Flame in the Flood

Groundhog Day. Just like Bill Murray in that iconic film, get ready to be trapped in a hellish loop where everything is repeated. In Flame in the Flood, you wake up on an island to a scene of desolation. Now, your days will be all about survival, until you eventually die.

This is a rogue-like, and every death is permanent, but we'll give you a few tips here. You'll need to be patient if you're to finish the game. If Story mode isn't your thing, but you're crazy about survival, then the Endless mode will challenge you to stay alive as long as you possibly can. Flame in the Flood is the perfect game for tenacious gamers who are always willing to go one step further.

Flame in the Flood challenges you to survive, and by that we mean managing your needs for water and food, and much more besides. You'll need to craft items using whatever is at your disposal, as well as cook up a storm. The crafting system is polished and your Boy Scouts Handbook will come in very handy here. But you'll need to be crafty in more ways than one: your rucksack isn't like Mary Poppins' handbag, and you'll need to make difficult choices about what you keep and what you throw away. To assist you in the drudgery of survival you have Aesop, your trusty canine companion. He'll prove to be very useful in lots of ways.

The game's artistic direction is wonderful, and the heroine reminded us of Coraline, a fantastic animated film from 2009. The monsters you'll encounter at night sent chills up our spine, and we were spellbound by the beauty of the game's environments. The boating sequences, meanwhile, took us on a journey through the American wilderness.

Flame in the Flood calls out to the Ray Mears in each of us, that part of you that knows how to identify edible plants and build tools. The desire to simply keep going kept us comling back to the game again and again.

Flame in the Flood has secured a place in the list of "unmissable" rogue-likes, so why miss out?