Harkening back to the nostalgic era of 3D platformers of the N64 and Gamecube, with a healthy dose of Zelda and Hollow Night, comes Blue Fire, developed by Robi Games and published by Graffiti Games. Where indie delights like A Hat in Time promised to resurrect the beloved 3D platforming genre, Blue Fire succeeds by bringing other influences to the table. While the likes of Yooka-Laylee felt more or less designed around a “here’s more of what you remember fondly” motif, Blue Fire combines an exploration, action-adventure world with its platforming gameplay that helps it stand out from the crowd. The question remains whether this offering burns bright enough, or whether its blue flame will be extinguished by its ambitions…
Journeying through the apocalyptic desolate ruins of the Kingdom of Penumbra, Blue Fire has us platform and slash our way through massive gothic castles, toxic underground sewers and towns built into rocky facades, as we discover what devastated the kingdom and how it links to a mysterious world known as The Void. Along your journey you’ll come across cartoony NPCs and log entries that help to flesh out the world around you, creating the impression that you are exploring a world that has fallen to calamity, with its own lore and history, conveying a similar feeling as Ocarina of Time’s overrun Hyrule, conquered by Ganondorf.
Waking up in a tank in an alchemist lab straight out of a Hammer horror movie, in a floating gothic castle that looks like Dracula decided to redesign Laputa’s flying castle, we begin exploring the dank dungeons infested with corruption, scattered with research notes and corpses. While the art style may have a certain cel shaded Wind Waker vibe to it, its gothic undertones give Blue Fire a wholly unique identity, and it’s hard not to make comparisons to Wind Waker, especially early on where the keep resembles a neglected Hyrule Castle, complete with spores similar Calamity Ganon’s Malice.
From the moment you take control of our minute hooded swordsman, you’ll start exploring the vast castle straight away, learning platforming mechanics upon leaving the first room and encountering your first fight shortly after. Blue Fire doesn’t tell you much about the story initially, leaving it to you to find notes to piece together, while NPCs help fill in the blanks. Given how quickly it throws you into its gameplay, it’s clear the largely vacant world and its perilous platforming help establish the atmosphere, which is vital to the experience, making use of a show don’t tell approach.
It’s fair to say there have been a number of 3D platformers with frustrating design choices. Not all platformers are equal, and few have been able to reach the lofty heights of Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie or Jak and Daxter, even with double-jumps and high-jumps. Thankfully, Blue Fire succeeds, and every misstep or ill-judged, desperate lunge for the next platform always feels like your fault, rather than poor level or control design. Our delightful hooded hero can double-jump and make use of a speed boost to cover short distances, or simply traverse the landscape with ease, which while it feels relatively loose, never feels unwieldily to control. With speed boost abilities and like-minded fashion choices, it’s easy to see how comparisons might be made to the likes of Hollow Knight – with a similar gloomy colour pallet. Admittedly, the wall running mechanic takes more than a little practice to get used to, but when you do get the hang of it, you’ll feel like a mini Ninja. Additionally you’ll be glad to know the camera doesn’t inhibit the experience, as it so often does in this nostalgic genre.
Of course there are plenty of contradictorily fun yet frustrating, progressively more challenging jumps to be made, many of which can be found in the Void – a strange Escher world where physics takes a backseat and the world designs itself around the usual platform motifs, akin to the ethereal challenge courses in Mario Sunshine or Galaxy. The Void can be accessed via mysterious glowing stones and function as linear platforming levels that test your skills, with moving platforms, vanishing blocks, lasers, and of course everyone’s favourite, spike traps. All the necessities to create a platforming nightmare. While it has the appearance of a tranquil misty purgatory world, this is deceptively where some of Blue Fires most challenging sections lie, increasing in difficulty, though they are hidden and you’ll need to explore Penumbra fully to find them all. While they are optional, the completion of each Void challenge will increase your maximum health, so it would be best not to aVoid too many of them.
Borrowing yet another familiar Hyrulean element, however, comes in the form of its own “Z-Target” combat system – to say nothing of its exploration, puzzles and dungeons, similarly complete with keys and chests. You can practically hear a Kojo Kondo score chiming away as you dive into large chests in search of a new item. Locking on and dancing around enemies feels familiar, and works for the most part thanks to its simplicity, though perhaps combat is where our hero falters. For all his athletic jumping and parkour abilities, sword play feels a little cumbersome – especially when fighting larger enemies. There are block and parry manoeuvres, as well as a ye faithful spin attack, but it becomes clear that the main focus of our adventure lies in exploration and platform hopping, rather than fencing. And consequently falling. A lot…
Naturally you’ll learn new abilities to aid on your quest, unlock better weapons, and of course some snazzy new duds to explore the various dilapidated, monster infested locales in style, making exploration feel rewarding. If you’re going to slay monsters wearing a chic cape and hood, you might as well dress to kill. Plus, you can even dye your character green, as if there weren’t enough Zelda references already. To find all the upgrades however, this does require some backtracking, borrowing from the Metroidvania, though it’s hard to really call Blue Fire a Metroidvania, rather an action-adventure platformer that happens to have some light Metroidvania ideas to flesh it out more. It’s worth noting as well that Blue Fire is a surprisingly much longer game than you might anticipate, coming in at around 15 to 20 hours, showing that Robi Games have crafted a full, content heavy experience.
Character models and cel shading definitely evoke that Gamecube/ PS2 era design as well, albeit with a gloomier gothic colour pallet that pertains a dark ambience throughout your journey. It’s like a cartoon with fun, simplistic character designs, but with a darker mystery afoot, set in a world that has been through gruesome events. This contradictory design illuminates Blue Fire’s world and bursts with an alluring charm thanks to its visual direction, which is fairly sharp texture wise, adding to that Gamecube-era nostalgia that permeates through the cartoonishly ominous atmosphere. Though there are some minor performance issues, these are rarely if ever that noticeable and generally speaking, Blue Fire runs fairly well making it a joy to play.
Composed by Ariel Contreras-Esquivel, Blue Fire’s soundtrack mixes atmospheric melodies with adventurous, more energetic if ominous beats that add to the exploration based gameplay, while fitting with the gothic set piece. Blue Fire wouldn’t feel out of place as a dark toned animated movie, and soundtracks like “Beira’s Tower” add to that feeling. The empty cavernous halls of the Keep hauntingly echo creaking doors, padded footsteps and distant, eerie music that reverberates in the background, showing how sound is effectively used to enhance the atmosphere. But it is the more rhythmic, exciting tracks that accompany combat scenarios that are the most memorable, where some of the more laid back atmospheric pieces can outstay their welcome after a while, even if they are effectively used to convey the empty, haunted feeling of exploring a devastated kingdom.
Blue Fire is a game that wears its inspirations on its tunic and wields them as fiercely as its plucky hero leaps from platform to platform. Combining some elements from The Legend of Zelda, Hollow Knight, and perhaps some location inspiration from Dark Souls, Robi Games have crafted a memorable adventure title with prominent 3D platforming mechanics that serves as a nostalgic Link to the past, infused with enough identity of its own that it doesn’t feel overshadowed by its more familiar roots.
