Flotsam is a city-builder game where you develop your own garbage town in the middle of the sea. That said, the developers launched the aptly named “Region Update” recently that introduced four new regions to the World Map. Update 0.5 also implements visual improvements and balancing changes.
Welcome to the Region
As mentioned earlier, there are four new regions introduced in Update 0.5. They are unique both in terms of landmarks and the resources that you can gather in these places. These new regions are:
- Polluted Woods
- Rural Ruins
- Highways
- City
You can develop a scouting landmark for three regions. Build a Watchtower in the Polluted Woods, a Church in the Rural Ruins, and a Skyscraper for the City. Also, regions can now be revealed by scouting landmarks.
The World Map has received a visual overhaul to accommodate the new regions. What’s more, the developers took the time to develop the map by hand, adding that touch of uniqueness that is always appreciated.
Highlights
- Created new Salvageable and Non-interactable props for each region. Added a choice between handmade map (regions) and random spawning (0.4.2 and down) game modes when starting a new game. Regions will only be present in the handmade map for the time being
- You can now use the arrow keys to move around on the World Map and sail freely
- You can now toggle camera and movement on the World Map, allowing you to move using WASD
- You can now click to a location and the town will move there
- You can now click and hold to move your town to your cursor
- Added a visual to indicate where drifters will moor onto landmarks in the map view
- Worked on the World Editor, allowing us to craft a handmade map
- Added region functionality to the World Editor
- Added underwater highway functionality to the World Editor. This was used to test if underwater roads can lead players to city regions
- Adjusted how camera dragging works
- Rebalanced the entire game to smoothly work with new region functionality
- Drifters will now only be able to catch bottled fish when using the fishing chair
- Removed experimental camera as it was no longer worth it to update it during development
- Removed cost per mile from World Map HUD as the information became obsolete with the new map
You can read the full list of changes on Flotsam's official Steam page.
