Floe: First Impressions
Transcript
I feel like I should change you think I should change we're like just be matchy we're like matchy matchy I think this happened before yeah we those like sweaters but on the video it didn't look as similar yeah you're right it didn't look quite as similar but yeah I like oh it looks less matchy than it did in person there's multiple times where we like get together I'm like Hey we're like same brain Hello everybody welcome back to the channel today my name is Carly
I'm crying oh my gosh happened to me before we got to like you could see like the buffering it was like buffering real time buffering happening in K FR oh that was so good gosh okay try that again hello everybody Welcome Back back to the channel today my name is Carly and I'm Kim there it is though it wasn't clear I know who I am and today we are kind of coming at you with we're going to be actually sharing our first thoughts on the brand new title flow from P
games so if you're unfamiliar with this game Flo is actually currently it's running a Kickstarter campaign um at the time of posting this video um but a couple weeks back Pika games actually reached out to me wondering if I'd be interested in kind of receiving a prototype copy of the game just to kind of share my thoughts on what I thought of this obviously I was immediately like yes please because I've been I think I've been very vocal about how excited I am for this game obviously I love Andrew Bosley um but also um Henry oton who is the designer of parks he's kind of behind Parks which is one of my favorite games of all time I love Parks love it um so to kind of like see this mash up of like you know obviously Andrew Bosley who I adore and then Henry oton I was like okay I like I I'm so interested in this game I really want to try it and this game was actually it was supposed to be released I believe last year or the year before that oh really yeah and it actually it it like kind of got postponed because they were still working on it and still trying to come you know kind of put it together in a way that um that they really wanted to so I've been anticipating this game for a while and so when Pika games reached out I was like yes please like sign me up yes I would love to get a prototype copy of the game if you are watching this video I do have like an unboxing video where I kind of go over all of the kind of components of this game kind of showing off the artwork in this video we're just going to be just kind of chatting about this game we played this game um our full game last night um and
so we kind of want to share our thoughts and what what we kind of thought about this game so Kim I'm going to kind of let you start what did you think first thoughts first impressions of flow Oh and before we kind of get into this I do want to just make it very clear that this is very much a prototype copy of the game stuff is still kind of in the work still in production so when we are sharing our thoughts just kind of take that with a grain of salt that some of this stuff could change um from now until you actually receiving your copy of this game so with all that out of the way Kim take it away so very first impression is it's beautiful and this is just it's not even like the final copy so I'm like I can't even wait to see what it looks like when it's finished I just love the colors um can't go wrong with Pretty Pinks blues and purples purple is my favorite color really aesthetically pleasing I really I really like these Miniatures because it's like Andrew Bosley's artwork like they come to life you know what I mean like in a miniature and so I think they did a really great job with the miniatures think really cute um yeah I really enjoy them so in this game you have two different actions you have you can either take a village action which means going to a house and basically doing what it is or or doing what it provides or going into the Wilderness and exploring so I like how the game had kind of two different it almost felt like two different games kind of that like meshed well together I don't want to say two different games that's guess that's wrong just gu two different separate things that are going on because you have the village where you're able to kind of upgrade like your
board a lot and then you have the explore action where you're going out and like collecting like the ingredients and stuff that you need um and then it's also when you're out exploring then you can like dive into the dungeon so it felt it felt kind of interesting I really liked how there were like separate actions and like when when you came back to the Village you know you went and you went back out to explore you kind of start again in the middle of the board so you kind of it you kind of have to like ramp up to it cuz you don't if you're all the way out here um and you really really want something you got to try to figure out a way to get that because you know if you do end up having to go back to the Village you're going to start again in the middle so it's kind of like it does feel like you are slowly going out and exploring you don't constantly kind of get to go where you want because every time you take a movement out there you're constantly losing that warmth and kind of coming back to the warmth I love I love the aspect of warmth I love how every time you move you're losing warmth like just thematically cuz this is like a frozen tundra um and I love how you're able to like unlock more health or more more Health spots more warmth spots um as the game goes on as I am was thinking about it I really like the aspect of like being in the village and then going out and exploring the icebergs and then having the ability to like enter caves and visit the cave system too to like fight the monsters if I'm feeling like particularly adventurous I'm like I'm going to go fight dragons and what it feels like you're doing that like it feels like a progression to be honest it
took us a while to learn the game but that being said um Carly was saying that the like the actual so we played it like on the I guess the hard mode right yeah the rule book as it is right now for everyone that's on the kickstarter page if you pull up their rule book or pull up the rule book you'll be scrolling through 70 Pages worth of rule books and when I first saw that number I like was like overwhelmed I was like s a 70 page rule book for this game are you kidding me but then when you go through you realize that it's very prototyp like there's some pages that's literally like just a picture so it's very spread out so I think the actual role book will be condensed and like Kim was mentioning based on what they've said is what they're going to be doing with this game is like the very first time you play you're going to play with like these these mechanics in it and then the second game you'll unlock something else so you'll slowly gradually kind of come into this game instead of what we did which is just a full-blown very first place everything in the game um and I think looking at this cover I like I I really enjoyed the game too but I think looking at this cover I worry that people are going to look at this and be like oh it's kind of like a lighter family game because that's kind of what this cover evokes you don't look at that thinking oh there's kind of a lot going on in that game you wouldn't think of that looking in but when you do play this game it doesn't feel so overwhelming to the point that I'm like this is a heavy game but there is a lot going on and you definitely it's one of those games where you're like okay I have to do this so I can unlock this so
