PC Floodland (15 November 2022) - an artistically beautiful post-climate change "point of no return" city/society builder from former "This War of Mine" devs

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I'd say that  we're already well into this game's "reality" at this point.

 

 

 

Floodland on Steam

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A society survival game set in a world destroyed by climate change. Explore, scavenge and build a city to unite the clans. Conflicting cultures and limited resources mean you need to make tough choices; have you got what it takes to lead your people into a new era of humanity?

 

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A society survival game set in a world destroyed by climate change. Explore, scavenge and build a city to unite the clans. Conflicting cultures and limited resources mean you need to make tough choices; have you got what it takes to lead your people into a new era of humanity?

 

 

Floodland is a colourful settlement builder about surviving post-climate collapse

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Floodland is a survival settlement builder about building back better after climate collapse.

 

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As the name suggests, rising sea levels have turned the world of Floodland into a series of smaller, disconnected islands. With a band of survivors in your care, you'll need to scavenge and explore, reinvent technologies, and "maintain the peace between differing factions".

 

The first order of business is catering to the basic needs of survivors by providing "food, shelter, water, health, security", but you'll quickly run out of space on any single island. That means you need to keep exploring the world in search of new land to colonise, and new resources to exploit. At the same time, your settlements will be shaped by the research choices you make on the tech tree, and the laws you pass on the "Law-Tree".

 

Laws will let you an "age of equality" or a "benign dictatorship." Which makes it sound as if you can't go so far as to create a malignant dictatorship, so perhaps the lack of grime in the colour palette carries over to the decisions you're making and your settlements won't tip into full Frostpunk-style horror. Perhaps.

 

 

 

In this societal city builder you'll restore civilization after global climate change | PC Gamer

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In Floodland you'll rebuild cities, and society, after the world has been deluged by seawater.

 

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Frostpunk continues to be an influence on new city builders, as you can see above in the first trailer for Floodland shown at the Future Games Show today. Instead of the fictional cold-pocalypse of Frostpunk, however, Floodland is set after the world has been deluged with seawater due to global climate change, a threat that is all too real.

 

As with Frostpunk, Floodland is more than just about building a settlement after a global catastrophe, it's about creating a functioning society that won't make the same mistakes as the past. That means establishing laws, and in Floodland there's a branching series of rules you can enact in your settlements. This includes sensible policies like water conservation, food quality control, and one that seems perfectly suited to our inevitable submerged future: swimming lessons.

 

Global climate change isn't the only realistic issue in Floodland. There are also COVID-like communicable diseases, and in the trailer you can see policies for social distancing, mask-wearing, and even settlement-wide lockdowns. (It'll be interesting to see how the virtual communities react to that, after witnessing how our real society did.) Other polices include a broad range of social issues, like same-sex marriage and labor laws, and plenty of darker options like declaring martial law and even engaging human experimentation.

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

‘Floodland’ Pulls No Punches In Highlighting The Climate Crisis

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This new strategy game shows a world drowned by our own actions

 

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A strategy title that isn’t afraid of showing players the reality that could await their children, and their children’s children - or even themselves, sooner than later, if we are indeed dangerously close to passing notable environmental tipping points - Floodland plays out in a fairly relaxed fashion. Initially, at least, as I’m only getting these people started in my demo - later, the city-builder slash survival sim will certainly up its stakes as nomadic factions connect with one another and the commodity that is livable dry land is contested. The more people you have in your settlement, the greater their demands and so the more resources you’ll need - and resources are at a premium in this mostly drowned world. Tarpaulins become tents and the waste that litters the landscape is converted into building materials - slowly, steadily, people find a purpose, a reason to hope again. 

 

But for its makers, Floodland is an important statement of where we are with the climate crisis - which is to say, few are doing close to enough to face up to the challenges before us. We progress culturally, technologically, as a society; but if the waters do rise, when the waters do rise, it could put us back decades, or centuries. This is what game designer Kacper Kwiatkoski (who previously worked on This War of Mine) at the title’s Polish developers Vile Monarch wants to make crystal clear to players, the game’s goal being “not to preach but to explore choices, consequences and the concept of responsibility from various angles”.

 

 

 

Floodland Preview – A survivalist city builder with social balance at its heart

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We go hands on with Floodland, a new survival city builder with some interesting takes on post-apocalyptic societal balance.

 

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At the very beginning things are much more simplistic, with a focus on building up the very basics of a sustainable settlement. Starting out from a simple resource collection point, you need to send the handful of survivors you have to salvage food and water from the nearby wrecks and ruins, gathering enough to put together some shelters out of recycled trash, and feed and water your people for a while. These are very finite resources – enough to get you started, but not enough to survive on for any length of time – and so you need to start getting creative, researching and fabricating the buildings that can sustainably make food, clean contaminated water, research ancient relics, and more.

 

Completing the basic missions through the opening rewards you with research points to spend in the tech tree, thematically either figuring out new buildings and structures for yourselves, or rediscovering old technologies and methodologies by trawling through relics and text books from fallen civilisations. Where your basic camp and foraging efforts can draw upon a pool of your people to do work, once you start setting up kitchens, water purifiers, fishing outposts, research towers, you need to then allocate one or two workers to keep them active. Beyond that you can also specialise buildings – the research tower can either use text books to help your workers specialise, or use relics found within the ruins to gain more research points.

 

 

 

Floodland Preview - Hands-on a Destroyed World

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How will the world look after the Climate Crisis destroys all we know? The upcoming city-builder Floodland asks this, and lets you decide the outcome.

 

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During Gamescom, I could have a hands-on session with Floodland, play some of the opening tutorial and section of the game and see elements of what's to come. I started by picking the Fire Brigade clan - I know it was because I preferred the sound of their perks, though I can't remember them entirely - and getting started. With ten people, you'll convert your makeshift structure into a storage depot, allowing you to send the workers assigned to your storage on searches.

 

Performed at the simple click of a button, your workers will collect any resource within a circular area and take it back to the storage if space is available. In addition, this option can be used to further open up the map by breaking through the fog of war. You will be limited to where you can search based on range and other factors. Still, it all feels like an intuitive system directed by the game's missions, which are built around a narrative path that offers alternate endings based on your decisions and actions.