Update: After some time of playing, I've decided to change my rating to a 5. I still don't know if i can call this a recommendation, but I don't dislike this game as much as when i originally reviewed. Original 2 star review: I grew to like this game less and less as I kept playing. I'm a fan of challenging games, but this is just plagued with cheap deaths, lag, and an overly slippery mechanic. I wanted to enjoy this game, but it just leaves me wanting to throw my controller with how frustrating everything is. The only way I can recommend this game is if it goes on sale for super cheap($5 or under), otherwise give it a pass.

Firegirl is a game where you have mainly two objectives. Extinguish fires to push through to the exit and mostly find 2-3 survivors that are usually trapped in the building. If you miss just one of those survivors, the mission is deemed a failure and you won't see much reward money. While in the beginning you get a heads-up before every mission how many survivors are in the building. It is up to you to find them in the maze of a building, because of the fire, you can not return to previous areas once you pass through a door with a fire icon. But once you rescue a German shepherd it will give you a hint that there is a survivor before you leave an area. The game is very coy with explaining you what certain icons mean, you have to learn on the fly. For example it took me a while to figure out that just because I see an exit, doesn't mean I can't continue searching the building for the rest of the survivors (especially in the forest area that wasn't quite clear). To keep things a little bit more balanced you can upgrade the headquarters, your gear and your income - basic stuff. You encounter three times some form of a boss fight with a giant fire demon. Overall the game suffers from it's small scope, there are only a handful enemies and four different kinds of stages: an appartment building, a moving train, a **** and a forest. And to be honest only the 'appartement building' is any fun the other levels are kind of boring because they lack true variety or interactive challenges. The random level design can also be very punishing with your water reserves, only with your upgrades does the game get exponentially easier, in fact at the last third or when you finish the game and continue grinding it's too easy. No added difficulty and another reason why this game is so short-lived. I also wished there was a way to upgrade the hose with a quicker movement like they did for the fire axe. There also is a tiny problem in the controlling: when you hover down closely to an enemy and you want to immediately hose them, you instead start hovering agzin. A lot of times I got punished for this little bug. I really liked the look of the game which reminded me a lot of the theatrical presentation of Mystical Ninja 2 (N64) or Viewtiful Joe but in a beautiful sprite costume. I only wished the boss was done in that style too, he sticks out a bit with his 3D-design. The soundtrack consists of only a few tracks but they are very catchy and feel like something from the early PSX/N64 era. From the gameplay it reminded me a little bit of Luigi's Mansion but dressed in a rogue lite package. But whereas Luigi's mansion had a creative puzzle component to lure out ghosts first before you can try to catch them. Firegirl misses an additional hook for the gameplay. I wished there were more creative ways to deal with the fires or solve puzzles to find survivors or let's say detect gas leaks that keeps feeding the fire. It is unfortunately a bit one dimensional and although I had a lot of fun in the beginning, the lack of new ideas makes the game lose steam pretty quickly (after 2-3 days was my experience). I truly hope there will be a sequel with more fleshed out ideas & levels because on paper this has the spirit of classic Nintendo games.

A very slow, repetitive and grinding game. It really does lose its 'buzz' after 15 mins or so