The Flame in the Flood Reviews
If you can handle the wild river - and the odd bug - there's plenty to love in this heartfelt survival game.
The Flame in the Flood offers up a sometimes overly-difficult survival adventure, but the fantastic visuals and tense gameplay provide plenty of reasons to keep playing.
The Flame in the Flood is a beautiful procedurally generated survival sim that gains a welcome sense of momentum from the need to stay on the move. Its unwieldy menus and tendency to crash ruins some of the fun, unfortunately, but not enough to diminish the strength of the hopeful, riverbound journey at its core.
Lovely and challenging with enjoyable crafting and survival elements, but poor river controls make it harsher than it should be.
Not the deepest wilderness survival game around in terms of gameplay, but certainly one of the most atmospheric and thought-provoking.
This challenging voyage makes for one of the most memorable and satisfying survival games in the last few years
The Flame in the Flood is an harsh and absorbing survival game that never lets you rest on your laurels, with fantastic audiovisual design direction.
Beautiful but clumsy, with a very helpful wet dog.
Overall, the experience of playing The Flame in The Flood is more frustrating than nerve-wracking. I get that survival games won't be easy, but their systems should feel balanced, not bullshit. And the nodal method of traveling down river can feel futile in its own way. There's a big, bad wolf between me and any desire to play this further.
The post-societal visuals of crumbling buildings, broken-down cars drifting along the flooded river, and menacing wildlife lurking in the distance, paired with an excellent folk rock soundtrack featuring Chuck Ragan, creates a unique atmosphere of exploring a desolate frontier. It's easy to become absorbed in this world and end up spending much more time on this treacherous river than you initially intended. That is, until it swiftly kills you without remorse. It seems mother nature is a cruel mistress indeed.
The Flame In The Flood is a remarkably well crafted entry in the survival genre that sets itself apart with compelling gameplay, an intriguing setting, and a stellar soundtrack. Having released on computer and Xbox One last year, its arrival on PlayStation 4 with the Complete Edition will hopefully see it find a new audience to entice on a beautiful, and bleak, journey down the river.
Death is pretty much inevitable in The Flame in the Flood, but it can be held at bay through luck, crafting, planning and skillful awareness of the environment and what it offers and hides.
A powerful, emotional survival adventure, The Flame in the Flood manages to stand out even in a swiftly-populating genre.
The Flame in the Flood has amazing moments that stick with you and far outweigh all the annoying bits. It is beautiful at times, but also melancholy and grim in other moments. If you are looking for a difficult survival game, you will certainly get that, unless you find great deal of supplies early on.
The Flame in the Flood is a quiet apocalypse in which it's Mother Nature you have to fight, not aliens or zombies. The goal is to drift down a river in a flooded world to reach salvation at the end. Surviving is no walk in the park, but with Chuck Ragan's brilliant soundtrack to soothe you, it's sure worth a try.
The Flame in the Flood is a gorgeous title that tries to find a good balance between realism and difficulty. The ideas and concepts are smart and make sense, but don't expect them to delve too much deeper that what is presented at the start. A few nitpicks with the menu system and cumbersome inventory management take a bit away from the experience, but the core mechanics work well. The Flame in the Flood is a good addition to the survival genre, and another satisfying inclusion to the ever growing eShop library.
The Flame in the Flood is beautiful, desolate, and it will kill you again and again.
As I rafted lazily down the river, passing churches and camp grounds, I found a moment or two to reflect on my time with The Flame in the Flood. I wonder "How much time have I spent with in-game menus?," "I wonder how far I can make it before my resources run dry?," and "How in the world can anyone kill a bear?" The game had lost its challenge an hour or so ago, but I remembered my first 10 or so hours fondly as constantly challenging and enjoyably tense. And while I don't see myself playing the game for too much longer, the The Flame in the Flood is a solid recommendation for anyone looking to diversify their catalog with a short, challenging, and artistically crafted indie title.
Where I'm at with the game now is that I do enjoy playing and it's because it offers a beautiful and non-overwhelming survival option. I also find that the repetition of crafting and of landscape and of encounters combined with changes in biome end up feeling like verses in a song – familiar but with some of the beats changed up. But I also find that I feel I'm spinning my wheels a lot, that the systems aren't creating interesting or varied stories.
The Flame in the Flood is an incredibly charming survival game. Even those that don't tend to love the harsh genre will enjoy the visual flair and fantastic soundtrack on offer. There's also several different options to make the game more difficult or easier (checkpoints can be added) depending on how much of a challenge you want. Whether players actually complete their trip will come down to their determination, but they'll have a good time, even if the rafting session ends a bit early due to a wolf attack.