So you think you’re ready? It’ll be tough, but there is hope. O.K then, let’s dive in
Welcome to Floodland, “It’s time”
We’re hugely proud and excited to be releasing our baby, our dystopian city/society builder game set in the post-catastrophic world of Floodland that we envisaged so many years ago. Firstly, a huge thank you to all our beta-testers and those who gave feedback during last month's Demo which encouraged and inspired us, you helped shape the game for the better.
To get you started, the eternal survivor, Colonel Damneders has kindly put together this guide for you. Stay tuned as “Part 2 - Mid game” and “Part 3 - Late game” will be released in the coming days.
The Templin Institute which oversees all alternative worlds has set the scene for you. Immerse yourself.
However, while we’re hyped to be releasing Floodland to you all, the good work continues. We will be grateful for your Steam reviews for we’ll be keenly assessing these and implementing your feedback into future updates.
Once a game is released into the wild, inevitably there are bugs. We've tested a lot with thanks to pout Discord members and determined none are game breaking. But to be safe it's always good to make hard saves just before key moments to avoid disappointment. Here are some known issues you may encounter which we are already working on a fix for:
Pathfinder Camp occasionally does not allow the expedition to come back home. This issue is extremely rare
Very few bits of text were not translated
Visual issue - fishing boats may sail on the land in some specific cases
In rare scenarios, survivors may choose a shelter that is too far from their workplace. This will result in the in-game 'long way from home' warning messages
Specific antivirus/firewall software may occasionally block access to save data files
On specific seeds some objects, especially trees have position changed in reference to the water surface
The saving options may not work when the scavenger camp is partially on the water and partially on land
A person may appear in the district in which he/she doesn't belong
In rare cases, when expeditors in pathfinder camp die, the new building is not established when travelers are on board
Lack of colliders in some objects on pathfinders or ferries way
Not all achievements work as expected
Rarely one of the assets is shown as a small black cube in the fog
Contact in Recreation Buildings may be miscalculated in some cases, resulting in negative Relations numbers.
People may take too long paths to Canteens, sometimes resulting in their disturbed productivity (when they can’t make it to work on time)
In case of some changes between the versions, the warning concerning saves appears: “Save version mismatch detected! This save comes from another version of the game and may differ e.g. in game balance, but continuing the playthrough is possible”. The saves will work in such a situation
In case you are worried about performance issues here, are our system requirements:
MINIMUM (1920x1080, Video Settings 'HIGH'): Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 x64 Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 or AMD equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD equivalent, 6 GB VRAM DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 6 GB available space
RECOMMENDED (1920x1080, Video Settings 'HIGH'): Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 x64 Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 8700k or AMD equivalent Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD equivalent, 6 GB VRAM DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 6 GB available space
Finally we'd like to thank everyone who supported us, espeically during last months Demo.
We can barely contain our excitement, but until next week, Happy surviving. - Your Floodland Team
Floodland: An Early Game Guide
As you emerge from the flooded wildness, end your nomadic exisitance and get started, the eternal survivor, Colon Damneders has kindly put together this guide for you.
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 regarding the mid and late game will be releasing on our social channels in the following days. You'll get the latest survival info and join the community of fellow survivors here: Twitter Facebook Discord Instagram
Happy surviving. - Your Floodland Team
DevBlog 12: 7 Days Till Release
“Greetings survivor”
The deluge will arrive for you in seven days. We’ve tested the waters, read the lore and studied the theory. Are you ready?
Welcome to Floodland, “Can you feel the waters lapping at your toes?”
We're proud to show you the prologue opening cut scene that will set the scene as you enter the game
It's only seven more sleeps until Floodland releases. Here are the exact times and dates across the globe.
Your continued survival is an achievement, and to reflect that progress, Floodland will have Steam Achievements to honour your milestones. Enjoy collecting examples such as:
Crunch Time = Have people work 7 number of days without a break (including Night Shifts).
Industrial Re-revolution = Start production using electricity.
Live Long and Prosper = Unlock all possible technology in the Development tree.
Leaders of Men = End the main storyline with no more than 10 deaths in the community.
