[h2]Great Concept[/h2]
The gameplay is very appealing, have fun with realistic water physics in a variety of environments, while you scrabble to get rid the water.
The premise simple, you're a proactive guy trying to help out your flooded town armed with a handful of tools.
Your trusty shovel will help you dig through the mud, and give you the option of forming channels for the water to follow, or create dams and hold the water back or divert it elsewhere. Your shovel is also great for clearing out drains.
You have pumps and generators too, which perfect for draining bodies of water confined to a space with no run-off.
There also a rake, for clearing blocked surface drains. And you'll be revisiting those drains when they clog up again, a nice touch.
There's a handful of other tools too, some useful, others a nice touch, but otherwise unnecessary... Or are they, more on this in a bit.
You can even purchase bigger vehicles
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
Starting with the tutorial, you spend a few minutes learning how to use the various tools. There's a touch of humour thrown in with regards to your neighbour.
Once you finish the tutorial, you find yourself locked in the garage with a whiteboard and map attached to it. The radio is on and you here a short news clip, again humorous. This sets the tone for some expected amusement and potential hijinks.
Once you select the map, you can choose the next level/environment, visit the shop and buy new kit, and then decided on your loadout. You're given a little bit of a hint as to what's likely to be needed, and you only have a limited amount of space in your truck.
Once at the location you're on your own to work out what needs doing, where you need to go, etc. All your equipment is dumped out of your truck onto the ground, if there's a lot, it can go scattering of into the distance (I had to go and fetch a couple of buckets that bounced and rolled down the hill at the construction site).
You have a tablet device, which provides you a map and highlights position of drains and colour codes the depth of water.
There is a checklist (not on the tablet, oddly, which breaks game immersion) that gives you areas that need draining/clearing.
There's a few simplistic puzzles occasionally thrown in, such as needing to drain an area before you can flick a switch to power something, or a pipe that needs repairing to stop the ingress of water. Drains can be hidden or covered over, or at a sufficient depth in the water so you can't initially reach them.
A lot of the gameplay mainly revolves around raking, digging, and pumping. In fact, if you're patient enough that's pretty much all you need to do.
The pumps are completely simplistic, the outlet hose only reaches so far to you hve to consider where you're putting the pump, and where the water will run off to, because you don't want it flowing back to the area you're trying to clear. The generation for the pump can't get wet, otherwise it cuts out, and then you'll have to pick it up and replace it to reset it.
There is a day and night cycle, and you have lamps available to help illuminate the area. Darkness is truly dark, and your pocket torch is terribly weak, meaning those lamps are worthwhile. The lamps only have a realistic limited range too.
To make matters worse, in the street environments, the street lights fail, again forcing you to consider the lamps.
At the time of writing there were 11 levels, including the tutorial. None of the levels are difficult to complete.
[h2]Watered Down[/h2]
It's at this point I need to mention the stuff that's not so great.
The first thing that should be noted is the issue with AMD GPUs and Fluid Motion Frames and Radeon Anti-Lag. These need turning off in the AMD Adrenalin software . If these are not turned of, the game will eventually grind to a halt, and the frame rate will drop to zero. However, this won't be apparent until you're several levels in, and there is no ovvious reason for it. See the Discussion sticky for more details.
As mentioned earlier, this is a great concept for a game, but the execution has let the game down.
The levels are not overly complex or vast. The majority of the levels are just draining relatively flat areas, streets, building interiors etc. More often than not a lot of the drainage can be done by clearing a few drains and waiting.
Pumps have decent enough hose lengths for it to never really be a problem or challenge where you place the hose, and that's equally true for the generator, there's no effort required.
Most of to tools are under-utilised, and in some cases not even used. I completed the game without ever using the inflatable barriers.
The starting vehicle is sufficient enough to carry all the tools you need to complete the entire level. This might not be completely true if you want sufficient lighting on hand.
Lighting is another issue. While darkness is done properly, I found it so tedious setting up the lighting for a limited range I just gave up and struggled by with the torch. In reality it wasn't such an issue, because a lot of the time I was waiting for pumps to do their thing, or I could work in another area with existing lighting.
The game has a timed challenge mode, where you compete to clear the area in the quickest time possible, where your time is ranked on a leader board with other players.
I'm sure some people find these types of challenges fun, but I don't really see the attraction. It's largely going to be about memorising where the blocked drains are, ensuring you've purchased a sufficient number of the most powerful pumps and generators and then racing around placing equipment etc.
For me this style of gameplay is cheap attempt at increasing difficulty. It doesn't appeal to me.
There are so many ways the levels could have been design to at difficulty and add challenges. Block routes, add impassable obstacles. Design the level so areas have be completed in a specific order to maximise efficiency. Reduce the number of tools or types of tools you can bring, e.g. only two pumps, or four pumps but only one generator. Random water flow rates would have been very interesting, as it would make each play through different and potentially forcing a different playstyle.
Mud does not erode. You can build huge, rock-solid walls and hold-back unrealistic amounts of water. While it might be too difficult to simulate mud erosion, a simple compromise would have been to limit the height mud could be stacked.
Sand bags would have been an excellent of obvious addition to the game. This could have been implemented in several ways, you buy full sandbags, and require a big truck to carry a useful amount, or you buy empty bags and fill them with sand in the level (similar to how buckets are filled).
The lack of levels is probably the biggest game breaker. Most of the levels are basic and feel like a batch of tutorials. The latest development suggests this might not improve, as focus is now on introducing a level editor and workshop, which leaves me to conclude the expectation is for the community to develop more challenging levels. Unfortunately, to be successful this will need a community, but you first need enough of a game to attract a community.
All the additional, more powerful equipment seems to be geared towards playing in a timed mode. But in order to raise the cash to buy the gear, you're going to have to repeat play several times. For me, this is not attractive.
[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
This game is early access, and so it's only to be expected there's some way to go. It will not be a perfect polished product at this stage.
The serious flaw with AMD GPUs needs immediate attention, even if it's outside the developers control, the workaround needs promoting more visibly, e.g. a warning in the game, not buried in the discussions of Steam.
Development being focussed on a level editor rather than additional levels is worrying.
