Firegirl:
Hack 'n Splash Rescue by developer Dejima and publisher Thunderful
Publishing—PC (Steam) review written by Jim
with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
You would think firefighting would make for a great setting in video games yet we don't get too many games that involve fire rescues. I like firefighting games myself so I was excited to try something other than a simulation-type game for once.
Firegirl is a platformer rogue-lite where you put out fire demons instead of regular fires and of course rescue people and animals while doing it. Each stage's layout is procedurally generated so they are always different but the setting of each stage only happens in one of four areas like a burning building, a runaway train, a forest, and one other I will leave for players to discover themselves. That said, it seems a bit lacking even with the procedurally generated stage design.
The main thing you do in each stage is to try to save all the victims of the fire and once you do this you can find an exit to leave the stage if you want. You do have a time limit for each stage but by putting out fire demons you can gain more time. You can also find a time-up power-up to increase your time as when the time reaches about a minute you have exactly that much time before the building collapses on you and everyone still inside of it.
Along with your limited time you also only have a certain amount of water that you can use before you have to wait a few seconds between sprays. Again, you can find a power up to refill the water or find other water sources. This makes the start of the game a bit harder than it should be but later on after you save certain victims you can recruit them to the fire brigade they will provide buyable upgrades such as a bigger water tank or being able to spray farther.
To recruit people to the fire brigade and upgrade your gear you will need money which you can get by playing stages. Acquired in one of two ways, the first way is from the mayor who funds the fire brigade as well as your fans which you get even if you fail a stage. The second is every time you save a person or animal you will gain fans and in turn earn even more money from them when you are successful on a stage by rescuing a certain number of people and then exiting the building.
You will fail a mission if you leave the building without saving the number of required fire victims, if the building collapses, or if you run out of health. If you leave without rescuing the right number of victims you will also not get money from your fans and even worse is that if you lose all health or the building collapses you will have to pay a hospital fee. Luckily almost everything is upgradeable so you can make hospital bills cost less, gain more money from fans and so on as there is a lot you can upgrade. Finally, there is also a store where you can buy better equipment such as a new helmet and such which let you take a shot before losing health as well as new axes to help you use to smash open doors.
Shortly into Firegirl, you learn that the fire lord has returned and will destroy the city so in order to stop it from happening you must find all of the hidden fire tomes in the stages you play. There is a small story to the game but even if it seems lacking luckily the game is fun to play and will take about four hours to complete before getting into the replay value as you can keep playing to try to upgrade all your gear and find other secrets. The soundtrack was decent and the graphics nice although sometimes I had a hard time telling what was in the background and what wasn't.
An issue that I had with Firegirl was there was only one boss in the whole game and it would have been nice to see a few more bosses as well as stages. Lastly when trying to put out the fire demon's debris on the ground sometimes it would get in the way though I have read that an update to fix this issue is in the works so hopefully by the time you read this it won't be a problem any longer.
Summary
Overall Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue is a fun but short experience that I enjoyed my time with. I do wish there was a bit more variance in how many different stages there are but still this was just a small issue I had with it. If you like roguelites and want to play something for a few hours then pick this up. It is a fun action game if you don't go in expecting a grand story or a super long game.
Score: 7 / 10
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