Wildfire

Stealth games tend to have two versions. Today, most are systemic playing fields in which players are presented with a variety of options to overcome a certain situation. In this video, game errors are redressed shortly after they occur, when the guard on duty decides that it was only a bunch of “rats”. On the other hand, there are titles that are more rigid, with only one correct way to play, and where each mistake is punished with death and loading screens.

In general, the most successful titles are those of the first group. That is why we say that in Wildfire there are situations in which we do not know what type of stealth game will be presented.

At the beginning of the game, our village is razed, its residents taken captive, and you are burned at the stake for being a suspected witch. To your own surprise, you emerge with the power to draw fire into your hands from any source around you and launch it as a fireball. The rest of the game, you spend sneaking around 2D levels, avoiding guards, and optionally rescuing villagers.

At its most basic, your survival is accomplished by avoiding enemies' line of sight. You can jump chasms, climb vines to reach higher ground, drop to dangle under bridges, and crouch in tall grass. However, the guards don't have visible vision cones like in Mark of The Ninja, making it difficult to judge if they can see you or not. The guards also patrol slowly and can hear you if you jump or run across stone surfaces, meaning that sometimes the optimal solution is to wait a long time and move very slowly.

Fortunately, what is considered optimal can also be optional. Most levels really only require you to reach one exit. Optional objectives such as rescuing villagers, remaining undetected, and allowing guards to live, earn you perk points. This feels like permission to not worry too much about details if we don't want to, which is important considering the game is called Wildfire.

The fire spreads, what a surprise. We can throw it onto a wooden bridge to shorten an annoying guard's patrol route, but then the fire also consumes a nearby vine, and then some nearby grass, and then ignites some barrels that explode, causing a chain reaction that continues. and continues throughout the entire level. The path that fire will take is largely predictable, but what is more worrying is that in many cases the use of fire causes havoc more than it helps. Burning grass for example, leaves you with fewer places to hide, for example.

Seeing their world in flames also causes the guards to panic causing unpredictable behavior. Panic is good because it allows you to get past the guard without being seen if you're quick, but it will also sometimes cause guards to throw themselves off cliffs unnecessarily. Sometimes they will survive the fall and end up in a new position hindering your progress, and sometimes they will die, causing you to fail the optional objective of staying alive. Neither seems like a good trade-off.

Our fire skills increase as we use upgrade points and are eventually joined by the powers of water and earth that are unlocked by reaching new parts of the game world. However, the opportunities these skills offer are an expansion in quantity rather than type.

Eventually, we will gain abilities that allow us to subdue enemies more directly: vines or ice to freeze them in place, smoke to blind them, etc. However, it always depends on the design of each level to determine the number of resources available to you.

In closing, it must be said that Wildfire has been polished in many areas. Its pixel art is clean and communicative, its user interface sounds gratifying, and nothing is missing. Tile sets change as you progress through the world, new enemies are introduced, and missions have unique objectives or unexpected twists.