The survival-based town builder is set in a waterlogged world and features moving towns, procedural world generation, and an eclectic group of survivors. Players will manage a floating village community as it sails across an endless ocean. In their fight to survive, they’ll depend on recycled garbage and scrap, used to construct structures that catch fish and create drinkable water. On their journey, they’ll encounter other stranded strangers, dangerous sea animals, and mysterious ruins and wreckages.

As players steer their town and explore the sprawling, dynamic environment, they‘ll uncover tall ruins, underwater cities, and reefs full of sea life and garbage. They’ll have to choose which obstacles to avoid and which to scavenge as they drift through the harsh ocean world. Players will rescue and care for drifters, who transform garbage, driftwood, and flotsam into boats and buildings, allowing them to collect rainwater, hunt for various creatures, and reel up scrap from the expansive sea floor.

The World Update reworks the town-traveling in a way that opens up the game. Take to the seas with your new townheart, move to any location, grow your own seaweed and more!

Flotsam is available on Steam Early Access and Kartridge at the price of $24.99 / €22.99 / £19.99.

Thanks to everybody who tested this update on the experimental branch. You helped us shape and tweak the game to its current state, huzza!

We're still working on translating the new parts of the game so some elements might remain untranslated.

Old Savegames

We try to minimize disruptions to existing save-games. Unfortunately that's sometimes inevitable when actively developing the game. In an effort to reduce further disruptions we've reworked the save-system behind the scenes. This means that your old save-games won't work anymore.
As an upside newer save-games will be less prone to breaking. To that end we've updated the warning when loading a save-game to more correctly indicate if the save will still work.

If you want to keep playing with your old save on the older version of the game, you can still do that on a Steam branch with the previous version.

This is how you can enable the previous version of Flotsam. This will only work when you're not in a game:
1. Open Steam Library
2. Right click Flotsam
3. Select Properties
4. Go to tab 'Betas' at the top.
5. Select 'early_access_0.2' in the drop-down.

Change Log

General

• Overhauled town traveling mechanic completely:
• Fully zooming out or tapping the map key now brings you to the overworld.
• The map now shows a view of the greater world where you can search for points of interest and landmarks.
• Left-clicking on the map view enables you to move to new areas.
• Townheart is now a ship.
• Townheart is now equipped with an engine that burns oil to move the town.
• Townheart engine is damaged at the beginning and must be repaired.
• Your town now rotates depending on the direction you last moved in.
• Once you've explored a region, you can move on to the next if you have enough fuel (currently requires 75% of your full fuel capacity). The new area does not have new gameplay associated with it, it is mainly to make the game world infinite.
• World is now generated procedurally with landmarks grouping in clusters.
• Updated auto-save interval to be time based. (A new auto-save is made every real-time 10 minutes.)
• Default graphics quality when starting the game is now 'High'.
• Drifters with lower health will now prioritize getting food or water, instead of the person on top of the list.

Gameplay

• Added new constructions:
• * Seaweed Grower: Grows seaweed spores to edible seaweed.
• * Oil Refinery: Converts plastic to oil.
• * Medium Storage Yard: Stores 45 items.
• * Large Drying Rack: Dries 6 items at once.
• * Fish Sticks: Dries 5 fish at once. Fish drying has been removed from the drying rack.
• Townheart is now a movable ship.
• Added item:
• * Seaweed Spore: Can be grown in a seaweed grower to edible seaweed.
• Drifters can now swim to salvage landmarks.
• Research points can be acquired on salvage landmarks now.
• Investigating landmarks has a lower priority now
• You can now cycle through all your drifters with the tab key (adjustable in settings).
• Showing drifter names has been moved to left alt by default and can now be adjusted in the settings.
• Workshopping is now below desalinating / cooking assignments by default.
• The drying rack & fish sticks will automatically queue a recipe.
• Refined selection on the buildings.

