Everyone loves themselves a bit of Real Time Strategy, right? Games like Civilization, Age of Empires, or even Warcraft? Honestly, it was rare for me. Civilization always felt like way too much to take on, and with Warcraft I just generally felt like I was bad at it, making me feel almost intimidated to tackle for longer periods of time. Flooded though had a premise that I genuinely found interesting. A race against the clock to be able to upgrade and improve your island before it falls completely underwater. This became a lot more of an RTS battling against yourself, than an RTS worrying that some massive army is going to show up and overwhelm you.

As stated, Flooded has you on an island trying to get more and more materials to be able to build better buildings that can help you get more materials, the regular RTS game loop. The main difference being that there is also a timer that is ticking away before the outer edge of your island is engulfed in water. If you have a building there, it’s lost to the sea, so be careful. The biggest danger to this is that there are also the occasional enemies, like pirates, that can attack you. You’re pretty well confined to your space so there’s no need to hunt them down, but when they come for you, you’ll need to protect yourself with turrets.

Now you need to be careful because you need them near the shore to fight off ships, but you don’t want them to be consumed by the sea. There is artificial land that you can build to expand your island, so you’ll need to prioritise where your buildings are and risk losing space in other parts of the island. There are certain things that affect how quickly your island falls under water, like rain. If it starts raining, then your island will start to sink quicker, which means you really need to hasten your building so you can reach a point of making artificial land.

Through the campaign you’ll be set missions to be able to progress your “era,” anyone familiar with Civilization is used to this kind of thing where you need to become more advanced to get better building, and become more efficient overall. While progressing your era, you will also be able to unlock perks, upgrades you can select and then purchase to give yourself a better chance based on your play style. This is stuff like reducing the cost of building, or making a chance for your land to not flood the next time the timer runs out. Every perk can be upgraded five times, obviously making it a little better each time.

One complaint I will say I have with Flooded is the fact you need to progress the story to unlock quick play. I understand the idea of teaching you the game, but if I want to be dropped into the madness and figure it out from there, why shouldn’t I be able to from the get go? Plus, there’s a “help” section in the pause menu that gives you every single tutorial you’ll get through the campaign right from the beginning anyways, surely it wouldn’t be an issue to just let someone play the game the way they want to play it, right? It’s like if Call of Duty locked multiplayer behind beating the first few missions of the campaign so you know how to run and shoot.

I love the look and aesthetic of Flooded. It’s a simple grid based island that doesn’t have a huge amount of space as it is. The different tiles are clear whether they’re regular land, or rocky making it harder to get water, or if it’s unbreakable mountains, or whatever it may be. The tiles that are about to be engulfed by water are also clearly marked out, Incase maybe you don’t realise that there is a bit of land hiding behind one of your buildings. The sound is also clear, if you’re listening you’ll be able to hear enemies coming, you can hear the weather of course, and it’s clear. You could essentially play Flooded just by sound, not that you’d know where you’re putting anything.

Flooded was a bit of a surprise. As someone not hugely into RTS games, the premise definitely made me interested enough to check it out. The actual gameplay loop kept me wanting to play more and more of the campaign, and even jump into quickplay matches every once in a while. I even have an “endless” game (quickplay that goes until you’ve been entirely overwhelmed) on the go that I’ll jump into when I have 30+ minutes to go through a few cycles. I would highly recommend checking out Flooded if you’ve wanted to give RTS games a chance, but find the whole thing overwhelming when you need to build cities or bases, build armies, defend yourself, attack others, and more at the same time. It’s a bit more of a relaxing pace, but can also get quite stressful as you get further and further through time.

Graphics: 7.5 The graphics in Flooded are simple, but clear and effective.	Gameplay: 9.0 You’re able to take Flooded at your own pace, something I appreciate as someone not massively familiar with RTS games. It’s inviting in a way no other games of the genre that I’ve played have felt.
Sound: 7.0 Everything is clear and obvious. There’s not a massive variety in sounds you’ll hear, but that makes it easier to know what everything you’re hearing is.	Fun Factor: 8.5 A welcoming addition to the RTS genre. The campaign teaches you everything you need to know, but I do really wish that unlocking quickplay and endless mode didn’t require you to progress the campaign, all the tutorials are available from the get go.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Flooded is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X.

A copy of Flooded was provided by the publisher.