Rouge-likes are all the rage now, from a sub category of games that was not used much but the last few years these little beauties have been growing in popularity. Most of these are fantasy or futuristic in their graphical style but here we have a game that at first glance looks very kiddie friendly with bright colours and easy to learn controls. Plus, who hasn’t ever dreamed of becoming a fire fighter?

 

So in Flame Over you are a fire fighter in a top down view with some nice colourful graphics and controls that just feel right. The game itself is hard as nails and you will die, die and die again before you make any progress with this game but that’s how they are designed.

 

You start in a safe zone where you can top up your water and foam and relax from the pressure of putting the fires out. You walk up to the doors and open these maze like rooms, which are all random in design so you never know what might be behind each door. The game uses a fog of war style system and you can't see what’s behind each door until you open or break down the door. Sometimes you might get a clue as you can see smoke coming from the bottom of the door frame.

 

The game plays just like a twin stick shooter with left stick to move the character and the right stick to fire out water when the right trigger is press in tandem. You also have other weapons to help you in your mission and you have foam to put out smouldering walls and objects as these if not foamed right away then the fire will start back up again, and you also get water bombs to fire out but these seemed very hard to aim with any form of consistency.

 

The graphics are nothing to write home about and some might be put off by the very bright primary colours used in the game and even the fire itself seems to have a cheeky side to it. When you are trying to put the fires out, they can chuck fire balls at you to try and kill you or if you don't manage to put out these fire balls with water, if these hit a wall then the fire will start back up right there.

 

The game plays very smoothly and everything is just about right, you die a lot but when you do you can put your collected money to buy upgrades in the hope that the next run you can get a little further and actually put the fire out and move to the next area.

 

I really enjoyed my time with this game as I feel the Rouge-like design really works with the top down shooter elements. I'm not the biggest Rouge-like platformer or dungeon crawler for that matter and feel that here it’s designed for short sharp bursts and for me this makes it one of the best Rouge-likes of the year so far.

   Flame Over                                           * * * * *