Flotsam has been one I haven’t had my eye on long, with the total bombardment from Steam burying this delight. The game has recently left Early Access, opening the boat-centric town builder up for me to poke around properly, and it’s a brilliant surprise.
You take charge of three drifters who set off in a desolate world on a boat. By using refuse from the ocean, you’ll build up an ever-expanding town to survive. This goes through the usual town builder motions, from fretting over the basics like food supply to struggling to keep on top of storage needs or the drifters’ happiness.
The main goal of Flotsam is to remain alive and become self-sustainable. It’s split up into a few parts: building, traveling, and survival. As you’re a boat town, you can just move wherever you need to. Repositioning to resources across the map is done by holding the mouse button down, and only a few times did I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Literally.
Automation is King in Flotsam
Once you’ve set up in an area, you’ll instruct the drifters to go out and collect any resources, like plastic, from the ocean. Eventually, you’ll upgrade from watching them go for a dive to sending out boats and having to manage a growing fleet. It’s wicked seeing just how fast Flotsam wants to get the player to the point of self-sustaining, because that’s where the game truly thrives.
Where my little town is, we’ve begun to grow our own seaweed, so no one is ever truly hungry, and we have a boating operation of four. One fishing boat and three salvage boats. At no point do I ever feel overwhelmed by the growing systems.
As long as you maintain that balance of having enough food to keep everyone alive, everything kind of works out.
Flotsam Difficulty Leaves a Bit to Be Desired
Flotsam is just not especially tough, despite the post-apocalypse setting. It veers towards the relaxed side of the genre, focused more on allowing the player to grow the town how they see fit. Again, it’s fascinating just how quickly Flotsam moves from those early teetering moments into a patchwork machine of regret.
While Flotsam isn’t harsh, it can quickly spiral out of control as the town becomes a little hard to read. Trying to find the source of what’s eating all the wood and preventing me from building up the pathways is like old-style adventure games, spamming buttons to find the item hidden in the room. However, fixing those mistakes or resource hogs is incredibly easy.
Menus are chunky and to the point. Managing processes or using new structures is just really simple, but it doesn’t mean the game is lacking depth. Quite the opposite, as opening the resource table to decide on the next thing to unlock knocked me back a bit. The game is dense, right down to the individual drifter management, but it never once gets in its own way.
Flotsam is an Early Access Success
Flotsam clearly benefited from Early Access, but the developers, Pajama Llama Games, also clearly understand the genre they’re making. It’s super accessible, but also filled with quality-of-life decisions that make playing smooth. I never feel as if I’m fumbling around, even as I’m struggling to find one source in my poor planning.
This is all helped along with the look of the game. Like its menus, Flotsam has this wonderfully chunky and cheery vibe, with everything constantly pumping, bouncing, or generally filled with life. One of my favorite moments is when fast-forwarding the game to the maximum and seeing the drifters skip about while building things up.
Flotsam System Mechanics Flow Brilliantly
I adore automation-style games, where you eventually have a system that allows you to focus on what’s next. Flotsam is constantly encouraging you to go and explore its various systems. It helps that, again, the game just never gets in its own way. Everything flows beautifully, especially the main transition from driving the boat and setting up a fishing expedition.
You can get really deep into the various systems, but as much as it encourages the player to do so, Flotsam can be enjoyed at its surface level. What’s more, it’s a real killer for showing off how a player thinks. It’s not just creativity, but logic. I’m a “put it down and worry about it later” kind of guy, hence my difficulty in reading the town once it gets a little busier.
Flotsam is truly a brilliant Rube Goldberg Machine of a town builder. Each element interweaves with the others, and managing it as the operation expands is hassle-free. This is thanks to the drifter’s AI, which never gets hung up or fails to do something as commanded. The only time you’ll lose control is when they have to sleep.
Going out of your way is almost vital. If you’re someone who can’t pass anything, this game will definitely eat your time. Moving the boat and finding a supermarket, which in turn has tools and food, saves my crew from starvation. It also then has the knock-on effect of unlocking that next piece in the progress puzzle.
It’s just endlessly satisfying, bundled with the way things are animated, it’s captivating to say the least.
Closing Thoughts
I hope that Flotsam gets its due, because it is truly a gem in the Steam pile right now. It’s been a long time coming, launching originally in 2019, and the six years it took to craft under the ever-watchful eye of early adopters has paid off.
Flotsam is a prime example of why Early Access can be so good when the passion is behind it. Looking back on earlier versions and seeing just how far it’s come in hindsight, it’s so good.
The final product is one of the better town builders recently released. Flotsam provides an excellent spin on the genre, while deeply understanding it and ensuring that its take doesn’t undermine why people like me come to these games.
Plus, it plays pretty well on the Steam Deck, which is an added bonus in all of this.
4 / 5
| Flotsam | |
| Pros | Cons |
| Excellent spin on the town builder | Towns can get hard to read |
| Never feels overwhelming as more stuff unlocks | Not especially difficult on the defaults |
| Incredibly quick to get into the thick of things | |
| Looks and vibes are immaculate | |
Platforms: PC
Developer: Pajama Llama Games
Publisher: Pajama Llama Games
Release date: 5 Dec, 2025
