The Flotsam Update 3.5 Beta has launched, giving fans of city-builders the opportunity to try out some new features (and new strategies) as they try to keep their floating city going.
Flotsam is a game where players start out on a ramshackle boat with a handful of people. The world has been flooded and not much remains of the past, but humanity is pretty persistent about that whole "survival" thing. You have to collect up debris to expand your boat into a veritable floating city, managing resources, scavenging for supplies, and recruiting survivors.
The developers released a content roadmap just over a year ago, detailing what players could expect to see as the game developers. Now, the Flotsam Update 3.5 Beta delivers on some of those promises — though there's still quite a ways to go.
What's New in the Flotsam Update 3.5 Beta?
The first major addition in the Flotsam Update 3.5 Beta is a Day/Night cycle, one of the many features promised in the game's roadmap. A "day" has been balanced to last for 15 minutes; 1.5 minutes of which would be nighttime. Complimenting the Day/Night cycle is the addition of a Buoy Lamp that can be used to light up your floating town.
Also arriving is a major change to your Drifters. Previously, Drifters had "quirks" which would give them slight variations in resource consumption and behavior; this system has now been replaced. Each Drifter has nine separate stats in this Beta:
- Construction: Determines a drifter’s building speed.
- Athletics: Determines a drifter’s walking and swimming speed.
- Nautics: Determines a drifter’s boat travelling speed.
- Desalination: Determines a drifter’s desalination speed.
- Crafting: Determines a drifter’s crafting speed.
- Research: Determines a drifter’s research speed.
- Cooking: Determines a drifter’s cooking speed.
- Fishing: Determines a drifter’s fishing speed.
How do Quirks work in this new system? Drifters will now have 2 "Drifter Backgrounds" that explain their backstory and, more importantly, determine their starting stats. Players will have the opportunity to re-roll characters when starting a new game if they see something they don't like.
Drifters have also received a bit of a cosmetic makeover with a 35% size increase, new looks, and new animations. These are just some of the new additions making their way into beta testing; you can read the full Flotsam Update 3.5 patch notes on Steam.
Players can jump into the Flotsam Update 3.5 Beta by right-clicking on the game in their Steam library, going to the "Betas" tab, and selecting the "Experimental" beta branch. If you haven't yet jumped into this city-building game, you can buy Flotsam on Steam for $24.99 or your regional equivalent.
What do you think of the new content coming in the next Flotsam update? What's your favorite city builder? Let us know in the comments below!
