Flotsam is defined as the wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating on or washed up by the sea. In this survival town-builder game, Flotsam, you use the debris you find to build your own floating town.
After 6 years in early access, developers Pajama Llama Games and publisher Stray Fawn Games have releases Flotsom version 1.0 on Steam on December 4th. Version 1.0 introduces a main narrative quest line, specialist quests and four new specialists (chemist, electrician, birdkeeper and aquaculturist), a new upgrade system, quality of life Improvements, ten new buildings and new regions to the map.
Starting with little more than a plastic jar of clean drinking water, your three person crew bobs along on a small boat in the ocean. The crew will swim out to collect plastics, and soggy wood and here’s where you start planning your build. Creating tents, storage, ways to dry the wood out, etc. You will begin making life more comfortable for your crew. Building items will require you to use not only the raw resources you find but also refined resources. You can build a sawmill, a metal recycler, rope, and tool makers (to help harvest other resources you find). You will start your food manufacturing by building a giant salad spinner to process seaweed for food, but will eventually learn to fish and open up the ability to grill that fish for higher-quality food.
The higher skills need to be researched before they can be opened, and the points required for the research come from levelling up your crew. As you travel further around the map, you will encounter random people whom you can ask to join your crew. This means more help, but also more mouths to feed. Resources are limited in each section of the map, but it’s worth moving around, gathering, and upgrading as much as possible. Pay careful attention to the hunger, thirst, and comfort of your crew; they can die quickly, meaning restarting from the beginning with a new town, or starting from a previous save and hoping you can make some changes quickly.
Flotsam has so many things to love. It’s a cozy town builder; it takes place on the ocean and involves cleaning up the environment. It involves research trees, crew, time, and inventory management, as well as survival aspects like managing food, water, and shelter.
The graphics are cute, cozy, and delightful. You can see details through the blue water, and the tree hugger in me wanted to clean up every bit of trash I saw. The music is chill and relaxing.
Created by a three person Swiss dev team, and priced at only $24.99, Flotsam is a fantastic game and definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of town building games.
Ophelia Payne 
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