The No
Bonus levels appear after each round to give you a chance at scoring more fireflies to spend.
Fire Fu tends to falter in the incentives department. Apart from getting a high score and earning fireflies to go towards unlocking boss creatures to burn, the only other thing to save up your fireflies for are potions. Potions can be used whilst playing to help you churn through monsters more quickly.
The potions allow for a range of special abilities such as an area of effect attack to destroy any enemies it touches.
However, once you’ve purchased all potion and boss unlocks, there’s not much else to play for, apart from the gameplay itself and ranking on the leaderboards.
Personally I think it would be nice to have a few more things to save your fireflies up for such as new environments to play in, or different enemy skins.
Aesthetic Charm
I really am very impressed by the graphics in Fire Fu. The hand-painted art-style is beautiful to look at as it comes to life with monsters and fiery effects.
Stunning orange sunsets mixed with the gorgeous flowing fire effects bring Fire Fu to life perfectly.
The fire that appears as you swipe to and fro looks gorgeous. A lot of games have incorporated fire in many different ways. Warcraft and Diablo were the first games that I noticed to use realistic looking flames, whereas other games have gone for 2D style fire. Fire Fu goes one step further and creates a beautiful flowing 2D flame. RetroFirst have really gone to great lengths to output an artistically hand-painted style with their flowing flames.
The music and sound effects in Fire Fu aren’t annoying, which is a massive plus in my books. A game that forces you to mute your device when playing is a downright no-no.
Final Thoughts
I really feel that gamers of a younger age will enjoy Fire Fu immensely. Being able to go absolutely nuts with your fingers is taxing on your muscles, but for young ‘uns, decimating the monsters will probably be a cinch.
There’s not much in terms of unlockable content, so you’ll probably find that you’ve unlocked the majority of boss creatures and potions in just a few hours.
I’m sure RetroFist are looking into what else they can implement for future updates, and I’m really looking forward to seeing which direction Fire Fu goes.
Score
3 stars – beautiful hand-painted art-style that could do with a few more gameplay incentives
Pluses:
- Beautifully artistic
- Great arm workout
Minuses:
- Not many unlockables to use your fireflies on
- Once you’ve played it once, it won’t feel very different afterwards