Survival adventure The Flame in the Flood is out today – find out what to expect from the Complete Edition

There’s a lot of things that in the American wilderness that can hurt the unsuspecting traveller. The hazards can range from the annoying itching of poison ivy to the certain doom of an angry grizzly bear – we’ve got those and everything in between waiting in The Flame in the Flood.

Our survival adventure sees you rafting through a ruined backwater river on the hunt for a place of safety. All semblance of society has fallen away and nature is taking over. The good news is that you’ll have the skills to survive. Find the right resources and craft what you need to survive – weapons, traps, clothing, medicine and more. You’ll need to be entirely self-sufficient if you want to make it to the end of the river.

The Flame in the Flood: Complete Edition is available now on PlayStation 4 and contains the full Flame in the Flood experience along with a Dynamic Theme created by Truant Pixel, Avatars and Directors’ Commentary mode. Creating this commentary mode for the Complete Edition has been a lot of fun as it’s given us a chance to reflect on the game we created with the benefit of a little time. I’d like to share a couple of these development stories with you today.

One big decision we made was to set our game along a procedurally-generated river instead of just a landmass of some kind. We were thinking about how tempting it is in other survival games to just build a hideout and turtle-up, it’s fun to do, but it’s not the experience we were shooting for. If you find yourself in a survival situation you’d never actually start a potato patch for your new farm, you’d be looking for safety.

We wanted players to go on a journey and the more we thought about rivers the more excited we got. The river in The Flame in the Flood is our tool to drive players to a single goal (unless you’re hardcore and playing our Endless Mode) but it also offers them plenty of agency along the way. The water ebbs and flows around many islands, each with different traits and resources. You’ll have to decide which places you’ll battle the current to get to and which you’ll have to pass up.

The locations you’ll discover have been taken over by mother nature and we put a lot of work into getting the wildlife right. Wolves are one of the most persistent threats you’ll face and we put a lot of AI work into getting them right. Our wolves will react to stimuli in the environment – startle some ravens and they’ll come to investigate, lure a bear towards them and maybe they’ll chose the bigger meal.

However, if the wolves come for you they’ll stick to your periphery and wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, they won’t just run straight at you and take a bite like other games. Scare them off with fire and run the heck away or, if you’re feeling very confident and flush with supplies, try to turn them into your dinner.

If you want to hear more stories from the development of The Flame in the Flood you can enable the Commentary Mode when you begin your adventure (though we’d strongly suggest playing without it first to enjoy the experience). Good luck in the wilderness!