Blue Fire Developer Requested Review

Introduction
A new Legend of Zelda-like game has been created by Indie Developer Robi Studios, wait that is not right this game acts more like a Dark Souls game with unforgiving combat. The atmosphere is more like that of Metroid and it uses a charm like equipment setting as you can also experience in Hollow Knight. Whatever the case is, Legend of Zelda was the main influencer of Robi Studios when they created called Blue Fire. In this game you wake up lonely and stuck in a test tube, abandoned but not dead you break free from the test tube to start your adventure. You can see a nice pile of corpses behind you, you must not be the first experiment created in that test tube.

You start out with only a measly three hearts and pretty much any enemy can do you in with a sneeze. Luckily the developers created a way for you to gain extra hearts and it is not by completing dungeons like in Legend of Zelda or leveling up like in Dark Souls. Instead, you will need to… Platform your way through difficult voids that will test your patience and your anger level but most of all your skill or lack thereof. Some of these voids come easy but some are rage-inducing. You will find shrines where you can rest, they act just as they do in Dark Souls, they will reset your blue fire elixir potions (Estus Flasks) but in the beginning, you only have two potions to heal up when injured. In each dungeon, you will learn new skills to overcome the challenges in that dungeon. If things did not yet get complicated enough with mixing all these genres, you can also equip swords to increase your damage but sadly the armor is only for fashion.

What did I think of Blue Fire before playing?
I saw this game come by after it launched on Steam on social media and it got me intrigued to look up Blue Fire.
I quickly learned that this game was influenced by Legend of Zelda and other games, I mainly saw this game on Metroidvania social media groups.
I decided to take a look at the steam page to see what this game has to offer, a great land filled with survivors after the darkness has overtaken the world.

Platforming in voids to earn great rewards and difficult combat. I also learned that there were dungeons and that the game takes away elements from many genres.
I was intrigued and decided to ask the developer if they wanted their game reviewed, the answer was a firm, yes and I got a key for Blue Fire.
Without a doubt, I quickly started this new adventure excited to see what adventures would await me, the game did crash immediately a lot but the developers have mostly fixed this already.

I rate Blue Fire with an 8.2 before playing.
Blue Fire looks great before starting but as you can most often expect with games that have not been released long there will still be some flaws or balancing issues.

Story
The story of Blue fire starts with you awakening from a test tube, you are left to your own devices as you need to find out what your quest exactly is. Luckily there is another survivor that tells you to seek the voids to become stronger before you know it the gods are talking to you. (Wait for a second, how can the gods talk to you when they are almost dying and asleep?) You will need to reawaken the gods and save them to save the land of Penumbra from the darkness.

I rate the story of Blue fire with a 6.1
There are some odd things going on here, I love the idea of re-awakening the gods in their respective temples but why do we only get to re-awaken two gods before we need to take down the demon lords? There are five gods that you’re your help and one that has become evil. Where are the other three gods and their temples, what happened to the other gods? Don’t we need their power to stop the darkness or the demon lords? I would have liked it better if we also visited their temples to gain more power-ups before visiting the three demon lords and taking down the evil and stopping the darkness.

Gameplay
There is a lot going on in Blue Fire gameplay-wise because it takes away elements from many different genres and tries to put it in a blender and somehow succeeds. There are still some bugs and patches needed to get the game to its full potential. Blue Fire is a 3D platformer but it also requires precise combat when you engage an enemy. When you target an enemy, you will see their health bar, you can perform some combos while dodging their attacks. When you have gained the mana shield you can try to parry their attacks but I like dodging more in this game. When you have gained the fire attack you can use ranged attacks to take the enemy down but beware of your mana, if your mana runs out you cannot use ranged attacks anymore! There is no alternative ranged attack available. You can upgrade your mana pool with the shadow fragments that enemies drop. Defeated enemies will also drop ore, ore is needed to make purchases later on or awaken checkpoints in the game. At the beginning of the game, you can only carry a small number of ore but you can find pouches later on to increase the number of ore that you can carry.

In Blue Fire you will also need to complete voids, these are hard platforming challenges that will grant you a new heart when completed, you can also find void orbs in the void. These void orbs are needed to increase the number of spirit slots that you can carry, what are spirits? They are basically dead people that you can equip to gain new powers! These spirits can be bought in stores or found in secret areas in the world and collecting them all is no small feat. You might need to do a lot of backtracking to find them all! On your adventure you will also find emoting statues that will sell you a new emote, these emote are needed to gain special chests with new rewards like special fashion tunics. These tunics are just for looks at the moment but I hope they will be of more use later in the game. Weapons are very vital and will increase the damage that you deal, the strongest weapon can just be bought in the shop but I hope the developers change this in the future.

