“Well, this looks delightful” I foolishly thought, watching the trailer for Drake Hollow, the next game from The Flame In The Flood developers The Molasses Flood. “Far less depressing than their last outing, innit?” Oh, what a rube I seemed when the shadow beasts attacked. There’s the dread we were missing.

Announced at XO19 last night, Drake Hollow appears to a multiplayer horde ’em up blending Slime Rancher with Fortnite: Save The World in a forest packed with spooks and mooks.

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>I really really really> like The Flame In The Flood. I am terrible at it, rarely reaching even the mid stage of the river, but I love it. The flood of the title is one that has swept through America, swelling the banks of a regular river until it s a wide and treacherous one. Only small islands of safety are left – an old fish bait shop, a homestead, a patch of wilderness – and they re not even always safe. Sometimes there s a big angry boar or a starving wolf.

The flame is you. And your little dog.

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Is it any wonder that people are struggling to sell games when everyone and their dog is just throwing lovely free stuff at us? This time, they even threw in the dog to sweeten the deal. Apocalyptic rafting survival adventure The Flame in The Flood is free for the next 48 hours (minus a couple) via the Humble store, and you should probably pick it up while the going’s good.

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The Flame in the Flood’s [official site] lead designer, Forrest Dowling seemed like an ideal candidate for my ongoing investigation of outdoor worlds in videogames both because of his name and because of his survival game. The Flame And The Flood sees you play as Scout, a woman trying to stay alive as she navigates her way along a fiercely flowing river. It manages to be a strangely cosy version of the outdoors with a wonderful, evocative colour palette and soundtrack. Here’s how it works:

… [visit site to read more]

The Flame in the Flood [official site] took a while to settle for me. I went through a few phases with the game but I seem to have landed on “comfy but ultimately not very deep” as a verdict. Ironic given it’s a game about being uncomfy and surviving a flood. Here’s Wot I think:

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The Flame in the Flood [official site], out Feb 24th, is a wilderness survival game with a difference. Several differences, actually. First of all, it doesn’t involve lots of first-person tree-punching and is more about isometric exploration than campfire crafting. And then there’s the setting – you’re in a drowned world, travelling by raft from one location to the next, searching for food, warmth and – just possibly – signs of life. Human life, that is. Because, as the trailer below shows, the wildlife is deadly.

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Each week Marsh Davies paddles through the polluted torrent which is Early Access and comes back with any stories he can find, or otherwise tumbles overboard and lets himself sink beneath the surging water. This week he s been fighting against the tide in The Flame In The Flood [official site], a survival game set in a drowned world, in which a girl and her dog paddle between islands looking for resources – then eventually fail to find them and die.>

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A few months ago I published up my impressions of an early build of The Flame in the Flood [official site], a sort of roguelike/white water rafting mash-up set in the backwaters of a drowned but contemporary America, and made by ex-Irrational, Harmonix, and Bungie devs. Which was jolly stupid of me, given the only other people who could play it at that point where those who’d backed its Kickstarter. Fortunately, it’s now on Steam Early Access, which means you can buy it, which means I positively demand that you read my earlier article on it first.

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