The Deluge

The Deluge is an emotional exploration of your recently-flooded hometown. Trying to gather supplies to safely leave the town, you can (re)visit some major spots, reflect on the years behind you and the relationships that were, and give yourself one last chance to say goodbye. Leaving is inevitable -- you always had plans to do so, voiced so far back that people you meet are surprised you're still lingering around. But this time, it's for real. It only took you a literal deluge for you to move forward.

It took me a while to figure out the underlying mechanic of the game, and the steps needed to complete story in the way it's meant to me -- like the protagonist at first, I erred around, not knowing how to accomplish my goal, visiting spots without being able to connect with them properly, believing once was enough. My feet would take me times and times again into the northern road, thinking this was the only way out of town.

I only have myself to blame, for the game clearly points out multiple times you should come back to this place later, or that you shouldn't forget to get a specific thing, or that you still have unfinished business. I thought one goodbye was enough, even if the ghosts of the past still lingered, even if I didn't deal with my feelings. That what mattered was to turn the page and close the chapter regardless. Life is full of badly closed doors anyway. Because... the town is flooding, why the heck would I put myself in harms way???

Well... turns out, you have all the time in the world to mend your broken heart, to untwist your torn feelings, to iron out the crumbled pages of your past. You shouldn't linger and forget to *actually* leave town at some point, but you won't find yourself washed away by the water either (just by your own thoughts). I got there eventually, patiently combing through each location in town, and taking the time to internalise what was going on (be patient! or you'll miss something too!).

Loss is prevalent throughout the game. Obviously, the town, ravaged by the floods. Your apartment by proxy, the sanctuary you're leaving behind. The people who left before you, leaving *you* behind, something you both grieve and envy. The people still there but changed, with unrecognisable relationships. And inside your own heart, the loss you never dealt with, keeping you from moving on.

All this to say, it paints quite the melancholic atmosphere. Taking the time to process and accept loss before moving on makes all the difference. Will you drown in your sadness or bittersweetly float above it?

Moody games focused on traversing significant places and memories are always going to be my jam. This one is a quiet exploration of a flooded town, playing as a protagonist who knows this place intimately and is now set on leaving. As you wander, you encounter layers of memories on what is essentially a farewell tour. Mechanically, you need to acquire goods for your journey away, but it’s the emotional landscape that’s really important.

Ghosts of the past are everywhere; the game’s opening image, describing a washed-out bridge, mirrors the relational broken bridges the protagonist reminisces on throughout the game. Friends who’ve left, former friends still physically present but your friendship irrevocably lost. The protagonist moves like a ghost themself, lingering in the various locations largely unobserved or ignored, acting out echoes of the past. In one instance, they flee from a possible interaction. A sense of loss permeates; we and the protagonist pause in spaces once carefully designed and curated that are now abandoned, useless.

The protagonist has decided to leave before they really know where they’re going, but the emotional heart of the game is discovering a sense of purpose, reviving a broken connection. Leaning in to the memories instead of shying away. Following this path requires some minor puzzle-solving; while you can reach an ending without it, it’s definitely the worse of the two.

The game is accompanied by music written by the author. I played with it off on my first playthrough, but listened to it my second time through and found it fitting, a subtly melancholy backdrop.

Atmospheric, evocative, bittersweet. I liked it a lot.

In The Deluge, floodwater doesn’t pollute, drown, conceal, or cleanse–at least not totally. It mostly just makes everything–the town, the landscape, the protagonist’s sense of themselves, their memories and relationships–kind of vague and eerie and unstable, which is a vibe that I am super into.

Many of the locations have a kind of generic placelessness to them: the mall with its thrift shop and basement club, the school (designed by a “moderately famous architect”), the town square, the forest. There are vague references to the history of the town and the Indigenous people who lived there first, but nothing specific enough to actually place it anywhere on a map (besides being somewhere in an ever-widening flood zone, I guess). Similarly, the main character is going through what seems to be kind of generalized early-20s soul-searching: “In the half-light from the rooms outside, your face’s reflection looks unfamiliar. You can’t look at it for a moment before turning away, colder than you were before.” The other characters feel just as hazy: the “frenemy” who is committed to staying in town, the friend (perhaps more than a friend?) who got out. Everything in this game seems to float just beyond the edge of feeling “real,” which I suspect is very intentional, especially in light of the H.D. poem that closes the game.

On the Review-a-thon poll, the author mentioned that this is their first game, and I did get the sense that, in addition to telling a story, the author might have been testing out a location system, a clueing system, and using conditionals to gate off progress. The clues did help me proceed through the game pretty smoothly, but in future efforts, I think stronger narrative motivation for actions (beyond, e.g., you have a feeling you need to come back here) would be more effective.

In general, though, I thought this was a solid first effort, and a great depiction of a town and a character suspended between here and there.