In Blue Fire you will learn new skills like double jump or even triple jump to be able to reach new areas, you will also be able to run on the side of walls but not for an infinite amount of time. These skills are usually found in the dungeons before you are able to find the boss key that leads to the final room. Dungeons are filled with enemies that want to shred you to pieces, when they do shred you to pieces, you will lose the ore that you are currently carrying. You can get the ore back by backtracking to the place where you died but beware the enemies will respawn. when you die again you will lose the ore that was in the field, beware there is also a bug that can make your ore disappear but I am sure that this bug will be fixed in the future. There are also side quests to complete, as of yet there are not many side quests available but they do give great rewards, I hope that in the future new voids and new side quests will be added!

I rate the gameplay of Blue fire with an 8.0.
I wanted to rate Blue Fire higher but there are still some balancing issues and fixes that need to be applied. More side quests and voids could also be helpful in getting this rating up! The combat does feel bland at times, especially when you already have this weapon halfway through the game.

Sound and Graphics
The graphics are not perfect but they work well in this game, I think the graphics could have been better and some areas need a little more polishing. I also was bummed that I did not get to see the other temple of the gods, I was inquisitive as to how the temples would play out, but the game took away a part of the story and erased it.

The soundtracks are good and I liked them but the sound effects were mediocre at best.

I rate the sound and graphics of Blue fire with a 6.4
I think the developers could improve the graphics quite a bit with polishing.

What did I think of Blue fire after playing?
I did enjoy my time with Blue fire, but there were many crashes in the beginning, but later these slowed down quite a bit, I had a hard time finding the fire lake area.
Every time I wanted to go down into the fire lake area my game crashed, I dismissed this elevator and thus I could not find the fire lake area for quite a bit of gameplay time.
I still think there are many balance patches needed to get the game to a fair gameplay point, some of the voids are on a very high difficulty because you get teleported back to the beginning of the void.
In other voids you get damaged but not teleported back to the beginning, the tunic for completing all the voids is also just a fashion tunic, I would love it more if I got a new spirit or a weapon for completing all the voids.

I had the feeling that temples were missing and that the game skipped many areas to reach the ending quicker, this decision felt very odd to me but nonetheless, I had fun while playing Blue Fire.
It hurt me deep into my soul that the game got stuck on 99,99% and that I was unable to get the satisfying 100% even though I collected everything in the game!
I would advise waiting with completing the difficult voids until you have the better spirits that let you fly through the air with ease, equipping dead people is useful, maybe a little bit disturbing.

I rate Blue fire with a  6.9 after playing.
I would love to give the game a higher rating as I did have a lot of fun when playing Blue Fire and training to complete the voids even though they tested my patience level sometimes. My biggest problem was that I only got to see two temples and then skip to almost the end-game boss without visiting the other temples. There are some balancing issues that also could be addressed in the future to make this rating go up!

My personal rating of Blue Fire
Blue Fire does bring the heat with the platforming challenges that the voids bring but can you handle the heat?

My personal rating of Blue fire is an 8.5
Even though there are many inconsistencies in the game with missing story elements and voids working differently I did like the game a lot. I would also recommend this game or maybe wait a bit until some new patches have dropped!

Pros
–-The world of Penumbra feels connected, there are many hidden shortcuts.
– A alchemist went mad and tried to mix many genres into one game but only got some Blue Fire.
– Gaining new skills opens up new pathways that you can backtrack to.
– There are many builds that you can create by using the dead people, I mean spirits.
– There are many different enemies that you will encounter in Blue Fire.
– The temples that are in the game look great and feel good to explore.
– This game is challenging for pro gamers.

Cons
– The game crashes many times, the developers are working to fix this.
– There are a few god temples missing and the game skips a part of the story.
– The combat can feel bland at times with the strongest weapon.
– The voids are inconsistent on what game mechanics they use.
– The Uthas temple can be broken by sequence breaking but you can still complete the temple.
– Blue Fire is not for casual gamers.
– At this point, you cannot gain 100% but I have heard of some people that did.*

* After writing this review the developers have fixed this bug! The developers are hard at work to make this game even better! I have faith that the game will look even better in the future!

Even though the game has many pros and cons I would still recommend this game to Legend of Zelda and Metroid fans. People that like Dark Souls would also love this game!
The final rating of Blue Fire is …Drumroll…

7.1

Let me know what you think about this game in the comments!
I hope that you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!