I had this game on my wishlist for a while because it looked great, then it was offered free from HB for a bit. I should have actually bought it because it is such a great game.

It's a rouge-like dungeon crawler, except your fast-travel world is a river you navigate on a raft and your dungeons are campsites, ghost towns and abandoned marinas. I finished the campaign and did some endless river, and really enjoyed both. The campaign's story is vague but neat and really puts the drive into continuing. I felt it very appropriate that I crawled my way to the end after being mauled half to death, but I made it.

There's some glitchy-ness that happens, both in design and mechanically. By design, in the campaign I had no missions until I was pretty much done the game and didn't need to craft anything for the mission's rewards. I hit a couple of bugs that forced me to restart from the last checkpoint, which was when I'd fill a jug of water from my raft it stick me there without any movement options. Then there's some minor invisible-wall issues for your character and animals, which just don't feel comfortable rather than game-breaking. I unfortunately discovered how to give yourself an invisible never-ending-torch.

The music is incredible. I'm a big Hot Water Music and Chuck Ragan fan, and didn't realize it was his compositions until the first song with vocals hit. There's a lot of instrumental atmospheric tracks with a bit of acoustic twang to make you feel the rural environment, then there's faster, folky tracks that pick up the pace alongside rafting the rapids or being chased by wolves. My gripe with the soundtrack though is that when it ends, it doesn't pick back up until you enter your raft again.

Trap placement and the bow feel clunky, but I really feel that's worth it. It would be unbalanced to have a lone survivor kill a group of wolves like they're firing a semi-automatic in a barren, flooded apocalypse. I've played both Kb+m and Xbox controller for this game, and they both feel fine. I died a lot in the campaign, but it was really worth it. Either I didn't prioritize making space and time for food, or I thought I could take on a bear with a single trap and a bow. There's a real feeling of dread when you realize you didn't prepare any antidote for that snake bite, and you're rushing to campsites to find a missing ingredient. That's part of this game, and it makes it fun.

Great job Molasses Flood!