Flood 64

Flood 64 is a homebrew game for the Nintendo 64 by Vrgl117 Games and released in September 2019. It’s a puzzle game where you grow your area larger by annexing adjacent colours.

You can get the ROM from its download page by using the password floodthescreen or from the itch.io page. You can get the source code from github or read a bit more about it on the vrgl117 website.

Flood 64 style and gameplay

This game is based on the Open Flood game for Android (available on Google Play and Fdroid).

The objective is to change the colours of the map to be a uniform single colour. You do this by changing the colour of the top-left cell which in turn ‘absorbs’ all adjacent blocks of the same colour.

The blob expands as you switch colours until it covers the whole screen, and the challenge lies in completing the task within a certain number of moves. That’s all there really is to the rules of Flood 64.

The meta of the game lies in how to reach as far into the grid as possible with the moves you have available. Is it worth picking repeated colours to dig deeper, or should you instead pick a colour with a lot of adjacent cells to your blob? The intrigue is intense.

Credits

Flood 64 was inspired by Open Flood for Android by Rhys Rustad-Elliott.

Music by m0d

This N64 version is by Victor Vieux of Vrgl117 Games.

Review and conclusion

This is a very simple-to-learn puzzle game that uses a simple concept and simple control scheme to provide a decent level of challenge to whoever would come across it.

A lot of the challenge with the game does come from the seed that builds the stage, whether or not you get a lot of conjoined pieces together or not. So don’t feel too bad if you lose at any particular point in time.

I did come across a couple of technical issues. The game did crash on me one (see video), and the audio does seem to be quite laggy at the beginning of the stage. Other than that, it’s quite responsive.

Flood 64 is really one of those games like sliding puzzles, jigsaw puzzles or any other kind of puzzles. Classic, simple and to the point.