Fire
Fire is a 3rd person
point-and-click game developed and published by Daedalic
Entertainment. It is a humorous game with exaggerated cartoon
graphics. Fire received a "Best Kids Game" award at the German Game
Awards 2015, despite Daedalic's claim that it wasn't designed as a
"kid's game." It has features that suggest it was designed as a
casual game chapters are short and can be individually accessed
from the Map Screen, making it possible to progress during brief
playing sessions of between 5 and 30 minutes. There's no real story
to keep track of, so spreading playing sessions out over the course
of weeks won't make you lose track of story or character
development.
Story
Your character is named Ungh. In
the opening cut scene, Ungh is given the responsibility of watching
his village's fire during the night, to make sure it doesn't go out.
But he falls asleep, the fire goes out, and he is kicked out of his
village. After that, he embarks on a quest to find more fire and
bring it back to the village.
Gameplay
Not long after being kicked out
of his village, Ungh eats a hallucinogenic object and sees 10
magical orbs appear in a tree, each orb containing a blue firefly.
Most of the orbs float away, but Ungh manages to grab one. He
immediately throws it on the ground, freeing the firefly, which
opens a portal, which pulls Ungh through to the Map Screen. Each
chapter has an orb that Ungh must overcome obstacles to collect, and
each chapter ends with Ungh picking up and breaking that chapter's
orb, releasing the firefly, and being pulled through the portal to
the Map Screen, from which he now has access to the next chapter.
The actual search for fire is forgotten until the very end of the
game. Individual chapters are all about solving the puzzles so you
can acquire the firefly orb and get access to the next chapter from
the Map Screen.
You can go back and replay
levels if you wish. Each chapter has three coin tokens to find, and
you may not find them all on your first try. Some coins are sitting
out in the open, perhaps partially hidden behind leaves or rocks.
But other coins only appear if you do a puzzle correctly the first
time. Since these puzzles may require experimentation, you aren't
likely to get them right the first time unless you are extremely
lucky or unless you use a walkthrough. In one case, you have to
input every possible wrong combination in order to earn a coin. In
another, you have to throw away an object you already know you have
a use for. Coins have no use in fulfilling Ungh's quest for fire,
and are an extra. Find all three coins in a chapter and you will
have access to character designs used in that chapter by using an
icon on the Map Screen.
Music
Each chapter has its own musical
theme. Interestingly, many of the themes resemble music used in
westerns on TV, with twanging stringed instruments and whistling. I
would have expected the music to sound more like something that
could have been produced by "Stone Age" instruments, but that's not
the direction they chose. Not that realism was a priority in this
game anyway, but the music made me wonder if I were going to see
cowboys, horses, and gunfighters at any moment. No cowboys though
not even a herd of buffalo or cowlike dinosaurs.
Puzzle Game or Adventure?
Some people consider the 1991
game "Gobliiins" to be a puzzle game rather than an adventure game.
The emphasis is on puzzles rather than anything like plot or
character development. And so it is with Fire. Even though the
puzzles are connected with the game environment, the environment is
a cartoon environment with cartoon logic. In each chapter you have
access to three or four screen locations, but the chapters are only
connected through the Map Screen. Instead of learning where to go
next at the end of a chapter and using a map to get there, you are
immediately thrown back out to the Map Screen by going through the
firefly portal at the end of each chapter. You go to the next
available area because it's now available, not because the plot has
given you a reason to go there.
Animals are often more like
machines than animals. Objects that are inanimate in real life, such
as stones, may behave like they're alive in Fire. Bushes can walk
around at least certain bushes can walk around in certain
conditions. Trees can grow overnight and produce magical fruit.
Everything you see onscreen has the potential to be a mechanism of
some sort. Forget about real world logic in this game. Anything in
the game environment has the potential to be part of a puzzle
solution.
Though most puzzles can be
solved through experimentation, there are some that require
dexterity. One such "challenge" involved threading your mouse
through narrow channels without touching the edges or you have to
start over. One of the later chapters included a Space Invaders type
arcade game. Yes, despite the fact that Fire supposedly takes place
during the "Stone Age," there is a chapter where Ungh goes into
outer space.
Controls
The game uses as few actual
words as possible. On the Main Menu, you have to guess that the
green triangle means Play, the rolled up piece of paper is the Map
Screen for loading chapters, and the gears mean Options.
There are three user profiles,
so you can have three games going at once. However there is only a
single autosave per profile, and it only keeps track of the latest
chapter you've completed and how many coins you've found. If you
finish half a chapter and exit the game, you'll start at the Map
Screen with nothing in the latest chapter finished. It does keep
track of how many coins you've found and they won't reappear on
replays at least it will keep track of coins if the autosave
doesn't malfunction which it did in my case. Although my game
remembered that I'd finished chapters, it sometimes forgot the coins
I went back for and found during replays it only remembered the
coins I'd found on my first playthrough of the chapter. This seemed
to happen when I exited the game after a replay to find coins, and
not so much if I replayed a chapter and then went on to an unplayed
chapter.
You can exit a chapter at any
time using the Escape key on your keyboard. The Spacebar will
highlight interactive areas. Other than the Spacebar and Escape key,
everything is point-and-click.
