The Flame in the Flood is a survival roguelike set on some giant, unnamed Midwestern river. The river is unnamed because it appears to have taken out most of civilization with it. Houses and factories peek above its waves, rusted cars float on its currents like so much debris. It's a world where staying outside at night after a soaking rain is more dangerous than the wolves circling the only shelter around.
It's also rather easy, which is not what I expected for a roguelike focused on a young girl surviving an uncaring wilderness. It may be one of the easiest roguelikes I've played; I beat Campaign mode on my first try on Easy mode, and I'm well on my way to beating it again on Normal mode. I nearly have a full set of wolf clothing for the cold, enough jerky and water to survive several days, my raft is almost fully-upgraded, and I have enough traps and arrows to kill anything short of a full pack of wolves.
So why is it so easy compared to most roguelikes?
- No Long-Term Debilitations: If one of your meters (Food, Water, Warmth) runs out, you die. If it's at least 1, you're fine. Not even broken bones have any long-term effect once you put a Splint on them. Between that and how common the ingredients for bandages & splints are, very few injuries become an occurring problem.
- Water is Moot: There's enough rain throughout the game, and plenty of jars to store it in. Since it only takes a few seconds to fill a jar with rainwater, you can gathers 3 days worth of fresh water from just a short shower. In both games, my water filters were barely used. The ease of gathering water means only 2 meters (Food & Warmth) are tough to keep filled.
- Spacious Inventory: The inventory system is based on stacks of items rather than item weight. Five jars full of water, or 3 unassembled spear traps, take up the same inventory space as 10 cattails. In addition, your raft can carry even more slots than just your backpack. Combined with the ability to upgrade your backpack & raft to carry twice as many slots, there's no reason not to carry everything you might need, plus a few spares. This is one game where an encumbrance system would be fitting.
- Easy Enemies: You rarely, if ever, need to kill one of the predators roaming the wilderness. Not only that, but it's easy to retreat from them with getting injured, and any injuries you do get can usually be easily healed with no long-term effect. Granted, you do need to kill a few to sew clothing warm enough for the later regions, but you just need one boarskin to start sewing wolfskin clothing, and you can easily kill wolves by tossing poisoned meat to them or luring them into a snake or bear.
- No Time Limit(?): I thought there was an advancing wall of doom to force you quickly down the river, but if there is I haven't seen it yet. You can visit every landing spot you pass by, spend multiple days at ones with plenty of resources to gather, and never feel rushed into moving on. This gives you enough time to gather all the resources you need, instead of just grabbing the most important ones and praying you chose right.
In short, Flame in the Flood feels easy because there's few tough choices or planning to do in it, which is disappointing for a game about survival.
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