izigame.me

It's been over a year since my last review. I'm still alive! It takes a lot to encourage me to write a review these days; I almost didn't, but given the mixed views on this, I wanted to share my point of view. I've forgotten how to style a review nicely so you get a wall of text.
If Frostpunk and This War of Mine had a baby, it would be Floodland. It's a post apocalyptic resource and colony management simulator. It's heavy on the micro management and excruciating on some of the detail, figuring out how to do it right and survive can be brutal and will take some time. Considering both Frostpunk and This War of Mine are in my top 10 favourite games, it's no wonder that I love Floodland too. There's so much to learn, so many mistakes to make - but very rewarding when you actually get that ah-ha moment of realizing you do know how to do something, until you're eventually one step ahead of the game.
In my current game I'm still in crisis management mode at the moment, my colony is struggling, I've not got enough workers, I rescued an old lady who gave my settlement the plague and I've got clans of people who hate each other and I'm trying to get them to play nice before all out riots break out. There's a massive world to explore but to be honest, I'm still trying to manage my tiny little island. And it's fun for me. There's atmosphere and there's story and there's meaningful choices to agonize over.
I did read quite a few of the negative reviews before playing and I think that going in to the game you do need to realize how brutal it is, how much reading of text and minute details, how much micro management and strategizing there is, and yes, how frustrating it can be too. Not everyone is going to find that fun. I've never sworn as much at a game as Frostpunk on hard mode, but that didn't mean it wasn't a good game. Perhaps it meant I wasn't a good enough gamer. But trying, and dying, is still a lot of fun. Floodlands strikes me as the same; a game that'll keep me swearing at it for quite a long time to come.
I will say that there are currently some optimization problems. I know a lot of people are having crashes when I write this. The game runs pretty good for me until it gets to day 100 or so, then the saving gets longer and longer and eventually it starts crashing after a save game and I need to restart. If I run autosave (which you kinda want to do in a game like this) I tend to need to restart it once an hour just to keep it happy, but hopefully this gets fixed in future patches. Obviously I understand the frustration of people who've paid for a game they can't play, but I do feel it's a bit unfair to write negative reviews within the first few weeks of release purely about optimization, without seeing if there are prompt fixes.
💖 If you find the reviews of an old Welsh lady interesting, please follow My Curator Page. 💖