The Flame In The Flood

It was a great game. Once you figure out what you're doing, you figure out the most efficient ways to loot every stop, and kill what you need to. The art style really fits the game. There was a great story that wasn't in your face.
There were a few things that weren't great. There should've been a little more explanation of the mechanics at the beginning. Clothes should've said how well they protect you from the crafting menu; because I assumed that insulated was better than rabbit fur. Half the time crows will be up high, and when you shoo them away you can't reach their feather. A big flaw in the game was that about halfway through, I had enough food and medicine to last forever; and I just sailed through the rest of the river without stopping. There was nothing else that the locations could give me. It maybe should've had less materials, or maybe more things to upgrade.
All that being said, I still recommend the game.

TL;DR More of a technical-demo or early access game than a finished product
I'll start by saying that the only reason I'm giving this game a positive review, is that it's an indie game made by a small group of 2 developers and 1 artist.
And I like to support small indie developers, because they grow up into large developers and eventually make great game.
This game is not a great game.
On the positive side:
The graphics are cartoony and unique, and give an original look & feel to the game.
The animations exist for all actions you do, and the game feels finished on that aspect.
The score it pretty good too, and changes fittingly according to the weather and time-of-day.
The crafting is arguably the best part of the game. You have plenty of items you can craft, and the base items needed for them range from common to rare, with a good progression over time.
Now for the less positive sides.
The combat is basically non-existent. You can run away, and you can set traps. You have no real chance head-to-head against the animals you encounter. I was mostly forced to employ game bugs to survive and kill them (some areas enemies are blocked from entering). Otherwise the game would be over pretty soon.
The game has no save feature - which is weird for a modern game. You have very rare save points, which force you to play the game for hours, just to be able to save your progress. You simply cannot play this game 0.5-1 hour, because your progress will not be saved.
The difficulty of the game sucks out all the fun from it, and prevents you from progressing. You are given barely enough resources to sustain yourself and fend-off enemies, which leaves you unable to craft the more advanced items in the game.
And the worst part, which basically makes it a sandbox simulation, technical demo or an early access game:
Is that it virtually has no plot whatsoever.
You raft on the river, from location to location, scavenging (and barely making by).
And that's it.
There are around 5-7 different location types.
And you're forced to do that hours upon hours, without any purpose or end in sight.
Don't be fooled by my 22 hours play time, most of the time was spent reloading from last save after being insta-killed by enemies.
Or playing the game for 1-2 hours, only to discover there were no auto-save points in my gameplay, so none of my progress was saved.
I ended up using cheats to actually get to the ending of the game (by the look of it, it would have taken me 10+ hours of pointless grind to reach it otherwise).
Only to discover it was as underwhelming as the rest of the game.
So to the developers:
This looks like a great technical demo made with minimal resources, and you guys have tons of potential.
Next time please make a full game!

Not sure how I got this game. Probably through a humble bundle for a $1 with several other games. I would guess I didn't pay much if any for it. Most games I acquire like that I have pretty low expectations for going in. I usually fire them up click around for 20-30 min and give up on them.
This game was not the case though. I loved it. Short but thats ok. The older I get the more I like short ones. Took me probably a solid 8 hours of game time to beat the game first play through. Don't mind the 17 hours steam says I had the game running; there was a lot of time spent paused and while I did other things. I could imagine getting more out of this with multiple playthroughs and/or achievement chasing. I could have easily pushed on and finished the game faster though but I was having too much fun dinking around killing bears. The way things randomly spawn keeps it fairly fresh. The crafting system was really well done. Once i figured out the crafting system I was hooked. Very simple game; don't die.
The quests were a nice touch but a little overlooked. Quests mostly felt like an afterthought. I liked there was no tutorial just throwing me into the game, and the signs and hints weren't bad. The crafting system was a little daunting at first though. Once you figure it out, its extremely simple compared to most games, but I didn't feel the learning curve needed to be so steep off the word go. The first quest was nice because it made me focus on the necessary tools. Quests were completely random after that though. Would have been nice to have a series of quests that help introduce the crafting system to me.

Starts great and has its own rural Americana charm. However there's not much to it. My run became very tedious; yet despite that I want to give it another go, so it's compelling. Definitely great value on sale.

What can I say about this. Well first of all, it should be noted I played this more than my time here will suggest; I actually beat the game on Amazon's game thingy where I got it for free, then decided to buy it on steam on sale cause I wanted to support the developers.
But beyond that. The game is beautiful. The southern, folksy feel you get from it is so relaxing even when you're on survivalist difficulty; you're fighting for your life, sure, but you're doing so while this harmonica music plays in the background or a guitar or a deep voiced man serenades you. It's fantastic.
The issues... there are a few. I feel the game might be a bit longer than it needs to be, considering that there's only 6 types of animals that you interact with and very few people. On top of that you get to a certain point towards the end where you're set and don't really need to land any more. In my last file I had literally every raft upgrade and enough food and water, so I just coasted past region 9 to the game's ending.
But it's nice. It's very, very different from typical survival style games, but you really fall into it. You can tell a lot of heart went into making this and I always appreciate that type of thing.
I'd give it a 7.5/10. Maybe even 8. Hard to say. But overall, I definitely recommend you pick it up and try it for yourself.

Very underrated indie survival game. Tons of character and the soundtrack is one of the best.

It was fun while it lasted
A beautiful Survival Indie Game with great music and attractive graphics. Once you figure out the basics and mechanics of how the game is played it can be quite enjoyable to play, you would find yourself travelling down the river on a raft and explore woods nonstop for hours even if you would do the same things over and over again. It is a really fun experience but I feel like it's one of those game that once you got the best of it everything just goes a little bland. There are also quite a few bugs especially a major one on fighting bears and it happens quite often and its really annoying. Overall this game is wonderful! It makes you feel relaxed without losing the distressed feeling that is a must in survival games.