Failures = Lead to the death of at least 30 people before reaching the end of the main storyline
While the game is set in the north east of present day USA, you can experience it in a variety of languages.
Today, we can also announce how much Floodland will cost.
United States = $29.99 Europe = €29.99 United Kingdom = £24.99 Japan = JP¥ 3,600 China = ¥99 South Korea = ₩34,000 Russia = ₽1999
We’re running final tests now and will communicate system requirements shortly.
Wishlist us on Steam and you won’t miss our release on November 15th. Until then, we recommend delving into our back catalogue of DevBlogs.
We can barely contain our excitement, but until next week, Happy surviving. - Your Floodland Team
DevBlog 11: 7 Days Till Release
“Greetings survivor”
The deluge will arrive for you in seven days. We’ve tested the waters, read the lore and studied the theory. Are you ready?
Welcome to Floodland, “Can you feel the waters lapping at your toes?”
We're proud to show you the prologue opening cut scene that will set the scene as you enter the game
It's only seven more sleeps until Floodland releases. Here are the exact times and dates across the globe.
Your continued survival is an achievement, and to reflect that progress, Floodland will have Steam Achievements to honour your milestones. Enjoy collecting examples such as:
Crunch Time = Have people work 7 number of days without a break (including Night Shifts).
Industrial Re-revolution = Start production using electricity.
Live Long and Prosper = Unlock all possible technology in the Development tree.
Leaders of Men = End the main storyline with no more than 10 deaths in the community.
Failures = Lead to the death of at least 30 people before reaching the end of the main storyline
While the game is set in the north east of present day USA, you can experience it in a variety of languages.
Today, we can also announce how much Floodland will cost.
United States = $29.99 Europe = €29.99 United Kingdom = £24.99 Japan = JP¥ 3,600 China = ¥99 South Korea = ₩34,000 Russia = ₽1999
We’re running final tests now and will communicate system requirements shortly.
Wishlist us on Steam and you won’t miss our release on November 15th. Until then, we recommend delving into our back catalogue of DevBlogs.
We can barely contain our excitement, but until next week, Happy surviving. - Your Floodland Team
DevBlog 11: Gameplay & Modding
“Greetings survivor”
”O.K. we’re stable and understand this world. It’s only natural to want to peer behind the certain and ask, what if? Let’s tinker with the very framework of society”
Welcome to Floodland, “Everything, but different”
With just two weeks to go until launch, it’s not long to wait now until you’ll be able to experience the whole of Floodland’s intriguing post-catastrophic world for yourself. In this DevBlog we’re going to take a look at gameplay, the core experience at the heart of Floodland, as well as exploring its modding possibilities which will allow you to experiment and adapt, and remake the game exactly how you would like to play it.
When it came to our core concept for Flood’s gameplay, we had one central aim. That was to tell a mature, thought-provoking story, which explored the social and civilizational challenges we face in today’s world, filtered through the lens of a post-disaster city-building game.
Moment to moment, we want you to experience the myriad challenges, decisions, and conundrums that a leader might face as they attempt to remake society. We centred gameplay around survival, both in the struggle to provide your community’s basic needs and having to cater for increasingly more sophisticated societal problems. We also threw in a pinch of exploration to add a sense of discovery and allow us to draw on the legacy resources of the old world.
We hope that we’ve created something that is unique and distinctive within the city-builder genre, with an emphasis on social dynamics and exploration, tied together by a rich storytelling layer. The interaction and dynamics between buildings, exploration, and managing your community are probably the elements of gameplay we’re most proud of.
Of course, there’s never enough time to include everything, but when we asked senior designer Michał Rudziński what gameplay features he’d like to have implemented, but didn’t quite have time to, he said:
“A leader change system, a waste treatment system, and a more complex crime system. I’d also have liked additional content in the exploration system to unveil its full potential.”
Kacper Kwiatkowski, game director answered: “More randomization of the map layout, and a more individualised approach to your community.”
Perhaps they’ll come in the fullness of time, but you’ll also be able to take our work and mod it to create new and interesting variations on Floodland’s main theme. You won’t necessarily need in-depth technical knowledge to mod the game, but if you want to go deeper, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube to get you started. We’ll also be publishing a detailed guide shortly after release.
