The Final Campfire from Hiya Video games (, of No Man’s Sky fame) is nothing like No Man’s Sky. It’s a peaceful little puzzle sport with lovely characters and exquisite environments. It’s pretty quick, with few characters and a candy story.
You play as Ember, a small soul who’s looking for their very own path and get to the top of their journey – wherever which may be. Alongside the way in which, you’ll encounter forlorn souls that acquired misplaced on their very own journeys, and also you’ll want to unravel self-contained puzzles to free them.
Puzzling
To seek out all these misplaced souls, and progress to the subsequent space, you’ll want to unravel numerous environmental puzzles. It’s the same old form of stuff, with objects to roll, push, pull, or set on fireplace. Ultimately, you’re going to get a number of instruments, and even get slightly boat to permit you to attain much more areas.
There are not any enemies, no fight in The Final Campfire, no timers or chase scenes. Nothing depends in your reflexes or capability to mash buttons on the proper time. Mixed with the Swap’s capability to droop video games, I used to be in a position to take my time and luxuriate in this peaceable sport.
Issue smart, a number of the puzzles are difficult, however none felt not possible, and I’m saying this as somebody who doesn’t play a whole lot of puzzle video games. Just a few instances did I want to seek out additional assist or steerage. The areas are massive sufficient that when you get caught with one side of a puzzle, you possibly can normally transfer to a different part and try to make some progress there. The misplaced soul puzzles – probably the most difficult side of the sport – may be reset when you muck issues up.
Benefit from the journey
There’s little or no dialogue in The Final Campfire. All textual content and dialogue is narrated by the identical calm voice. You additionally accumulate little snippets of journals as you discover, providing you with slightly extra perception into the world. I notably appreciated that everybody within the sport makes use of the pronouns they/them.
The music is calming and the sport sounds nice normally. The entire thing gave me Ori and the Blind Forest vibes, with out the fight and loopy platforming, after all.
Efficiency points
As lovely as the sport seems to be, The Final Campfire suffers from visible slowdown when shifting via areas. Surprisingly, that is worse in docked mode. I ended up taking part in principally in handheld mode, the place the sport runs considerably higher. Nevertheless, the slowdown and stuttering are nonetheless evident even in handheld mode. On condition that the sport has been out for some time now, I’d have anticipated this to be mounted in a patch, however as I’m scripting this, that isn’t the case. It is a pity, as it is a sport that’s completely suited to the Swap, and I loved having the ability to decide it up and play in small bursts. I can solely hope that is addressed in a future patch, and that the sport runs higher on different platforms.
Conclusion
The Final Campfire is an exquisite puzzle sport marred by efficiency points on the Swap. In the event you’re in search of one thing calming, candy, and never too lengthy, undoubtedly give The Final Campfire a glance.
