Build a driftwood city in the beautiful blue world of Flotsam

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Flotsam refers to the fragments of ships that wash up in the tide. I know that because I grew up watching Spongebob Squarepants, and because Flotsam is a promising-looking survival sim from the delightfully named studio Pajama Llama Games. Billed as a "survival town-builder," Flotsam is set in a world of pure ocean, which makes for some interesting structural challenges, namely: everything not sinking.

It's also terrifying. Here we see a no-doubt perfectly peaceful whale whaling it up, but what else lurks below the surface? What horrors lurk in the deep, their toothy, tentacled maws poised to tear your city asunder? Deep water is the only thing more terrifying than deep space, and Flotsam is surrounded by it.

And again, it's also a survival game, so on top of building you have to look out for your citizens and keep them alive, presumably by way of seafood and water, sans salt. I'm a big fan of the cel-shaded, rustic, driftwood aesthetic, all heavily inked models and cobbled-together paths. It pops out from the unchanging oceanic environment fresh and helps keep it fresh, and I look forward to seeing more of it when Flotsam releases. Though admittedly I don't know when that will be, because neither does Pajama Llama. Hopefully, 2018.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.