As junior designer Bartek Romanowski says: “In most cases, ordinary players will be able to create their own mods, because they can edit the localization files or sheets that the mod replaces.”
You’ll be able to tweak all kinds of parameters including the traits of clans and leaders, community needs, buildings, building modes, laws, tech tree perks, crises and much more. To be honest it’s difficult to explain all the possibilities because we don't know where your imagination will take you. We’ll also be providing support post-release, with a manual on how to create a mod, what kind of files to include and where to put them. We’ll also be sharing an implementation-ready example asset bundle containing a modification of the existing buildings as soon as we can.
Over time we hope to provide even more support, with additional manuals on how to hack the game and add further modding options.
As Bartek says: “To be honest, we hope to see all kinds of mods from the community. We can’t wait to see what modders' experiments lead to and how they will grow and extend the game.”
Wishlist us on Steam and keep up-to-date with our weekly DevBlogs which will continue to delve into the mudded waters of Floodland. The tide has risen and there is much to prepare you for before November 15th's release.Using the tech of the before-times, you can follow us here for more.
Next week is the final DevBlog before release and we’ll detail the price, system specs and language options so you can confidently dive into Floodland
Happy surviving, - Your Floodland Team
DevBlog 10: Law and Order
“Greetings survivor”
We’ve found others! But what have they already been through? Do they share our ideas and values? We need their manpower, but at what cost to our fledgling society.
Welcome to Floodland, “With freedoms comes responsibilities”
When you have a small group of people huddling together and trying to meet their basic needs, there’s very little need for formal rules, you simply do what you have to in order to survive.
Yet, as your community expands, you’ll need laws and regulations to govern your citizens’ behaviour and to help your settlement grow and flourish. In this DevBlog we examine law and order, the foundation of how you shape your community in Floodland’s daunting post-apocalyptic world.
The design philosophy behind Floodland’s law and order system was to create a structure that engages players and helps them deal with the different ideologies of the clans in their community. Different clan leaders will want laws to reflect their own beliefs, but these might not please everyone, or indeed have a positive overall effect on your society. In this sense law and order is like a kind of puzzle which you have to solve in order to deal with social friction.
The law and order tree is divided up into six main branches which include authority, security, recreation, specialisation, survival, and a custom set to help mould your traditions. There’s a wide variety to choose from and we’ve made it so comprehensive because we don’t want to force you down any single path. The law tree allows you to develop plenty of contrasting features, everything from mandatory masks to help fight disease, to a choice between censorship or a free press, ethical dilemmas like experimenting on corpses, or social choices like allowing same sex marriage.
Floodland’s law and order system won’t try and guide you towards building a particular utopia or dystopia, but allows you to explore the possibilities using your own playstyle. For example, you can introduce authoritarian laws like establishing a militia, a police station or developing martial law. But, this may generate unrest amongst more freedom-loving clans and lead to a rise in crimes like assault and theft. You really need to try and keep a lid on unrest and keep it as low as possible to ensure a happy, functioning society. New laws can be developed to address a particular challenge, and some laws can be brought in temporarily, while others will be more permanent additions. Some special laws even require your society to have met specific prerequisites.
Recreation buildings are also an important part of developing your legal system. However, while they subdue unrest and allow different clans to mix in a more positive way, they are costly. Clans also have distinct preferences when it comes to how they spend their free time. Authoritarian one's favour gyms and gun clubs, while more peace loving ones prefer parks and forums. If you can match the right leisure building to the right neighbourhood, it will help build up your satisfaction level, gaining you influence points to spend on enacting new laws across your entire community. So plan carefully and listen to your people, because recreation buildings are an essential part of meeting the needs of the moment, as well as propelling your society forward. Although, be careful of how they affect inter-clan relations.
Floodland’s law and order system has gone through many changes as we iterated and developed it into its final form. Originally, it was very much a binary system based on statuses and thresholds, but that turned out to be a bit messy. So we rebuilt the core mechanics so that each clan member has their own parameters and needs, which generate an average satisfaction rating. When we added in a new user interface and other visualisations the system really started to come together and feel right. Now it’s a lot more intuitive and no matter how you like to govern, you’ll find the full force of the law much easier to apply.