There are 10 locations in all,
each with 3 or 4 screens to interact with and 3 coins to be found.
Some of these coins are out in the open, perhaps partially hidden by
leaves or other objects in the environment. But to make other coins
appear you have to do something special, such as solving a puzzle
without any mistakes. Or in one case, you have to input every
possible wrong combination in order to get the coin. Since solving
some of the puzzles is not going to be possible without
experimentation, it means you can easily miss the appearance of the
coin in the process of solving the puzzle.
What are coins good for? Not a
whole lot. Which is fortunate because in my game they didn't always
appear when they were supposed to. For example the puzzle in the
final location (the "Lava Level") where you have to click the
correct symbols on a rock wall. According to a walkthrough, you're
supposed to get a coin if you do it right the first time.
Considering the same puzzle was used in an earlier location, it's
not hard to do this puzzle correctly the first time. So I did the
puzzle correctly. The wall opened up on my first try. Yet there was
no coin. If I hadn't done the puzzle correctly, the wall would not
have opened up. Did the game think I had tried the puzzle
previously? I'd purposely left the puzzle alone until I had the
proper information. Bug.
There are "extras" ("bonus
gallery") that become available as you progress through the game. A
treasure chest will appear in the upper right of your Map Screen,
from which you have access to extras like concept art. If you've
found all three coins in a chapter, you'll have access to that
chapter's concept art.
Graphics
The graphics in Fire are very
cartoony and exaggerated. Nothing is remotely realistic. You'll find
things such as dinosaurs that are sewn shut with giant stitches,
bushes with eyes and legs that can play music, magical fireflies,
and all sorts of whatnot. Many of the puzzles use some sort of sight
gag, like a giant zipper in the side of a rock.
Kids' Game?
The cartoony graphics, the lack
of any intelligible language at all, and the nature of the humor,
which largely depends on sight gags, make the game seem more like a
kids' game than a game for adults. It is not surprising that Fire
won a "Best Kids Game" award.
Miscellaneous Comments
I found the later chapters to be
less creative and interesting than the early ones. The final chapter
(the "Lava Level") re-used several objects and puzzles seen in
earlier levels. Much of the Outer Space chapter was just clicking
the appropriate object within a time limit in order to move to the
right.
Your character's "reward" for
finishing the game is something that's been used in countless Warner
Brothers cartoons -- and I'd be surprised if it isn't still used in
modern cartoons. Only a very young child, or one who's never watched
cartoons on TV, wouldn't have seen some variant of this ending
before. Maybe some people would enjoy the familiarity, but I don't
find that sort of thing either creative or amusing more of an
"eye-roller" "not-that-old-thing-again" sort of ending. It did not
improve my opinion of the game, which had already decreased due to
the lower quality of the later levels and the coin bug I ran into.
There are icons for Facebook,
Twitter, and a feather pen icon (a shortcut to Daedalic's website)
on the lower right of the Menu screen. I suppose these are shortcuts
to those websites so you can announce your score. I have no interest
in such things, and hiding them wasn't an option, so to me they were
the equivalent of unwanted advertising. I also don't like it when
clicking a menu item in a single player offline game can access the
Internet without warning.
The game may be enjoyed by very
young children. Most puzzles are solved by experimentation, and one
thing young children seem to like to do is to try things. However
there is a scene where a character (not the protagonist) is zapped
by lightning and reduced to black ash. Perhaps even more disturbing
is that your character seems to think it's funny and giggles
afterwards, as opposed to putting on an "Oops" expression. It's not
like a Warner Bros. cartoon where Wile E. Coyote, for example,
reconstitutes himself almost immediately after being incinerated.
The unfortunate victim in "Fire" remains a charred pile of ash for
the rest of the game (or until you replay the chapter). So that
scene might fit the PEGI definition of "May contain scenes and plot
elements too disturbing or frightening to younger players." There is
certainly no bad language (or any language to speak of) in the game
only unintelligible grunts and occasional rude sounds resembling
flatulence.
I am not the fastest player by
any means, but I finished Fire in about 5 hours, and that includes
the time it took to replay chapters looking for coins.
Grade: B
I'm grading Fire as a casual
game rather than as an adventure. It wouldn't get as good a grade as
an adventure, since it has neither a compelling story, interesting
character development, nor an engrossing gameworld to explore. It
might deserve a better grade as a children's game, but since I don't
have access to a child who could give me their opinion, rating it as
a children's game would be guesswork.
I bought my copy of the game
from Adventuregamers Store. It is also available from Steam, Humble,
and probably a few other places (though currently not from GOG).
Minimum System Requirements
·
Windows XP 32 Bit or
later
·
2 GB RAM
·
nVidia GeForce 8600,
Radeon HD 6570
·
DirectX 9.0c or higher
·
DirectX 9.0c
Compatible Sound Card
Additional Notes from the
Adventuregamers Store:
Using the Minimum Configuration, we strongly recommend to use
minimal settings in order to not experience low frame rates.
I played the game on a
computer with:
·
Windows 7 Ultimate,
64-bit
·
Intel Core i7 - 3820 CPU
@ 3.60 GHz
·
8 GB RAM
·
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560
Ti with 1.25 GB VRAM
·
Realtek High Definition
Audio (onboard sound)
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
September 2015
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GameBoomers
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