then I can do this you really have to plan like multiple steps ahead in this game there's lots of different things to choose from there's a lot of different cards that are involved in the game like different Decks that are used for lot of different cards in my opinion I feel like there was like a couple too many decks yes like I think that they're I like what they were I like their Envision because and I wish I could find the actual c i remember reading it somewhere but I I remember reading or them talking about this game and how they wanted it to feel like like almost like a video like Adventure game so I I do get that from this game but I also at the same time feel like okay I feel like they could streamline a couple things a little bit more because there's just one too many decks there's one too many tokens there's one too many you know what that's kind of the vibe that I got at least for me when I was playing like these Adventure decks Iceberg encounters the sea encounters and then the cave encounters but we kind of already talked about this last night encounters they kind of feel a little bit flat for me because I when I when you hear the word encounter you think like something's going to change or the something you know something's going to affect something going to happen with the weather or something but really it's just you flip these over and you get an instant and then you get some sort of ability that you can use later on so it's like they don't feel like encounters to me no they don't yeah and so it's like I understand why they have three different decks for thematic reasons but then Dr atically I feel like there's a disconnect I liked all the
things that the other cards did um and they were exciting and thematic well one of the cards that I had was oh when I got a chest and the little words were so I go I got a chess and I went and I ate Ramen at the ramen place that's that's all I don't know what it's called I'm just calling it The Ramen place so you go to the ramen place and you eat ramen and all the characters are sitting and they have have a um oh they're right here they have like little text boxes yeah and they're all like sitting at a table and eating Ramen and he's like take the chest if you want it I can't seem to find the key like I don't know to me that's just like really it feels like a video game you know I mean he's like here you go and I can't find the key so like if you find the key then maybe you can open it so there's definitely like an adventure esque element to the game and like exploring and having little I mean personal encounters with these these little characters that you go and meet in the village so this game does deal with half points there are you can like times where you can score half points MH how did you feel about that um I have um mixed feelings about it the way to keep track of it and maybe it's just our our brains I don't know but like it's I mean Maybe Carly showed this in the unboxing I don't know you have to go like up and down and up and down and at some point I realized I was like wait was it this or was it this you kind
of keep forgetting yeah you keep forgetting like where you're at like like am I only at a half point right now or did I just earn a full point yes CU you would gain a lot I feel like you definitely gained half points way more often than you gained full points yes and so you're flipping that thing pretty often and I I I was the same I kind of kept forgetting I was like wait did I just SCH a FL point there was it a half point so when I was learning the game something that's kind of interesting is you have your on your personal player on the double layer player board you have like your resources in the middle and you have these flow stones that are basically like halting the progression of the resources that you collect so you need to like increase your flow Stone so then you can collect more resources basically and if you unlock your flow Stone completely then you can place it on a shrine and like get a point so because those flow stones are constantly rising up the way that you gain um resource resources throughout the game is kind of interesting because in this Village when you are SP ending resources you can't just like spend one mushroom at this place you actually have to spend everything like the the maximum that you were that you were able to get at that time of mushrooms in order to then unlock that ability so when I was learning about that kind of that mechanism I was really worried that it would feel really punishing because I was like that doesn't make any sense like why would you collect all these mushrooms just to spend all of them every single time you took this action but I and I'm actually surprised that I'm saying this I I actually liked it I liked it too I really liked it it's make it makes these places like harder to get to so you have to like really manage
your resources efficiently and you have to really zero in on what you really want to spend what you really want to collect it's I was I was really surprised that I actually really liked that I feel like it like is a really good like balancing yeah I guess maybe that's the word that I'm looking for is like it's a balancing because as the game goes on you do get stronger you do get more resources as more tiles flip over you are able to get more and more resources as the game goes on so it is a way to balance this Village area here I do think that some of the iconography could be cleared up a little bit more I do find it weird that like Ramen like there's Ramen and heat and I feel like they both kind of acted a little bit like the same way like the ramen like I feel like those could have just been combined to heat again I love the thematics of like the ramen I love that I love that but I I feel like that was kind of confusing for me sometimes I think the thing that was more confusing for me me I I don't disagree but the kelp symbol like when we first were learning I thought I thought kelp was fire at first um but it's not that's the that's fire but the fire almost looks like a flower I don't know so like some of the and then the bubbles the bubbles look like crystals crystals yeah and you which maybe wouldn't be a big deal but you have crystals purple crystals in this game and so when you refer like I would be like oh I gain a crystal then Kim would like reach over to go hand me a crystal and I'm like oh no sorry I meant a bubble like yes I definit I got that mixed up all the time so this is kind of like a small little thing that they added that I really loved I loved the diving aspect how like when you can