Whether you agree with William O. Douglas that, “Common sense, makes good law,” or Otto von Bismarck that, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see how they are made,” Floodland’s law and order system will give you a powerful set of tools to mould your post-apocalyptic society, but which ones you choose, or how you apply them is entirely up to you.
And join us this Friday for a Dev AMA on Discord, you'll find us here:
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
Dev AMA on Discord
That's right, we're having a Dev AMA
Come join us on Discord this Friday by clicking the link here: >>> https://discord.com/events/1007288045868961933/1034417896648093746 <<<< It starts at 18:00 CEST / 17:00 BST / 9:00 PT
We'll talk: survival, city-building, law, order, doves & answer your questions. Totally casuall, no need to wear pants.
And ask us anything in the comments below on in the special channel we've created on Discord👇
Looking forward to seeing you there, - Your Floodland Dev Team
DevBlog 09: Ingame Events
“Greetings survivor”
Our society is shaped not only by the clans, but also events. The people have their own stories and dilemmas. Your choices, and bearing its inevitable boons and consequences will define us. Making no choice would be worse.
MINOR SPOILER WARNING
Welcome to Floodland, “We’ve have to make a choice”
As a survivor you can plan for many different eventualities, but you’re always at the mercy of unexpected events and unanticipated challenges. In this DevBlog, we’ll be taking a look at the different in-game events and dilemmas which you’ll have to meditate on for your community. They can aid its progress, hinder its expansion and affect how your clans feel in Floodland’s post-cataclysmic world.
When we came to planning in-game events, above all, we wanted to promote your engagement in this world. The aim was to build a series of mini-narratives that would help you become better immersed in the setting.
As narrative designer Piotr Rubaj says: “We thought of them as short stories, we wanted them to provoke emotions, avoid cliches, and at least sometimes, have an ending and resolution that wasn’t quite so obvious.”
Just as British prime minister Harold MacMillan famously once remarked, “It’s events, dear boy, events,” which are one of the most difficult things to deal with as a leader. In Floodland you can expect new events to appear quite frequently. The more you set out to explore the world and probe the secrets of its ruins and buildings, the more events you’ll encounter, so that more curious players can expect to encounter perhaps two to three for every hour of play.
So should you be cautious about these gameplay events? Not really, they reflect your current game state and the decisions you’ve previosuly made. While they can have both positive and negative effects, just as in the real world, there is still no predicting exactly what might happen next.
Some internal societal incidents will have mixed results and there are a few almost wholly negative ones in which almost every choice you make will have a downside, so it’s a case of picking the lesser of two evils. It’s a dynamic system, based on your game state and some events are intricately tied to the relationship between the clans in your settlement, ranging from simple envy to outright hostility, and they can provoke dramatic results.
Others though are much more positive and if peace and friendship reigns, some events will decrease unrest amongst your warring clans. It’s fair to say events are fairly comprehensive too and will cover all aspects of a settlement's life – everything from (four) weddings to a funeral.
But you won’t face these decisions alone, your clan leaders will chime in giving you some indication of how their people will respond to your decision. Go with your gut, appeal to the majority or appease a restless minority.
The other main events you’ll encounter arise from exploring the world around you and while the Wetlands are a dangerous place, they are also full of surprises. Searching through the ruins, you might discover the skeleton of the uncle of one of the clan chiefs and learn his dark history. Or come across an unusual dove. Or find an old doll that is of great value to certain people within your community.
Above all we’ve tried to make the events you’ll face in Floodland unique and memorable and if there’s one thing which Piotr wants you to take away about in-game events, it’s that: “We really put a lot of heart into them… We hope that at least a few events will stand out, even for those players who usually don't pay much attention to the narrative side of the game.”
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
DevBlog 08: Clans and Encounters
“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.”
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
DevBlog 07: Tech Tree & City Building
“Greetings survivor”
We have a presence, and for now it’s sustainable. I’m fed up with just surviving, it’s time to thrive. In the dregs of the old world we find knowledge. Let’s upgrade. Consequences be damned!
