Blue Fire

 

Release: 2021

Developer: Robi Studios

Publisher: Graffiti Games

Gameplay Stats: 13 hours, 100% Achievements

Visuals: This game looks pretty decent! It's got a definite sense of style here that I can get behind. The enemies look good and telegraph what they are about to do. I wish the telegraphs were a little more fluid, but I can't really complain. The animations in general weren't as fluid as I would've liked to see, but it was definitely okay.

Audio: I enjoyed the music pretty well when it was present. Nothing spectacular, nothing memorable. The sound effects though I didn't care for. The enemy noises were okay, nothing special. No voice acting.

Plot: It kind of tried to be a Zelda type game, but there wasn't enough communicated for it to be effective. There were some small blurbs but all of the characters kind of felt like sign posts. None of them had personality, there were no arcs. The game itself felt a little... sparse? I kind of got the impression that this was a student project or maybe a game jam game that was fleshed out a little.

Gameplay: The platforming felt pretty good! The combat not so much. There are several bosses that kind of feel like damage sponges. Not that they had a ton of health, but there was no variation in attacks/patterns to keep it fresh. The hitboxes for some things were pretty poorly shown to the player. I think the whole difficulty curve here felt bad. The intro area was really easy, which was good. The first dungeon was a bit more challenging and then it throws you in the dep end. There are jumps that are extremely precise and required to proceed. The timing on things  is difficult but not in a super fun way. Gotta give a shoutout to the rifts, they were some really fun platforming challenges for the most part. The lack of checkpoints here was kind of a misstep in my opinion though.

I walked away from this game a little less enthused than I started it. The game felt like it was rushed for some kind of looming deadline, maybe a semester end or some sort of capstone project. The game took some good influence from Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Sunshine, Hollow Knight, and Dark Souls; but I don't think the execution was done as solidly as it could have been. This is the first game from this studio though, so I have to give them a bit of slack. I don't think I'd recommend this game, but I'm personally interested in checking out where this studio goes in the future. [6.5/10]