Jump and slash your way through the world of Penumbra as you take on a small warrior’s quest to banish the darkness.
Blue Fire
Developer: ROBI Studios
Price: $20
Platforms: PC (reviewed), Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review.
Your journey in Blue Fire begins in an abandoned keep, where you awaken and begin to fight your way out. There isn’t a lot of context, but you eventually learn that you’re trying to save the world of Penumbra from the darkness threatening to overcome it and the handful of survivors who live there. At first, you only have a limited number of moves available to you. You can jump and dash, and you have a basic sword attack to use against the enemies you encounter along the way. As you progress in the game, you unlock several new abilities and upgrades, some of which are for combat but many more of which are for traversal.
The heart of the gameplay is 3D platforming, and you’ll soon learn to use a combination of jumping, dashing, wall-running, and more in order to get to where you need to go. The dash is a particularly interesting aspect of the gameplay, because you control its duration. Holding down the dash button gives you a longer dash, while releasing it partway through cuts the dash short. Sometimes you’ll want to cover as much distance as possible, while other times you’ll need just a quick burst through the air. It becomes almost puzzle-like to figure out the best combination of moves to use to reach the next platform. Everything is introduced gradually enough to not feel overwhelming, and the controls are snappy and tight. No matter how tricky the obstacles in front of me were, I always felt like I had full control over the platforming.
While the main adventure contains its fair share of difficult sections, the real challenge comes in the form of the Void: linear platforming levels separate from the main world that will definitely put your platforming skills to the test. Moving platforms, disappearing blocks, laser beams–the Void throws everything it can at you in a series of increasingly-difficult sequences. A star rating at the entrance to each one tells you how difficult it will be to complete. They’re technically optional, but each completed Void level increases your maximum health, so you’re well-rewarded for your efforts.
Increasing your health is important, because not only do you have to deal with dangerous platforming, but with enemies as well. Combat is fairly basic, although I found the enemies in one particular area to be so annoying I wondered if I was doing something wrong. The boss fights start out pretty simple, but become more interesting later on. Defeated enemies drop Shadow Fragments, a resource used to increase your mana, but it’s so abundant that I eventually ended up selling some to get extra ore. Ore is the game’s currency, which you’ll find by breaking boxes, pots, etc. If you die, you drop all your ore and need to reach it without dying again to retrieve it. Unfortunately, dropped ore also disappears if you quit the game before retrieving it–or if the game crashes, which happened to me a handful of times.
Although the core of its gameplay is platforming, Blue Fire is structured like an action-adventure game. Your journey will take you to temples, dungeons, and small cities with a handful of NPCs who will tell you more about the world and give you side quests. Side quest rewards range from new tunics that only provide a cosmetic change to new weapons and useful upgrades. Exploration is an important part of the game as well, both for the main story and for discovering the secrets hidden away. It never guides you too closely, trusting you to remember areas you couldn’t access earlier and backtrack accordingly. However, there’s always some guidance, so if you really feel like it’s cast you adrift, there’s probably an NPC somewhere with the hint you need to continue your quest to save Penumbra.
The Final Word
While it has occasional frustrating sections and leaves a lot of things up for the player to discover on their own, Blue Fire is a delight of a game filled with secrets to find and a beautiful world to explore. If you like 3D platforming challenges and exploration-based gameplay, Blue Fire is a game you don’t want to miss.
-MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
