Wildfire (2020)

A clever little stealth platformer, where you use the elemental powers you learn to distract, evade, or eliminate enemy soldiers to rescue your fellow villagers. You can use these elemental powers in a number of different ways, unlocked as you progress, which give you a ton of different options for getting through each level. While a single play through is fun enough, the real joy is after you beat the game and can replay in New Game+ with all your abilities already unlocked. This gives you all-new solutions for solving each level more quickly and easily than before. It's obvious that this is the way the game is intended to be played, because you won't be able to fully unlock all the skill trees and equippable upgrades in one playthrough, possibly even two. Each level also has a speedrun goal, which is extremely hard the first time through and much easier with some upgrades under your belt. Only a few **** things keep this from being a 10/10 for me. The big one is that some of the game's rules aren't explained well. In particular, the villagers' wooden restraints can not only be burned with fire but frozen with ice, smashed with thrown objects, or even broken by dropping on them from high enough. Ice doesn't last as long when an enemy is encased in it. I eventually figured out how to put guards to sleep, but sometimes they wake up and I don't know why. Enemy AI is kind of inconsistent. They don't always seem to spot me at the same range and at the same angles, and sometimes they'll climb or jump to look for me but sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'll get to the spot they want to search and look around, but sometimes they'll just stare off in one direction. It makes consistent solutions hard to figure out. There are also a few collision bugs. Notably, I've had villagers teleport and stand on thin air pretty regularly, and occasionally soldiers will zip around as well. Overall this is a delightful game, and I discourage anyone from passing judgement on it too early. For the most positive experience, I recommend skipping any frustrating optional goals on your first playthrough, and come back to them in New Game+ instead. Once you have most of your upgrades unlocked, breezing through the levels is a ton of fun.

Jeu très sympa où l'on acquiert de plus en plus de compétences basées sur les éléments (feu-terre-eau) pour progresser dans les niveaux. On peut soi-même doser la difficulté en réalisant ou pas des objectifs secondaires (il y a même un objectif speed-run pour chaque niveau). Attention, il faut réfléchir au choix des compétences car on ne peut pas les avoir toutes sans passer par un newgame+. Les niveaux sont réalisables de multiples manières et il y a plein de succès amusants à compléter.