Flotsam

This is a tough one to review. On the one hand, I do like the concept and it feels very similar to a few other titles like Raft, Havendock, etc. All the pieces are there, gather materials, research a tech tree, build ever more complicated workflows, etc. The game took me 20 hours to get to a point where I think I've finished? There's nothing left to do really. I researched everything quite awhile back, though it took me an eternity just to find a single type of resource (no spoilers here), which was honestly crazy frustrating. Some of the buildings are very confusing - looking at you fish farms. I have no idea what is happening and when I'll actually get fish. Also, the way that churning out resources from buildings work is also very, very annoying. You might have a workshop that can make plastic waste from garbage or firewood from furniture, or electrical components from computer waste, however you can only set it to generate ONE of those automatically up to a production limit that you set. If you want to automate the production of all three of those as you get raw materials in, you literally need to build three buildings, each of which will be idle most of the time. It's just kind of dumb. Like I said in the beginning, I've stopped playing because I've essentially done all there is to do in the game, and there is no 'ending'. My town is essentially self-sustaining and I could stay put if I wanted to. I suppose the one thing I could do is collect all of the remaining drifters, but there's no real point to it. They just suck up resources, which means I need to build more crap in the same way I've already done and the map is all the same stuff on copy paste. So all in all, it was a mostly fun adventure that got tedious after hour 10 or so. I think the devs could make some QoL improvements and maybe add something to the story to make it more interesting as well. So, recommened with reservations, but not a No.

This review will feel very negative and pessimistic, but I also want to congratulate and encourage the devs because making games for a small indie studio is never easy and their work should always being recognized in this jungle. But still. This is a 30 $ CAD with taxes game and for this price to me it really feel like and empty and boring game which is no different from the many other games of the same genre. I'm sad of doing it, but here's why I posted a negative review : - Buildings, if we can call them like that, are smalls heaps of DIY odds and ends held together on floating rafts. So I simply dont understand why they could not be moved ? It would be so convenient to be able to slide building from one point to another, creating dynamic floating town with moving district. This could help a lot in planning. In my game, I had to scrap and restart my town multiple time since my layout wasnt appropriate once I was getting further in the game and unblocking things. Having to demolish and rebuild each buildings was very long and frustrating. And you cannot destroy a pathway if there's buildings attached to it, meaning if you want to just change a road, you must delete everything first. - The tech tree is way too small... - I wasnt researching the good things at first so I neglected the batteries tech. Results ? I now have a too big town and my boat go so slow and must recharge its battery almost instantaneously when moving... I was about rage quitting because of that... This is clearly skills issue. But the problem for me is that at some point I didnt even have and idea about weight in the game since the UI isnt that clear and is not explained in the tutorial. - It is so long to gather new people... Even with the radio technician. - The world at first look huge, but you quickly discover its emptiness and repetition. Every islands is the same. There's not much biome and they all feel similar. There's not much of resources. There's almost no animals (spot of uninteresting fishes, seagulls and weird whales). Actually there's no main story or any narrative features in the world. - The music is not that good, I was pleased by the trailer music feeling like a atmosphere jovial and rhythmic, full of hope but also percusions and bass. But it is not like that really... A lot of time I feel like there's no music at all, the world just feel so silent. Your character doesnt talk or react. The sea of the environment doesnt offer any interesting sounds. - The graphics arent immersive. I could compare this to Oxygen not Included. Same kind of funny and disorganized world that doesnt take itself serious. But ONI feel almost artistic to look at despite the low graphic needed while this game doesnt look good and when you zoom everything look blurry and fuzzy. City building are often played to enjoyed your work. Here I dont have this feeling... I'm just looking at a pile of scraps and junks badly floating. - The update rate is way too slow. The game got out in 2019. It was six years ago. I dont understand how the game would be only in that state with no clear roadmap at least and frequent updates. - The game is not well optimized. Sometimes - and I dont know why - the FPS suddently drop drastically, like it became unplayable. The only way I found to recover from this is to restart the game... I didnt find any help online...

Very fun game, and it already has so much content to play through even in early access. There are still few bugs that I noticed, for example it would show notifications that they need a house even though everyone already has a house. If I exit to main menu and play again, the notification would then disappear. I am very excited for the full release and I hope the game will have a lot of updates and maybe new maps in the future!

Good for a couple hours... or a lot of hours...

Jakarta 2050 Simulator