Pathfinding

• Improved pathfinding thresholds to reduce drifters switching between walking and swimming.

Balancing
BUILDINGS
Woodworking shed:

• FIREWOOD: Increased production time from 14 seconds to 60 seconds.
• ROPE: Increased production time from 10 seconds to 30 seconds.
  
• Increased plastic waste cost from 6 to 12.
• Decreased dried wood cost from 8 to 6.
  
  Desalinator:
• WATER: Increased production time from 23 seconds to 60 seconds.
• WATER: Decreased produced amount from 4 to 2.
• WATER: Decreased fuel use from 4 to 1.
  
• Increased plastic waste cost from 4 to 14.
• Increased pipe cost from 6 to 8.
• Added 16 metal scrap cost.
• Removed 20 screw cost.
  
  Distiller:
• WATER: Increased production time from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.
• WATER: Decreased fuel use from 2 to 1.
  
• Increased plastic waste cost from 10 to 14.
• Decreased dried wood cost from 8 to 6.
  
  Small Drying rack:
• DRIED WOOD: Increased production time from 80 seconds to 180 seconds.
• DRIED FISH: Increased production time from 100 seconds to 180 seconds..
  
  Solar still:
• WATER: Increased production time from 100 seconds to 450 seconds.
  
• Increased plastic waste cost from 6 to 14.
• Added 4 pipe cost.
• Decreased dried wood cost from 18 to 10.
  
  Fish Kabob:
• COOKED FISH: Increased production time from 10 seconds to 60 seconds.
  
• Increased dried wood cost from 4 to 12.
• Added 2 screw cost.
• Removed 6 plastic waste cost.
• Removed 14 metal scrap cost.
  
  Food Truck:
• COOKED FISH: Increased production time from 10 seconds to 60 seconds.
• SUSHI: Increased production time from 10 seconds to 60 seconds.
• SUSHI: Increased production amount from 3 to 5.
  
• Increased dried wood cost from 6 to 12.
• Added 10 screw cost.
• Removed 6 plastic waste cost.
  
  Fishing Hut:
• NIBBLE FISH: Increased fishing time from 29 seconds to 120 seconds.
• NIBBLE FISH: Increased fish amount from 3 to 5.
  
  Scrapsmith:
• PIPE: Increased production time from 10 seconds to 30 seconds.
  
• Increased plastic waste cost from 6 to 12.
• Removed 4 dried wood cost.
  
  Plastic Recycler:
• PLASTIC NET: Increased production time from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
  
• Increased plastic waste cost from 8 to 18.
• Removed 12 screw cost.
  
  Small Water Container:
• Increased plastic waste cost from 6 to 8.
• Decreased pipe cost from 6 to 2.
• Removed 4 dried wood cost.
  
  Water Container:
• Increased plastic waste cost from 10 to 14.
• Decreased pipe cost from 6 to 3.
• Removed 6 metal scrap cost.
  
  Medium Storage Yard:
• Increased dried wood cost from 8 to 10.
  
  Large Storage Yard:
• Increased dried wood cost from 4 to 10.
• Added 2 rope cost.
• Decreased metal scrap cost from 14 to 10.
• Removed 8 plastic waste cost.
  
  Bed:
• Increased dried wood cost from 6 to 12.
• Removed 8 plastic waste cost.
  
  House:
• Increased dried wood cost from 6 to 12.
• Increased metal scrap cost from 8 to 10.
• Removed 8 plastic waste cost.
  
  Townheart:
• Decreased liquid storage from 60 to 40.
  
  RESOURCES
• Increased boat radius from 300 to 500.
  
  Seaweed landmarks:
• Mainly contains seaweed spores now.
• Contain significantly less seaweed.
  
  Factory:
• Added 10 metal scrap.
  
  Fish shack:
• Added 10 metal scrap.
• Removed 20 raw fish.
• Added 20 dried fish.
  
  Wood shacks (01):
• Added 10 metal scrap.
• Added 5 canned food.
  
