The Flame in the Flood was The Molasses Flood’s debut title.
It was a pared down survival game, in which you play as a girl with her dog, traveling a flooded post-societal American south.
The inspiration came from two ideas, one of mine and one from one of our co-founders, Scott Sinclair. I was interested in the design of a game based on real world survival, in which the primary dangers are wild animals and the elements, as opposed to zombies or some other combat oriented threat. Sinclair had been exploring the visual idea of “tiny worlds” that the player could explore.
These ideas came together in the form of a river that bound them - the river was your foe, but also the ribbon that tied together the survival concept with the islands, or ‘tiny worlds’.
The Flame in the Flood was my first full game as the Lead (in fact - only) Designer, and while there are many things I’d do differently now I’m proud of the tight and minimal design. I’ve given a talk on the design process, which you can view here: The Flame in the Flood Design Post Mortem.
Some highlights of what we accomplished:
From company founding to launch was 21 months - this was within weeks of our initial launch target.
The game was built for under $500k including marketing, contract art, music, localization, QA. We worked lean.
We broke the top 10 best sellers on Steam, and more significantly were in the top sellers on Switch for months.
The original soundtrack is beloved, and was nominated for an IGF award, along with a nomination for Art.
It was played by Soulja Boy at E3, who was instantly bored and glided away on his Soulja Board.
It taught me how to run a game business, and the million things beyond being a designer that are part of creating and shipping a game.
The Flame in the Flood is now published by CD Projekt Red, and is available on Windows PC, Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.