Floodland Review (Dsyphus)
TL;DR 3/10 DONT BUY every run is practically the same. If you grow too much the game cannot handle it. (crashing, frame loss) Finite resources tedious to gather. Segregation is basically the only way to manage clans. Electricity addition later in the game feels lazy and tacked on
Played on Ryzen 7 3800x - 32GB ram - Asus 1080 - dropped resolution too 720p -- played on second highest difficulty
The map is technically random, but really its just the same map with the islands shuffled around. The starting island is the same every time including the resources. Story events are pretty boring. Far enough in they are just people asking for policies that dont really do anything.
The game seems to be incapable of handling more than 150-200 people, I got over 300 and it was a coin toss every day cycle if the game would crash.
Finite resources are not hard to get but annoying to get. Need scrap? building often cost 400-600 some even more, you can either send a scouting party to take a raft to an area, gather material (they can only hold 750) then leave. and repeat that basically non stop to meet demand. The other way is too either set up a proper expansion near scrap piles usually only 3-4 piles worth about 250 each. after that they are gone. The third and most annoying but something you'll have too do is set up an expansion, ferry over some extra workers, gather the piles (which you can only do at a base and not with the scouting party) then once the piles are gone, dismantle the base and ferry your people back. Very annoying when you need thousands of scrap and rubble to progress with metal and concrete.
Managing the different clans with differing world views seems interesting, until you learn that you'll be spending all of your time trying to build a glass tower just so they dont turn to crime and screw you entire economy. The only way i found to stop them from spiraling into chaos was too just give any clan with separate views their own district where that cant interact with another clan. As for the laws and policies, they are essentially pointless. any buffs they provide to make people get along are either too late to be useful or too minor to make a difference. All the other provide boring unnoticeable changes ie eat 10% more food, 25% lower chance for sickness to turn lethal.
----------- ELECTRICITY... IS.... boring... very, very boring. minor spoiler ahead -----------
You fix the power plant. good job. you can pretty much only use that power on that island, likely far from your main base, and chances are your island aren't close enough to one another too build a bridge that would connect them to make them one district.... So you need to build your own power plants. rather, a coal plant or a wind turbine... that's it..... turbines are very cost inefficient. So coal power it is. you can make an infinite amount of coal so you never need to worry about fuel. but scrap... remember that, the material that's super annoying to get. your going to need a shit ton of it too make metal too then make the coal plants.... Great, you've made the metal got the coal plants, now too put those electrons to work...... but hitting a toggle on all your building and giving them a 10%ish boost to its production..... good job. that's its... all done
Overall, this game feels like it fails to achieve any wins at anything its trying too be. too basic too be a city builder. really only one strategy, only emphasized by the map being the same. Not a very engaging story. (regardless of your opinion of climate change) any choice you do make is practically predetermined by your main clan worldview.
DONT BUY, 3/10 i guess. there are far better games, probably on sale right now