  Wood shacks (02):
• Added 5 metal scrap.
• Added 5 canned food.
  
  Wood shacks (03):
• Added 5 metal scrap.
• Added 5 canned food.
  
  Fishing spot:
• Reduced fish amount from 25 to 10.
  
  Starting supplies:
• Increased water amount from 15 to 20.
• Decreased food amount from 25 to 20..
  
  VITALS
• Removed "New World" condition.
• Drifters will now sleep, drink & eat when they're at 10% of their respective vitals, instead of at 30%.
• Thirst will reduce to 0% in 300 seconds instead of 235 seconds.
• Hunger will reduce to 0% in 600 seconds instead of 333 seconds.
• Tiredness will reduce to 0% in 600 seconds instead of 600 seconds.
• Damage from thirst has been reduced by 33%.
• Damage from hunger has been reduced by 33%.
• Healing will apply as long as you're not hungry or thirsty (<10%) instead of when above 70% of both vitals.
• Health will go to 100% in 4 seconds instead of 50 seconds.

Visuals

• Adjusted the size of buildings to be more uniform.
• Adjusted the water visuals of stored water.
• Added small cloud effect when items are finished drying.
• Placing a marker will now only show the relevant range. Showing the swimming range while placing a boat range caused confusion.

Audio

• Added sounds for townheart engine and movement.
• Added sounds for hovering over landmarks.
• Added sounds for map interactions.

UI

• Map:
• * Map is now in a 3D view and shows miniature versions of landmarks and point of interest.
• * The town is now represented by a miniature townheart.
• * Shows engine state and fuel contents.
• * Town route is now shown when hovering over destinations.
• * Showing interaction radius for the town as a subtle circle.
• Added capacity bar under inventory button.
• Added firewood to resources at the top.
• Added clear amounts for storage in descriptions of constructions.
• Added border around the screen when the game is paused.
• Added engine section in the townheart construction panel.
• Updated inventory full warning above inventory button.
• Updated farm recipe panel.
• Updated inventory full warning icon.
• Inventory full warning now shows only when the inventory is completely full.
• Updated UI Icon for nourished to be clearer.
• Added production time to passive producer UI.
• Updated UI icon for the landmark interaction assignment.
• Updated UI icon for wood dryer.
• Updated UI icon for woodworking shed.
• Replaced loading screen.
• Tweaked some icons.
• Added highlight on the research button when something new is available for research.
• Added compass arrow pointing to townheart when townheart is not in range. Clicking the arrow will center on the townheart.

Performance

• Greatly improved physics performance of flotsam in the world.
• Reduced memory footprint of drifter portraits.

Persistence

• Updated persistence to support new map mechanic.
• Reworked large part of the saving and loading system to be more future-proof.

Fixes

• Fixed issue where load save panel had wrong title.
• Fixed issue where a stuck seagull or drifter might cause loading to fail.
• Fixed issue where healing would quickly reduce thirst & hunger.
• Fixed issue where some audio sources didn't resume playing after being paused.
• Fixed issue where audio settings weren't properly set in the map view.
• Fixed issue where character portrait would be white square when your inventory was full.
• Fixed issue where drifters would not show the proper warning when they couldn't salvage a landmark due to storage being full.
• Fixed issue where items would get stuck in a producer when deconstructed, causing it to never deconstruct.
• Fixed issue where passive producers would not be deconstructable when it was marked for deconstruction at the wrong time.
• Fixed issue where boats would flip upside down and stay turned over. They will now automatically start floating upright.
• Fixed drifters colliding with landmarks and getting stuck.

Key Features

• A constantly moving landscape while your town floats on the ocean currents.
• Construct and maintain a floating town.
• Give jobs, feed and help your drifters to survive in a flooded world.
• Befriend sea creatures and defend yourself against the dangers of the open sea.

Flotsam is in development for PC, scheduled for 2020.