Wildfire Review
This past week has been a nightmare, at least in America. Every day brought some new display of bizarre cruelty from police and military forces against protesters across the nation. Protesters were shot in the face with tear gas canisters at near point-blank range, reporters were assaulted and arrested for reporting on the protests, government-sanctioned community groups were attacked for violating a curfew they were exempt from, non-protesting civilians were assaulted for being nearby, and elderly people were attacked and left to bleed. As a cis-hetero white guy, I know I speak from a place of ignorance and privilege and that things like this have been happening all the time, but I can’t in good conscience stay quiet in the face of this horrifying escalation. Amid all this, it feels weird to play and review video games, yet no engine can run forever without maintenance, especially the engine of social change, and people need a way to unwind and bring some joy into their lives after a day of struggle and violence. Keeping with the theme of defiance of unjust authority, I decided to take a look at stealth game Wildfire this week.
In Wildfire, players take on the role of an unnamed witch fighting against the forces of the Arch Duchess after their village is burned and their people are captured. Fortunately for the protagonist, they have recently been granted magical abilities thanks to the presence of a strange meteor. This allows the witch to control the natural elements of fire, water, and earth, with the strange condition that the witch must first nearly die to these elements. Thanks to the efforts of the Duchy soldiers, this happens rather quickly, with the game opening on the witch being burned at the stake. Using these powers, the witch must save their people, defeat the invading soldiers and, eventually, take the fight to the Arch Duchess herself through stealth, sorcery, and guile.
The main draw of Wildfire is the elemental powers and I’m impressed with all of them because they can be used in many different ways. The first power players get is the power to control fire, which is obviously the most overtly powerful element. Fire can be used for the obvious purpose of setting fire to flammable things as well as to scare or even kill enemy soldiers, but also has a number of non-lethal uses. Using fire, players can harness fiery explosions to propel themselves into the air or use smoke to stun enemies to sneak past safely. Water, on the other hand, is all about being slippery and indirect. When wielding water, players can create bubbles to float past enemies, create distracting noises, and freeze water into ice with humorous and possibly lethal results. Lastly, earth, which really should be called “plant,” is about harnessing local flora to build new hiding places and escape routes and ensnaring enemies. Wielding these elemental magics in Wildfire is a blast, not just because it’s fun and cathartic to harness impossible power but because the powers can be used in so many ways and the levels are set up to accommodate a wide variety of play styles. Depending on how players specialize, the same scenario can play out in a number of different ways. An example that comes up often in Wildfire is a situation where a player must get up a cliff, get a key from a guard, and then get past that guard. Where one player might use a water bubble to ascend the cliff, use earth to plant a hedge to hide in, pickpocket the key from the guard and sneak past, another might use fire to launch themselves up the cliff and use earth to capture the guard in strangling vines, taking the key uncontested from the immobile soldier who is unable to pursue. Wildfire does a great job of giving players a wide-open playground with no wrong answers.
Helping this approach of letting players solve problems in their own style are the many mechanics that allow players to advance their powers in a variety of ways. The chief way this is done is by earning spirit points by completing various tasks in each level. Spirit points are used to upgrade the player’s general performance, such as expanding the range from which players can harness the various elements or increasing the witch’s pool of health points. These improvements are the typical bread-and-butter of game upgrades, not particularly interesting but undeniably useful. Much more flashy are the upgrade statues. In each level, there is an upgrade statue that allows players to gain upgrade points to expand and empower their elemental powers. However, the element that receives the upgrade point is determined by which element the player offers to the statue. This means that players have to make a conscious effort to bring a specific element to the statue, or specifically choose not to in the case of the impatient or hasty. In addition to upgrade shrines, players can also mold their suite of powers through the use of the meteor shards that can be found in each level. Somewhere, usually somewhere difficult to access, in each level is a glowing meteor shard that somehow modifies an aspect of the game. These modifications have a huge variety of possible effects including causing enemies killed by fire to burn into ash and thus leaving no evidence behind for other enemies to find, to causing all archer enemies to always miss with their first shot. Best of all, if a player does recover a meteor shard and decide they don’t want that particular ability, they can exit out of the level and retry it again as the available meteor shard changes each time the level is loaded, assuming the player hasn’t already retrieved one in that level yet. Any game that allows players to adapt the game to their play style is a good game in my book and Wildfire does amazingly at it.
Right now, I think the best way to spend your money is by donating to groups that will help alleviate the pain being felt by those most vulnerable across the nation and those who will work to change laws and institutions to make sure these things never happen again. Consider donating to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Color of Change, and the National Bail Fund Network, or to the various more specific funds for individual victims of authoritarian violence. But, if you’ve already done that and are looking for a new game to take your mind off all the bad things, I think you could do much worse than Wildfire. It’s got plenty of creativity and interesting challenges easily making it worth the full $15 asking price.
Buy this game at full price
It’s worth every penny they’re asking
