“Greetings survivor”
We’ve found others!
But what have they been through?
Do they share our ideas and values?
We need their manpower, but at what cost to our fledgling society?
Welcome to Floodland, “Is anybody out there?”
During the course of building your society, you’ll meet many fellow survivors while exploring this new world. You’ll face new experiences as well as many unexpected incidents and events. In this DevBlog we’ll focus on the clans and encounters you’ll discover in Floodland’s watery post-apocalyptic landscape.
Of course, your first encounter with clans will be choosing your starting one and there are four to select. Each one leaning towards a different worldview and offering their own attributes and/or skills.
Let’s meet them:
The Good Neighbours are suburban survivors with a traditional American worldview who value individual freedom and liberty. They’re workaholics, enabling you to set up night shifts in your buildings to increase production, and they also suffer less than others clans from the stresses of overwork.
The Oakhill Survivors are led by Anna Brown and are preppers who value hierarchy and codified laws, but consume fewer food resources and are great explorers.
The Fire Brigade, led by Taylor Palmer, are a liberal clan who value freedom, science, and personal growth. They are also highly resistant to disease.
Finally, Berkut-3 are former oil workers who’ve made it ashore under the leadership of Philip Johnston. They place a premium on order, security, and well defined rules, and are superb resource collectors.
Narrative designer Piotr Rubaj has some advice:
“When you start, try not to be guided by your own personal prejudices. Sometimes we were surprised at how deeply we carry ingrained views and beliefs… they don’t mean much in a world after a major catastrophe.”
So you can tailor your starting clan to your own playstyle, or however you want to role-play that play-through. But, you’ll also meet plenty of other survivors out in the wild too, eking out an existence. Some will be unaffiliated, allowing you to choose which clan to integrate them into in your society. While others will be full formed clans with their own ideologies which may or may not be compatible with the clans that comprise your existing society.
It might be tempting to immediately welcome anyone you meet into your community, as new people bring new skills, specialisations, and opportunities, but rapid growth can bring its own problems too.
Clans’ competing worldviews and philosophies may cause contention, and will require skilful management of your community’s mood to resolve. Some disputes may even trigger narrative events or affect the shape of your settlement. The ultimate sanction for troublesome clans is expulsion, but some clans can become so harmonious that they fully integrate and merge into one.
With 12 main clans and 24 supplementary ones you can meet in the later stages of the game, there’s a lot of variety. Being semi-procedurally generated, it’s unlikely you’ll ever encounter the same one in different playthroughs, meaning clan management is set to be an ongoing, ever evolving challenge.
While exploring the Floodland also yields some exciting opportunities, there are also risks. Exploring buildings will uncover valuable resources and new recruits, but you’ll have to balance that against the possibility that your people may be injured or catch an unexpected disease.
Weighing the benefits of exploration against its possible harms is one of Floodland’s more intriguing decisions, but you’ll also meet ordinary people, often with very down-to-earth problems. Search thoroughly and you’ll discover some touching stories dating back to the turbulent times surrounding the catastrophic event. But the urge to explore is an intrinsic part of human nature and will also be an essential part of the game.
As Piotr says:
“Meeting the needs of your community will often require exploration. In a way, it's a metaphorical take on what humanity is likely to face: the need to migrate in search of basic resources. But it is almost impossible to succeed in Floodland by staying in just one place.”
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With the prospect of new peoples and the challenges they bring laid out before you, join us next week as we discuss the ingame-events your society will face.
Until then, happy surviving,
- Your Floodland Team