“Greetings survivor”
”O.K. we’re stable and understand this world.
It’s only natural to want to peer behind the certain and ask, what if?
Let’s tinker with the very framework of society”
Welcome to Floodland, “Everything, but different”
With just two weeks to go until launch, it’s not long to wait now until you’ll be able to experience the whole of Floodland’s intriguing post-catastrophic world for yourself. In this DevBlog we’re going to take a look at gameplay, the core experience at the heart of Floodland, as well as exploring its modding possibilities which will allow you to experiment and adapt, and remake the game exactly how you would like to play it.
When it came to our core concept for Flood’s gameplay, we had one central aim. That was to tell a mature, thought-provoking story, which explored the social and civilizational challenges we face in today’s world, filtered through the lens of a post-disaster city-building game.
Moment to moment, we want you to experience the myriad challenges, decisions, and conundrums that a leader might face as they attempt to remake society. We centred gameplay around survival, both in the struggle to provide your community’s basic needs and having to cater for increasingly more sophisticated societal problems. We also threw in a pinch of exploration to add a sense of discovery and allow us to draw on the legacy resources of the old world.
We hope that we’ve created something that is unique and distinctive within the city-builder genre, with an emphasis on social dynamics and exploration, tied together by a rich storytelling layer. The interaction and dynamics between buildings, exploration, and managing your community are probably the elements of gameplay we’re most proud of.
Of course, there’s never enough time to include everything, but when we asked senior designer Michał Rudziński what gameplay features he’d like to have implemented, but didn’t quite have time to, he said:
“A leader change system, a waste treatment system, and a more complex crime system. I’d also have liked additional content in the exploration system to unveil its full potential.”
Kacper Kwiatkowski, game director answered:
“More randomization of the map layout, and a more individualised approach to your community.”
Perhaps they’ll come in the fullness of time, but you’ll also be able to take our work and mod it to create new and interesting variations on Floodland’s main theme. You won’t necessarily need in-depth technical knowledge to mod the game, but if you want to go deeper, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube to get you started. We’ll also be publishing a detailed guide shortly after release.
As junior designer Bartek Romanowski says:
“In most cases, ordinary players will be able to create their own mods, because they can edit the localization files or sheets that the mod replaces.”
You’ll be able to tweak all kinds of parameters including the traits of clans and leaders, community needs, buildings, building modes, laws, tech tree perks, crises and much more. To be honest it’s difficult to explain all the possibilities because we don't know where your imagination will take you. We’ll also be providing support post-release, with a manual on how to create a mod, what kind of files to include and where to put them. We’ll also be sharing an implementation-ready example asset bundle containing a modification of the existing buildings as soon as we can.
Over time we hope to provide even more support, with additional manuals on how to hack the game and add further modding options.
As Bartek says:
“To be honest, we hope to see all kinds of mods from the community. We can’t wait to see what modders' experiments lead to and how they will grow and extend the game.”
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 November 15th's release.Using the tech of the before-times, you can follow us here for more.
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Next week is the final DevBlog before release and we’ll detail the price, system specs and language options so you can confidently dive into Floodland
Happy surviving,
- Your Floodland Team