When The Molasses Flood first released The Flame in the Flood last year on Xbox One and PC, chances are they never thought that the post-apocalyptic survival sim depicting a US in which global warming has made rivers burst their banks and submerged large swathes of the landscape, could become an actual reality. With the election of Trump and his insane views on climate change though, the waterlogged wasteland presented in The Flame and Flood has a certain unnerving prescience to it.
The Flame in the Flood opens with a mysterious canine, Aesop, waking up young female protagonist Scout, who is asleep by a fire at a post-apocalyptic campsite and presents her with a backpack ( he tore off the skeletal remains of the last poor bastard to follow him down the river). Inside the pack is a Radio receiving a scrambled transmission.
After a brief tutorial and time to get to grips with the game’s controls, crafting systems and numerous menus(so many menus), the pair jump aboard a makeshift raft and set off downriver in search of the source of the transmission.
At its core, The Flame in the Flood is a survival game in the Don’t Starve mould with players tasked with collecting and crafting various items in order to keep Scout fed, watered, rested, warm and able to protect herself from the numerous predators that stalk the (mostly) abandoned gas stations, campsites, and churches that make up the wilds of post-societal America.
Bears, boars, and wolves make up the bulk of the beasts that will happily and very swiftly turn Scout from a happy camper into a broken, bloody mess. Initially, at least, it is best to run as fast as your little legs will carry you back to the boat.
It also doesn’t pay to be rooting around in menus for too long when there’s a wolf or boar about. time keeps ticking along while Scout is pouring over her journal, looking at crafting recipes and tinkering around in her inventory, likewise, predators won’t think twice about pouncing while the poor girl is unaware.
Learning to use the quick menus is essential if you want Scout to make it all the way downstream. These are accessed by using L2 and the d-pad. I mention this because I only discovered that there was a quick menu system by accident after many hours of wondering why I even bothered crafting a bow as by the time I equipped the damn thing, let alone fired it, whatever I was going to shoot with it had already pounced and was busy feasting on Scout’s intestines.
When the coast is clear though, players will spend a lot of time rooting around through the menus, especially in the crafting and inventory pages. In the early stages, players will spend a lot of time in the inventory trying to figure out what to cram into Scout’s (initially) tiny backpack, give to Aesop to hold ( anything in his pack can be used in your next run) and in the hold of the Raft, which can also be expanded greatly (but more on that in a mo).
Initially, Scout’s life in a state of nature is, as Hobbes posited – nasty, brutish and short. However, once players get past the initial teething period, and get a few useful items crafted and a few upgrades under their belt, The Flame in the Flood really opens up, and serious progress can be made downstream.
When not stuffing anything she can find in her pockets, Scout and Aesop are rafting downstream like some kind of post-apocalyptic Huck Finn. Sailing from island to island is initially a tricky affair, the raft is flimsy, the rapids fast and Scout’s only means of steering from one dock to the next, as she hops from island to island through the endless engorged floodplain is a large stick.
This becomes a hell of a lot easier once Scout has visited a few Marinas–specific islands which are used for upgrading and repairing your craft with odds and sods (bolts and lumber) scavenged from the myriad ruins visited along the way. At the Marina the raft is slowly transformed from little more than a couple of lashed together pallets into a something akin to a ramshackle barge, with a rudder, motor, extra storage and eventually a stove, shelter and even a water treatment plant, greatly improving Scout’s chances of survival both on the water and on dry land.
The jaunt downstream is for the best part a beautiful one, graphically The Flame in the Floods, painted visuals tread a line between a pop-up book and a Henry Selick movie ( Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas). Meanwhile, an absolutely stonking soundtrack by former Hot Water Music frontman turned Alt-Country God, Chuck Ragan marry together to convey both a sense of struggle in its tougher moments and whimsey when Scout and Aesop are drifting downstream with the sun on their faces and the wind at their backs.
At least it does when it works, unfortunately, there are a lot of sound glitches in the Flame in the Flood on the PS4, and though it doesn’t ruin the experience it does break the sense of adventure and immersion at times when everything goes quiet for no apparent reason and then suddenly the player is treated to a musical interlude.
The choice of track often feels random as well. Though admittedly it’s one of the finest soundtracks I’ve heard for a game in a long time (I’ve spent months playing it in my car prior to me even playing the game) when the music hits into a driving rhythm while Scout is attempting to sneak away from a pack of Wolves while Reagan’s gravelly tones wail ” There’s nothing to fear, but fear itself”. It doesn’t half drag you out of the game.
The other area that drags you out of the game a little is the director’s commentary cassettes scattered throughout the wilderness, which is new to the Complete Edition. Though entertaining, when trying to survive the wilds players don’t have time to hang around and listen to anecdotes about the game’s development and influences when their player character is slowly starving to death. AS such it would have been nice to be able to listen to them out of the game instead of having them play as Scout wanders around.
Ultimately, these are minor quibbles. in what is otherwise a delightful and engaging slice of post-apocalyptic Americana that is well worth your time and attention.
