Floodland last week, all of a sudden vile rulerJust in time to create some conversation about the opening of Gamescom 2022, he chose to hand out a small promo of their games.
This was because during the German expo the team was en masse present to offer everyone the opportunity to see the game and get themselves started in a generous testing session to get familiar with the mechanics to try and understand something more. With a post-apocalyptic flavor that seems to follow in the footsteps of the great Frostpunk, this city management system offers different variations on the theme, starting with the setting.
We don’t believe it’s a coincidence that, among other things, part of Vile Monarch comes from 11-bit studios, the team that spawned the strategic set on ice, or even composer Piotr Musial. He is the one who created the music for many works of the Polish software house, including Frostpunk and This War of Mine. It is becoming increasingly clear that Poland is the home of talent and great ideas, and that Floodland has done nothing but join the ranks of productions from Eastern Europe that have successfully invaded the rest of the world and offer interesting and refined gameplay.
After such a pompous opening, it is essential to go into the details of what we have. Tested on Floodlandfocusing primarily on our impressions.
Another type of apocalypse
Whereas Frostpunk describes and describes a world where a catastrophe creates extreme global cooling, the small surviving population is forced to survive and settle around giant heat generators, Floodland describes exactly the other end of the spectrum. climate change: global warming has led to the melting of the poles and rising seas that in a few years have flooded a large part of the emerging land, destroyed known urban settlements and reduced humanity to very few survivors scattered in small areas. nomadic tribes. To create even more drama, there was the so-called Event, a global catastrophe that was produced in a chain reaction due to the climate crisis, which suddenly led to the destruction of all electronic and communication devices and the abandonment of humanity. dark.
The intent of Vile Monarch is clearly to offer a narrative start that is not only realistic but also raises concern and awareness about this topic. environmental disaster In the hope of these decades, as they say, to combine business with pleasure. In this case, we literally see and think that we are talking about a video game with great strategic depth. In practice, the setting is North America, or rather, a swampy version of the border regions between the United States and Canada with a hot and humid climate. Based on this premise of history, it will be up to us to choose and manage how we will enrich the small tribe by collecting everything the region has to offer, thereby developing our technological skills to build the structures necessary to be self-sufficient. adequate, and up to this point, we are assessing whether and how we will accommodate other survivors in a way that is compatible with our need to thrive.
A city builder with high hopes
Once you have the mouse and keyboard in your hands, it really takes very little time to become familiar with the interface and game system and understand what it is if you are the least connoisseur of the genre. game dynamics and more generally, the type of approach Vile Monarch has chosen to build its strategy. So let’s repeat: If you’ve played Frostpunk even once (and we highly recommend you don’t), you know exactly what to expect from Floodland.
The gameplay is the same for good or bad: After choosing a small tribe in the game creation phase, we start with a handful of other options related to the region and the difficulties encountered, and in the first phase of the game, in order to have enough food, water and building materials, it is scattered over the small piece of land we will choose to settle. We’re going to have to be good at gathering resources. Survive in its early days. Next we will have to invest what we have gathered to try to achieve self-sufficiency by building water recyclers, farms for agriculture and marinas for fishing, and then we will need to focus on teaching by creating schools and specialist workshops to gain access. higher level buildings begin higher and, consequently, more complex jobs.
Unfortunately, our testing did not allow us to see how the game develops in the medium to long term, no matter how long according to the rules of a fair, i.e. whether there will be opponents to face or whether it will be possible to move from there. the first part of the land will “colonize” other neighboring areas, but one of Frostpunk’s core dynamics seems to be present in Floodland as well, practically unchanged. this dynamic events This may have to do with both more or less adverse climatic problems and the arrival or discovery of other tribes, which we can consider whether we welcome or move away from our settlement. By openly taking responsibility for the choices made.
And clearly like any citizen management Self-respecting, a big component of the game has to do with micromanagement of both resources and population. In the first case, we will have to take into account water and refined food, but also raw food, which will then be cooked or processed together with recycled raw materials, learning books and artifacts from the previous civilization, which will be necessary to earn points. technology adapted to the evolution of our settlement.
As for the tribe, we must always be careful when performing the exploration and gathering tasks assigned to the population, but at the same time keep an eye on the tribe. needs structures that require a certain number of workers to be assigned to them. So, is it better to have a large number of residents, many of whom risk being unemployed and creating unrest and riots, or to maintain an elite structure of the camp by hosting the few who survive at the risk of slowing or nailing production when we choose to explore neighboring areas? fields? This is just one of the dilemmas we had to answer during our games in Floodland.
a distinctive style
a technical and artistic point of view, Floodland departs with great force from its main inspiration, Frostpunk. Despite the fact that it tells a period of misfortune and suffering in one person, the game is very colorful. aesthetic style seems to suggest a mix between watercolor painting and pastel painting. The detail is enormous, with the possibility of zooming in until we see the individual inhabitants struggling with the multitude of tasks, and the sea all over our settlement is filled with reflection and refraction effects that reveal the day-night cycle and allow us to imagine the bygone era. there are only skyscrapers curving over them and bisected highways.
The end result is extremely pleasing and the gameplay has already shown an incredible level of cleanliness, a clear indication of an improvement that has been going on for some time and in which people with great experience have clearly cooperated. Even though the title was announced very recently, we currently have a very firm release date, November 15th. only on PC Steam, to highlight a very specific choice of communication: show the game only when ready and launch it as soon as possible to enjoy the hands-on generated chat. We believe Floodland will come to consoles later, but for now, we’re looking forward to the final release. And you should do the same.
SYMPTOMS
- Game loop shows experience and expertise in the genre
- He has a unique style that makes it very enjoyable to watch.
- The presence of dynamic events offers a very good jump of randomness
- We have no idea how the game will continue in the later stages of the game.
Source: Multiplayer
