Flotsam Reviews

Its a cool game. Its tempting to build too much. Gaah...just another one of those.

It's really buggy. If you have several saves for whatever reason, the game might confuse them with each other. For example I can't possibly have the summary of Day 12 while I'm on Day 5. Anyway, it was enjoyable.

Game is nice but my drifters keep getting stuck in hauling animation. Sometimes i was able to solve this by changing prioritys or deconstructing the affected building. Now i only have 1 drifter left to work and thats no fun.

Having a blast with this game. Good goofy toon graphics, good tutorial for first time start up. Light, casual game you can get lost in for hours.

Aswesome game! It's one of those games you start playing and then suddenly it's the middle of the night 😸 You can play is very relaxed and cozy. The graphics are very cute and I like that you can decorate your ship-island. It's early access but I feel like they are constantly updating and improving the game. I feel like the devs listen to the players as well. If you like cute, relaxed, cozy base-builld/management games then this is definitely for you.

Was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better before update. Mini map no longer works properly, drifters get stuck, Map is way smaller now and not as populated. I loved it before the update... Now im struggling a little. I have faith when it is finished it will be great. The positive is its an awesome game.

Had this game for a very long time and just recently started playing again after several big updates have come out, I am pleasantly surprised by how well it plays now and all the new stuff that has been added, definitely worth a play through

The recent update made the game unplayable - the map size is too small to actually unlock all the features! It didn't used to be - I'd played it before and the world map was huge, larger than I could uncover before unlocking everything and getting bored. I used to enjoy it quite a lot but now would not recommend.

A word of caution is also why I like Flotsam: It's in development, so it's changing. Things work, then change, and sometimes break before they work again. It's like playing a new game every few months. The play is casual, which I like. But interesting enough to keep me playing one more game day. They've added "architect" which allows fixing city layout. Floating things can be rearranged. So unlike other city games, when something doesn't work, you don't have to destroy, crash your population, and then rebuild. I like the discord community too.

[b]Flotsam[/b] (Early Access Build 0.8.5f2) is a cute little city-builder with cartoony graphics, some interesting ideas, and an ambitious price tag. It will appeal to certain players (see "Recommendation" section below for the tldr), but in the absence of a "neutral review" option, I can't recommend it. [h3]What Works For Me[/h3] ✅ The cartoony dystopian art with [i]Borderlands[/i]-style lines is charming and unique for this genre. I especially like the ramshackle nature of every workstation and how the scrap-plastic paths genuinely appear to be crafted from flotsam. ✅ Multistep crafting requires some strategy, especially early on: salvaged goods must be refined into plastic scrap, which is refined into floaters, which is required to build new workstations. Wet wood needs to be dried to create dry wood and then chopped into firewood so you can distill fresh water. ✅ Villagers have randomized pre-flood and post-flood backgrounds that give morale and skill benefits to certain jobs. You start with three villagers, can recruit more, and can adjust their priorities to boost morale and production. The Steam page mentions that villagers have dislikes as well, but I rolled a bunch of characters and never saw a dislike or negative effect. ✅ Hilariously, your post-apocalypse villagers are as fussy about food as I am; an endless diet of seaweed and fish bits will tank morale, especially on a raft full of foodies. I found myself researching culinary upgrades over survival upgrades. ✅ The map function is pretty neat: You can see resources and ruins, but only within range of your ship or around a previously scoped-out tower. Moving your ship uses eel-ectricity and villagers can only gather resources within a certain range, so you need to be clever about where you park. [h3]What Doesn't Work For Me[/h3] ❎ It wasn't long long before the gameplay loop of "move - gather materials - wait - craft - wait" started to feel tedious and repetitive. Your villagers aren't particularly intelligent, so you need to turn off stations to keep them on task, but other than that, everything is so automated that I was playing on max speed and actively watching YouTube. ❎ For a 0.8 version, the tech trees are short; in 90 minutes, I unlocked a chunk of them in the hopes that more would appear as I advanced, but that doesn't seem to be the case. ❎ The tutorial is long and a poor example of gameplay. I spent around 10 minutes with it, and learned far more by just playing the game. ❎ You're stranded in an ocean, similar to [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2020710/Havendock/?curator_clanid=45365863]Havendock[/url][/i] , [b]but[/b] build your city around a moving boat. There's so much potential for clever mechanics or some additional crunch (e.g. balancing lift/tilt/thrust in [i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2438680/Airborne_Empire/?curator_clanid=45365863]Airborne Empire[/url][/i]), but the actual implementation is bland. ❎ When idle, your villagers form a single glitchy gyrating mass in the center of the boat. There's a weird "oh" sound effect that makes it feel particularly... inappropriate. [h3]Final Thoughts[/h3] While I initially wrote a "tentatively" positive review for [b]Flotsam[/b], my opinion of it decreases every time I play another city-builder. Six years after launching into Early Access, [b]Flotsam[/b] feels more like a polished pre-release demo than a game worthy of a $25 USD price tag. While the character backgrounds are quirky and the art is cute, the actual gameplay is monotonous and lacking. Progression is limited and largely hands-off, so there's not much for the player to do or engage with. I was bored, and uninstalled after writing my first review. [h3]Recommendation[/h3] If you love resource gathering, exploring, and building pre-fab shantytowns, and you're looking for something a little mindless and repetitive to play while watching TV, then this is a good pick. I'd also suggest it to cozy gamers who enjoy multistep crafting and moving at their own pace, or who want a little more art in [i]Havendock[/i] or fewer mechanics in the [i]Airborne[/i] games. This is not for you if you like hands-on management or conflict, or if you're looking for a unique spin on city building. You might find better options on [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45365863-Eekz-Today/list/138164/]this list of City Building/Management games[/url]. [quote][b]Follow [u][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45365863/]Eekz Today[/url][/u] for more crafting, life sim, management, strategy, and story-rich recommendations.[/b][/quote]