Welcome to Floodland, “We can rebuild better”
We hope you’ve been enjoying our SteamNextFest Demo. Feedback so far has been great and we welcome more. Many of you have proven your survival capabilities.
But now it’s time to flourish. Floodland is not just about surviving the catastrophic “Event”, it’s about growing and improving your community on the path to building a new society. Once you’ve covered your basic needs of food, water, and shelter, it’s time to start shaping your community and we’ve given you powerful tools to help achieve this.
The tech tree is your primary method of developing the buildings and technology you’ll need. It's divided up into four main quadrants: survival, well-being, exploration, and growth. These are presented on a clock-style interface and it’s trying to balance these competing areas which will be one of your most crucial tasks.
As you progress from gaining a foothold in this new world, growing from hunter gatherer to electrical engineer, you’ll have access to basic raw materials like rubbish, wood, and rubble, which can be gathered and processed and turned into resources you require to develop your community. Eventually, you’ll progress all the way around the hours of the clock to unlock and manufacture advanced materials like coal, metal, and concrete.
These four main quadrants of the clock are also intimately interconnected with the buildings that you’ll develop to further enhance your society. The Survival arc, for example, concerns itself with harvesting basic resources like wood, food and water, which in turn will enable you to develop starter buildings like the Fishing Dock, Water Still, and Forager Hut.
Those first two are vital for securing your food supply and water sources, but the Forager Hut is useful for harvesting components of the old world, allowing you to sort through rubbish and rubble and repurpose them to fulfil your community’s needs. If you follow the survival branch all the way to its logical conclusion, you’ll be able to construct advanced buildings like the Shellfish Farming Center, Fishing Harbor, Water Treatment Plant, and Insect Farm (yum!). You’ll also unlock new building modes and advancements for your current structures.
This means the tech tree is a powerful way of measuring your progress but it also provides different choices so you can select your own path. City building is part of society building, it’s not about developing every single advance in a linear fashion but carefully choosing the ones you think will give your society the best chance of flourishing and facing your immediate challenges.
You’ll need to change and adapt your research and building strategies according to your current needs, as well as anticipating the challenges you may face in the near future. It’s about cause and effect, making trade-offs, and realising there’ll be good and bad. All of which will change with every different playthrough.
As Michał Rudziński, co-lead designer says, "Research points are limited so we force you to make choices, to specialise rather than generalise. It means there’s a consequence and weight to your decisions. You can’t have everything.”
This means you’ll have to choose wisely, survivors. A Medical Tent is probably always going to be an essential path to establishing your community, but whether you develop that before or after you construct Climbing Equipment is just one of many intriguing decisions Floodland will ask you to make.
All the while, keep in mind your ultimate goal, working towards unlocking the mysteries of the power plant. Some of these, like the transformer and turbines, will need to be manufactured from those advanced materials, others will have to be discovered by exploring the world.
If you would like to become a beta tester and provide feedback you can apply on our form here
And join us on Discord channel: https://discord.gg/Hnbxg9CJbZ
Wishlist us on Steam and keep up-to-date with our weekly DevBlogs which will continue to delve into the mudded waters of Floodland. The tide has risen and there is much to prepare you for before the November 15th release.
Tomorrow, we're having an AMA with the Devs Alex and Tomek. That's Friday the 7th at 17:00 CEST / 18:00 BST / 08:00 PST It'll be Streamed on our Steam page https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336180/Floodland/ Drop your questions in chat or in #🙋︱questions-4-devs on our Dicord channel and we'll answer them all .
And if you would like to win a Floodland game key with our SteamNextFest Demo just show us the beauty of survival by putting a screenshot of your starting settlement in the artworks section of our Steam community. Closing date is Monday the 10th and we'll pick some winners. Tips: hold RMB to move the camera & consider lighting effectsand ctrl+u to toggle the U.I. GLHF!
Come back again next week when we’ll introduice you to the clans and encounters your sure to meet as you venture forth into the floodlands. Until then, happy surviving,
