“Greetings survivor”
We’ve settled here, but we can’t do anything without food.
Then water.
Once secured, we can explore the scrap and ruins that surround us.
O.K Let’s see what we’ve gotta work with!
Welcome to Floodland, “We’ve got work to do”
To survive in Floodland’s watery post-apocalyptic world, you’re going to have to get comfortable with your new surroundings and discover what opportunities and challenges they hold. Here, we’re going to take a look at the three pillars of exploration, resources, and survival which will help you do just that.
You begin in a small basic camp made up of just a few survivors huddled around a fire. You need to attend to their immediate needs, food, water and shelter.
Where and when to explore your immediate surroundings will be one of the first crucial decisions to make. We want to provoke a curiosity about your surroundings because this world is so different from the one you knew. You’ll need to understand how it has changed since the catastrophe and what opportunities lie in both the immediate vicinity and beyond.
In order to tease out this sense of discovery, we’ve implemented a feature which is quite rare in city builders, which is the fog of war. At first, you can only see what’s close to home and you’ll have to go out and actively search to discover the basic resources you need to get started on your journey.
Once you’ve accomplished that, you’ll also discover the outlines of distant buildings and structures, but you won’t immediately know what they are, or what they contain.
It’s only as you get closer and commit to exploring them fully that you’ll learn their true purpose and how they might be useful to you. In this way we hope to keep fuelling your thirst for knowledge and ignite an urge to see what’s out there.
But to get started on your journey, you’ll need to search for the basic materials for survival which are based on Maslov’s hierarchy of needs. These include items like food, water, and the means to stay warm and get some rest. Some basic food items like fruit and fish can be grown or caught locally, and sometimes you’ll also unearth relics of the old world like canned goods which provide a welcome boost for your community.
Once you’ve satisfied these basic requirements you move up onto the next stage of Maslov’s pyramid which is relationships. This means finding fellow survivors, who you can welcome into your community and who you will need to make it grow and thrive. In this sense, people are a kind of resource too, and during your journey you’ll learn more about their stories and history and how they survived themselves.
By the end of the game you’ll also be discovering major new resource types which you’ll harness to become a more advanced society. For example, somewhere in this flooded world is a prototype power plant waiting to be discovered. Restarting its turbines will provide electricity to power your settlement, but while that’s in the far future for now, it’s an important goal to work towards.
One of the key tools for survival is the tech tree, but we’ll cover this in much more detail in a future DevBlog. We want to give that feeling that you’re not just living day to day, but actively improving your community’s lives, you’re constructing an actual society, not just a series of buildings. As your community gets bigger and better there are problems that go alongside that, questions you need to answer so that people can live in harmony while holding different world views.
Floodland also has procedurally generated elements to it so that no two games will ever quite be the same. Your approach may have to adapt from one playthrough to another because it may not be so effective this time. Locations, events, clans, resources and survival parameters will all change, so over the course of several different playthroughs you’ll be able to walk different paths. While there'll be some small tweaks and changes, the general map will broadly be similar. However, in future updates the scope of randomization will improve and expand. We want to give you many different ways to come to terms with the challenges you face in this intriguing post-apocalyptic world.
You’ve been drinking in the flavour of floodland and now is the chance to play.
We’re excited to be a part of this year's Steam Next Fest!
A demo will be playable for a week from Monday, October 3rd at 18:00 BST / 19:00 CEST / 10:00 PT until October 10th.
This demo sees your small band of survivors making camp and pitching the beginnings of your settlement. Before you can concern yourself with the wider world, you must see to your people's needs. Scavenge the local resources, explore your island, begin production and discover the means to set your sights beyond. Depending on how you use the speed settings, the first play-through should roughly take an hour.
If you would like to become a beta tester and provide feedback you can apply on our form
here
And join us on Discord channel: https://discord.gg/Hnbxg9CJbZ
Wishlist us on Steam and keep up-to-date with our weekly DevBlogs which will continue to delve into the mudded waters of Floodland. The tide has risen and there is much to prepare you for before the November 15th release.
Using the tech of the before-times, you can follow us here for more:
Twitter
Facebook
Discord
Instagram
Join us next week and we focus on the city building and tech tree as you seek to expland and advance your settlement. Happy surviving,
- Your Floodland Team