Developer: Deepnight Games
Publisher: Deepnight Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Nuclear Blaze – Review
Nuclear Blaze is a game made by Deepnight Games, the studio that also created Dead Cells. Nuclear Blaze is all about intense 2D firefighting and actually finds its origins in a 48-hour game jam. The potential of the game, plus the creator’s kid’s love for firefighters, made it that this game reached a full release with a story that has about 3 hours of playtime. A fair trade for the 9,99 that you pay for it on the Steam Store.
Story
You get sent on a mission as one of the firemen who need to make sure a fire in a forest gets extinguished. While working hard with the sweat on your forehead, you get cut off from the other workers and you discover a mysterious facility. Central indicates they don’t even have any records or maps of this facility, and before long you are too far underground to reach them at all. This is how the mysterious story of Nuclear Blaze starts, giving you a quest of epic proportions that involves saving the world. The game feels a bit like a 2D movie with small dialogue moments, where more and more information over the course of three hours of gameplay is given.
Aside from saving the world, Nuclear Blaze is also based upon a couple of the SCP stories, with one (no spoilers) in particular. The SCP stories, for those who don’t know, are a collection of absurd mysterious stories, much like The Twilight Zone was back in the day. These stories contain peculiar objects of mystical or alien origin, and the SCP Foundation (Secure, Contain, Protect) is tasked with making sure they never see the light of day, as well as with researching them to learn more. The game cleverly uses this as a base for its story, as SCP stories are somewhat of an internet phenomenon. The game also includes many easter eggs with references to other games or SCP stories, if you are willing to try and find them.
Graphics
While the game itself is straightforward, it looks complicated enough to give you something to look at as well. Especially the mysterious complex feels largely unique as you delve deeper and deeper, stopping the fire from spreading as you go. The game communicates what’s going on quite well, via dialogue information and the HUD, and manages to give you the intensity of a real fire surrounding you with special effects such as particles and smoke without losing the aforementioned toolf of communication. While your main character and other (dead) characters might have been designed a bit too simplistic, it does not negate that the overall game looks pretty good and makes you curious about what will happen next.
Sound
The soundtrack is surprisingly good, and at points actually reminiscent of games such as Terraria and other pixel-art-loaded games. There’s a retro-style synth accompanying mysterious or dreadful parts, and during the more intense fights, the music tends to go rock-and-roll on you with an electric guitar. Other than this music and the sound of fire crackling/being extinguished, there are your classic footsteps, some radio static, and so on. There are no voice-overs, and the overall soundscape could be considered to be retro-inspired.
Gameplay
The gameplay is fairly simple in Nuclear Blaze. As a classic 2D platformer with action elements (shooting water with your hose), this is a genre that’s familiar for many players. The goal is quite simple. In each room, you have to make sure the fire does not get a chance to come back anymore. This partially just means dowsing everything with your water, but it also means racing against the clock sometimes, as fire will spread again when left unfought for too long. The player can counter this by opening valves that might trigger sprinklers when available, creating safe areas in a level.
While you might feel rather useless at the beginning by lacking skills such as aiming upwards, the game grants you such “basic” skills throughout the course of the adventure. Little by little you get more abilities, making the game more interesting and slightly more intense. Watch out for active electricity, dodge explosions, and more. The only real mediocre point we found is that you can’t really aim your hose, which sometimes will cause you to hit something you definitely did not intend to hit. Luckily, the game is rather forgiving and quickly allows you to try again, be it at the start of a level. Other than the lack of aim, the game is fun, exciting, and even somewhat original throughout its roughly three hours’ worth of game time.
For those who want to explore every little secret Nuclear Blaze has to offer, there are also a total of 14 cats to find throughout the game. These are hiding in secret hallways and tough-to-reach locations, asking you to be alert before leaving a level. On top of that, there are some achievements to find hidden references to other SCP stories in the facility, giving the game a small completionist edge. Perhaps one of the coolest additions is that the game is also very well playable for young kids, as the creator made a special “kids mode”, mainly for his own kid! This mode consists of four small levels where you have different controls than in the main game, where the main goal is to rescue kittens. All somebody has to do is walk around and fire the hose. No jumping, aiming, or something else is required here. It might not be much, but it’s a nice accessible extra.
Conclusion
Nuclear Blaze offers you a nice, intense adventure that will take you about three hours to play through. The pace of the game where you get upgrades over time, as well as the main mechanics, makes it a fun and exciting game to play. Before you know it you are at the end, possibly wanting more action, as the gameplay got better and better. This is just an example of how indie games can provide you with a great experience if they are designed well, where the extras such as collectibles in multiple levels are just a bonus.
Nuclear Blaze - Review,
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