the game without them. It limited me from crafting a lot of useful items, including traps, once my stone knife, which requires flint to craft, runs out. Second, it's hard to aim, and you'll most likely miss a shot or two. Third, it takes some time before you can take it out and shoot, and the few seconds are vital if you want to take down boars or wolves.
Luckily, you don't have to use resources every time to kill enemies. You can lure animals to kill each other, netting you free meat to eat. However, this requires some setup, and it might not be possible to do all the time. To be honest, I prefer to forage my resources from this method since I don't have to use anything to get them.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the campaign in 15h. After that, I beat it again for an achievement in 4.7h. I spent the rest of my playthrough in the endless mode, cleaning all achievements that I didn't manage to get. Due to the randomized nature of the game, The Flame in the Flood is a perfect game if you are looking for replayability value, although the repetitive gameplay might not be for everyone. Heck, I was even bored during the last stretch of my endless run because of it.
As I said before, the game has a rough start at the beginning. You need to learn a lot of things and died several times, but once you get past that, you're basically invisible. Moreover, there are several bugs and exploits that you can use to make it easier to play.
Issues
It can be hard to see objects and your character if you are walking behind some buildings.
Conclusion
As a survival game, The Flame in the Flood balances its gameplay perfectly. It is relaxing to traverse through the river with your raft, and the music really can get your heart pumping sometimes. The foraging part of the game can be repetitive and annoying, but it's how the game maintains its difficulty. Your run will be randomized every time, and although the islands can feel similar after you play it for a long time, they will still have different items in them. It's the perfect game if you are looking to play a game in short sessions.

I generally like 3rd Person survival games. I love Project Zomboid. I like Don't Starve. I appreciate what This War of Mine is trying to do. I couldn't get by the look of NEO Scavenger. But regardless of whether I like them or not, one this is true:
I suck at them. I never win. I rarely get into a stable position. While some people are living for years in PZ, I'm dead in 5 days. While some folks can build a massive base on Don't Starve, I think I've made it to winter once...with mods to make it easier. I had to mod This War of Mine to get through it.
So I finally picked up Fame in the Flood during the Steam sale. I waited until a good sale because it was likely that I'd get only a couple hours in it given that it wasn't moddable and I'm terrible at such games.
I was wrong. While flawed, this is a greatly entertaining game.
First of all I find the setting charming. As a former whitewater guide, I love floating down rivers. It's unique and beautiful. Add in some great - perfect for this setting - music and you wind up with a great atmosphere. The graphics are functional but I'm not as big a fan of the art style. It didn't put me off though. The game is best played through an XBox controller rather than keyboard and mouse (but both are functional).
As for the gameplay, this is a flawed but ultimately satisfying game. The core gameplay is your character is floating down a river and pulling off at various stops. You gather, craft and push back off to float down the wild river some more to make progress. In your way aren't zombies or weird monsters. The dangers here are more mundane but still terrifying - hunger, thirst, wolves, disease, sickness, exposure and so forth.
The challenge in the game is scarcity (which is typical of this type of game). You're rarely going to have enough stuff to do everything you want and you're going to have to prioritize. FitF doesn't give you much backpack space and so you're always going to struggle to figure out what to carry. You're going to have to leave stuff behind that is useful. You're going to make food, water, clothing, traps, bandages, herbal remidies, raft upgrades and so forth to overcome the dangers of this world.
Note there's no real combat here. While you can make a bow to hunt with a bit and traps to catch food or defend yourself, this isn't a combat game. You're always playing defensively and you're not going to craft a sword to slay wolves with. If you're looking for a combat oriented game, this isn't it. In fact, this has less combat than any survival game I can think of but I think that's a strength and not a weakness.
So what are the flaws? Well, inventory management is supposed to be part of the challenge but frankly it's one of the more annoying aspects of the game. You're going to be in your inventory A LOT and the UI is fine but it's still really annoying. You're going to spend a lot of time in that inventory screen.
There's also no modding support for this game which is unheard of in this genre. Thus this is a WYSIWYG (look it up) game - it is what it is and you're not getting anything else. While some would say that means the game is unfinished, I don't think so. I've encountered no bugs and no crashes in 10 hours of play, so I see this game as finished.
And to come back full circle to the opening paragraph, it's also winnable - at least for me on easy mode. It took a few tries but on easy I was able to progress (with liberal use of reloading) all the way to the end. So if these games are typically too difficult, this one isn't. And if you're good at these games, there are other difficulty levels which I'm sure can provide an ample challenge.
In conclusion, this is a charming, well-constructed and entergaining game that deserves your patronage if you like this genre. It won't go down as a classic but you'll likely have some very fond memories of this title long after you move on to something else.
As for me, I'm getting ready to get back on the river. The wild calls....