Porno for Pyros
In real life, burning things down is highly antisocial, but then, so are a lot of the things that are fun to do in games.
Play with Fire has novel and interesting gameplay; you win by burning stuff down. If most 3D games have the verbs "move, jump, and shoot", Play with Fire has the verbs "move, jump, and set on fire." The result is something you've never quite seen before.
Check out the Gameplay Video
Designed by Chris Bateman (who produced Kult: Heretic Kingdoms), Play with Fire is a highly unusual platform puzzle game in which you play a giant ball of fire--and burn things down.
Bateman (who blogs here) is something of a game design theorist, and the author of 21st Century Game Design
Burning Down the House
In Play With Fire you do three things: move, jump--and burn. Each level presents you with a structure composed of different kinds of materials, ranging from unburnable stone to a variety of others that burn more or less easily.
Somewhere in the level is an exit, and to get to it, you have to burn things in the right place or order to reach it. Sometimes, if you do things wrong, the structure will collapse as it burns and make it impossible to reach the exit; sometimes you must move quickly as the object burns and the fire spreads to get to the exit before the structure collapses underneath you.
Different materials burn at different temperatures, and you can increase your own temperature by starting a fire in a low-temperature material, then touching it, thereby allowing yourself to burn materials that require the next level of heat. Increasing your temperature also allows you to jump higher.
The controls are intuitive, and simplicity themselves: you move with the arrow keys, jump with Shift, and slam down at your current location with Ctrl. The challenge of the game lies in puzzle-solving, not interface mastery.
Great Balls of Fire
Despite the apparent simplicity, there's a lot going on under the surface, though; its 3D, a physics model controls how blocks fall as supports burn away, and particle effects are used to make things look realistically on fire. The combination is responsible for the relatively high system requirements of the game.
Play With Fire was developed in an unusual way; Bateman's company, International Hobo is based in the UK, but owns a development studio, Fantasy Labs Entertainment in India. Many of the game's more than 100 levels were created by people who responded when Bateman asked for submissions on his blog (among them Patrick Dugan who curates the Indie Gamers page on Myspace). So the development of Play With Fire was distributed not only across the Internet, but also across the globe.
The developer says:
Where Does Fire Go When It Dreams?
Enter the strange and wonderful world of Play with Fire. As a flaming hot ball of fire, you can burn and melt blocks of many different materials, and soar high above the world – before slamming down and exploding in a blast of intense heat. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can stop you. The hotter you become, the higher you can jump. The hotter you become, the more you can burn!
Play with Fire is an inventive new platform puzzle game in which the player controls an indestructible ball of flames which sets fire to everything in its path. The game features unique gameplay based around burning and jumping, and three different ways to play - a Fun path which is easy enough for anyone to enjoy, a Puzzle path for those wishing to test their intellectual mettle, and a Challenge path presenting formidable trials for those who wish to test their limits.
Designed by International Hobo Ltd, the game has been developed by India's first console game developer, Fantasy Labs Entertainment Pvt Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of International Hobo). Unique and innovative, Play with Fire is designed to appeal both to experienced gamers craving something original, and to a wider audience looking for something that is easy to learn but hard to master.
Reviews
"Now here's a game that should appeal to the pyromaniac in all of us."
-- Bytten
Our Review
Playing with Fire Without Being Burned
Submitted by pdugan on Mon, 2007-01-22 21:09. The WordBuilding PwF Fields Like A Master
One of Play With Fire's Level Designers Explains How to Use the Level Editor and Make Your Own
by Patrick Dugan
Table Of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Field Design Styles
3. Customizing Objects and Shaders
4. Emergent Destruction
Introduction
So, you've played with some fire. You might even have scored some gold medals and beaten all the Hell fields. Congratulations! You're the sort of skillful pyromaniac your parents feared you'd become. But there's a big difference between annihilating pre-made structures and building new ones laden with clever puzzles, timing traps, or whimsical unraveling. The latter requires the use of Play With Fire’s level editor, but using the editor is easier than you might think. In fact, it’s as easy as looking in the Bin directory of your Play With Fire install, sparking up the level editor program, importing a library, and dropping objects like flammable Lego bricks onto your custom level. Getting started is painless, but building your masterwork takes something unusual, a love of creation combined with an appetite for destruction.