activate like a dive ability and I don't know it just felt really cool you know you can like dive down you can choose your heat level like how much heat you want to lose and how far down cuz on that track that's where you can gain the chests that's where you can gain the key so if you have a chest you really need to go to get a key you know you can just go diving into the ocean and find that key um so I like that kind of little tiny aspect that they added that was the thing I liked thematically was like the chest and key how if you get a chest and then you get a key then you get to open it up and it has goodies inside yeah it was so that was really cute I did want to briefly kind of talk about the cave system because I feel like the cave system it was really cool but I wish when we talked about this B we were playing I wish it would have been more of like a race to the end yes and whoever makes it to the very end there's like spots that you know you so like the first person gets a full point second person gets a half Point third person gets like a tool or something so it's kind of it feels you I want to feel more drive to go down there and yes when you go down there you do get you do get you get rewards but I wish there would have been even like more incentive to go down there for whatever reason like I wish it would have been a slightly bigger part of the game yeah um because it feels almost like an expansion that's tacked on I feel like you could play this game without that AG it might not be as cool but I think the game would would work perfectly fine without it so it felt like an expansion and I wish it would have felt more like an integral part of the game because I think that is such a
cool idea yeah I think I like I just thought of the if you if you watch go watch the our worm span review and we talk about the The Guild the dragon Guild and how that is like a little bit of a it's not like a huge race system but it's got you have incentive to want to like get bump your token before someone else because then you get to claim like a cool reward that no one else can get so I think something like that would have been really some sort of race element would have made that more like almost like fighting over positions down there and despite me wanting there to be something that grabs me a little bit more in the cave I do really like the fighting system with with the monsters I think that is feel I like how like you go first like you you have to like first you like shoot them with arrows and then if you if you get them and you kill them then like the fight's over but if you don't then they like come up close to you and they do damage to you and you use pull out your sword so it's kind of like a staged ble system and it feels like that's how it would work in real life I play Dungeons and Dragons so it kind of has a little bit of that feelish to it too and like that you get an action to fight the bad guy and then they get if you don't yeah if you don't completely like wipe them out then they get a response if you have like a lantern either a lantern potion or you roll lanterns on the dice then you have the ability to loot the dungeon and I like I like that aspect a lot too
it's just like okay now it's clear the monster is gone and now I can look around and see if there's any goodies in here so like the the fighting system I really liked so I really like adventure-based games story based games Campaign games I have a lot of fun with them and and one thing I really like about this game is that you get somewhat of a feel of that without actually diving into like a campaign yes because you are able to level up your characters you're able to like level up your dice which is basically you just get more dice to fight the the monsters You Can level up your tools familiars You Can level up your familiars You Can level up your character and so like by the end of the game you can have like you can Cho you can really choose which things you've like leveled up so I like really enjoyed having those like pieces of those games without actually having to dive into something that's like really long story based or campaign based but you get little like flares of that and this really I really did enjoy so much about this game it is a lot heavier than I think people are going to go into this and think and I think some like I think some other channels are making making it seem more heavy than it actually is cuz I wouldn't like this isn't a heavy game for me it's not heavy it's not Eclipse yeah it's like it's it's not a heavy game but it it's more heavier than you would think there's just a lot of
planning ahead lots of different ways to kind of get resources like there was even a point in the game where I like I it was my turn and I just sat there for a minute being like okay the point of the game like how do I get the points that I need like I just had to sit and think for a minute because it was like I could do this and this and this and this with which then would unlock this or I could do this and this and this and this and this so there's just a lot of decision making in this game I think that's what it comes down to is there lots of decision making it's not necessarily heavy and I think like by the by the end of our first game I was like okay I got it but it did it took me a full game some some games you play around and I'm like okay I got it I know what I need to do this took me a full game so by the time I was done I was like okay I've got it now um but yeah it did it did take a full game for that to kind of like click with my head I agree I was I was the same way all right so those were our first thoughts and Impressions after playing flow for the very first time again I just want to preface that this is a prototype copy of the game we were working with prototype roles and everything um so everything is subject to change but if you are interested in this game U make sure to hop over to the kickstarter um campaign that is currently live for this game to kind of look at all of what they anticipate kind of having in this campaign what I'm really excited about is the organiz because going through the Prototype it was like a mess and I was like it would be so nice if there was like an organization system for this game which um I believe they do have in um at least the deluxe version of this Kickstarter game so that was our first thoughts on Flow huge shout out to Pik games for
sending us this copy we hope you have a great rest of your day and we'll see you next time