This happens at regular intervals, nicely timed between your journeys to abandoned settlements and outposts at the river’s edge. While The Flame in The Flood can be played like a roguelike through a specific setting, the best way to play it, in my estimation, is by using checkpoints to mark your path down the river. Then it hit me: this is Nindie Oregon Trail and it is incredible. A few hours into this arresting world, my character got dysentery. The Flame in The Flood, which supposedly clawed at both game types, was a bit of a gamble on my part. However, I also didn’t jive with the preeminent indie-made survival game Don’t Starve all that much. Mostly due to the onslaught of great roguelike games on Switch, I’ve gotten back into that style of game a lot more after a few years of disinterest.

I went into The Flame in The Flood, a recent Switch eShop release that originally came out in 2016, with a little bit of trepidation.