Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue Review

Have you ever had dreams of becoming a heroic firefighter dashing into the flames to save trapped people? In Firegirl: Hack ‘n Splash Rescue you will get your chance to be the hero of the day and restore glory to the town’s fire brigade. You play a young woman following in her late father’s footsteps working as a firefighter. The fire chief refers to her as Rookie, so I am not sure what her real name really is, but it doesn’t matter, all we need to know is that she is new to this line of work and is eager to get out there and help by taking out the fire monsters that are constantly attacking the city.

Firegirl starts you off with one of the shortest game tutorials I have seen in a while. The controls for jumping, using your handy axe, and using the fire hose are flashed on the screen then you race off to fight your first fire. The hose you have isn’t just for dousing fires, it works as a propulsion system using the insane pressure from the water to shoot yourself through the sky like a jet pack. It takes time to master this technique and ration the amount of water you are using to fight the flames and navigate the level.

Firegirl: Hack ‘n Splash Rescue is a procedurally generated game, so no two run-throughs will be identical. There are four different environments where fires can occur; multi-storey apartment buildings, upscale hotels, forests, and on trains. Yes, the city in this game has issues with burning trains! If you get called to fight a fire at the apartment building you may think that you already know the locations of the survivors since you have played this level before. That is not the case. The layouts of the building are totally different, along with the locations of items like extra water, clocks to add extra time on the clock, and first-aid kits. For a lot of the game, you only have three minutes to find all the survivors in the level and get out of there successfully. In all the hours I have been playing, I have only been able to save everyone and get myself out in time a handful of times. Luckily this is not required to keep playing. After every attempt, you will earn money from the city, fan bonuses if you have a large fan base, and a bill to pay for a trip to the hospital. Apparently, your injuries are never fatal, maybe Rookie has superpowers?

As you play through the random levels and rescue survivors, some of the people you have saved from the blazes come to the fire station to offer help, for a price that is. No one wants to work for free! So the money you make in the levels can be used to upgrade your items, like your hose decreasing your water consumption, increasing the distance it can shoot, or even getting the mechanic to make the fire truck faster adding thirty seconds to the countdown. That may not sound like much, but anytime you can add time to those initial three minutes is a huge help!

As all your fire fighting gear gets upgraded, the levels do get a bit easier. My favourite upgrade was spending $50,000 to get a water tank that automatically refills itself by pulling humidity out of the air. It took a long time to save up enough money for this, but I don’t feel as restrained in the levels always having to conserve how much water I would go through. If you want something cheaper to spend money on, you can always buy hearts to increase your health from the four hearts you start with. Those hearts run out fast, especially when you are rushing through the level due to the time constraint.

Firegirl: Hack ‘n Splash looks gorgeous with super vibrant colours and pixel graphics. The ambient lighting that comes off of the flames is great and very well done. It is really noticeable when you put out a fire and that area gets darker because that added light is gone. Each of the four environments has its own music and the roaring of the fire sounds quite authentic. The flames even have their own personalities. They have faces and make funny sounds when you are soaking them with water, it was pretty entertaining to hear them saying “ow, ow, ow!” But the flames aren’t just your run-of-the-mill normal type, they also come in the form of fire birds and bats that will swoop at you and push you around. What is causing all these fire monsters to attack?

Firegirl: Hack ‘n Slash Rescue is a lot more addicting to play than I had initially expected. Especially when you have to play the same location multiple times, you would think you would get tired of it. With everything randomly generated, it was never exactly the same, and being able to upgrade your equipment was always exciting. Earning medals in the game for tasks like saving cats, or defeating a certain amount of flames was a nice addition and getting bonuses when you equipped them was neat.

I wish the game would show me how many times I wasn’t successful in my runs, as I’m sure it would be a ridiculously high number. But personally, even if a run only lasted thirty seconds before it was over, I would count it as successful if I was able to rescue one of the pink-tabby cats that are in all the levels. What can I say, I am definitely a cat person!

Firegirl: Hack ‘n Splash Rescue is definitely worth checking out if you want a challenging game that is really different from other titles you have played. It can get frustrating at times and feel like you aren’t making any progress but remember that even if a run isn’t successful you will still make money to use to upgrade your equipment, making the game just a bit easier in future attempts. One day I will get good enough to consistently save all the people and animals trapped in the buildings, but I’m guessing that won’t happen until I learn to manage my time better.