Bonfire

Bonfire is what happens when you take a battle system out of an RPG, boil it down to what really matters strategically, and make it super-hard. It’s a game takes 10 minutes to learn, but hours upon hours of sweet suffering to get good at.

You form a party of three distinct heroes and use it progress through randomized quests and puzzle-like challenges. You manage your health, come up with cool strategies to get out of hopeless situations, think when to activate powerful single-use items, and improvise to get the most of your setup. Defeat comes often, but it only makes the rare victory that much sweeter. Progression unlocks more characters, allows to develop their stats, initial equipment, and further customize your strategy.

The game is set up so that every encounter and party combination requires improvisation and custom approach. All monsters are designed to break or counter different strategies, and your characters are pretty fragile. Trying to do the same thing over and over results in a quick defeat. Every turn, you must consider what’s the best action to take, depending on the encounter’s composition, your characters’ status, and what items are available. Each battle is a puzzle of its own.

Last updated on August 14, 2015