Wildfire Swap Review

Wildfire Swap is an addictive and challenging 2D puzzle game from indie developer Ryan Kubik Games. As stated by the creator, “Wildfire Swap is a game about exploring the efforts to control those massive fires. It explores how a small spark can quickly turn into a raging inferno and how easily forces of nature can spiral out of our control.”

The game opens on World 1, a simple tutorial map that teaches you the basic game mechanics without ever telling you how to play. Through a progression of small, intuitive puzzles that require no explanation, you will learn how to save homes from the raging fire. And if you do happen to get stuck? Well, just take a look at the level title; many of them cleverly hint at how the puzzle can be beaten.

The lack of a learning curve is refreshing and well done. Wildfire Swap skillfully builds on its simple mechanics as you progress through its 120+ levels, without ever losing sight of its core gameplay.

The game goes like this: There are houses and there are fires. Your job is to keep the fires away from the houses. Simple, right?

You accomplish this by swapping tiles each turn until there is no possible path left for the fire to progress. In addition to the houses and fire, each level includes any combination of trees, grass, haystacks, or bare tiles. Each turn, the fire will advance to any adjacent tiles...but be careful! While trees take a full turn to pass on the flame, grass and haystacks will spread immediately to any adjacent tiles with burnable material.

The only safe spaces are the bare tiles consisting of dirt or sand. That is, until a later world introduces the mechanic of wind, which can spread the flame up to one space away over empty tiles.

Wildfire Swap starts off deceptive in its level of difficulty. In World 1, I fell into the trap of thinking, ‘Wow, this is easy. I’m smart - this’ll be a piece of cake!’

Let me tell you, I was quickly proven wrong.

The game really turns up the heat in World 2. I didn’t expect the challenge to come so early on but, several puzzles in, I was already scratching my head. Many times I called for my husband to help me with a puzzle that had my patience boiling over, only for him to end up just as stumped as I was.

One thing in particular that this game is very good at is inciting the rage-quit. I’m not sure how many times I hit that little ‘x’ in the corner of the monitor, only to stare at my screen for a few moments before once again hitting ‘play’ on Steam. Luckily, the game loads up in seconds and its menu is easy to navigate right back to where you left off. The challenge might inflame your brain...but you’ll keep going back for more.

Thankfully, the ‘Undo’ button allows for an unlimited amount of use and was highly utilised during my playthrough. There’s also a ‘Reset’ button to easily jump the puzzle back to its starting point.

Wildfire Swap does try to allow you every opportunity to avoid getting stuck. Most pathways include two different puzzles that allow for forward progression through the world maps - so if you can’t beat one, try the other. Several times, I did have to walk away from the game and come back later with fresh eyes to try again.

The art of Wildfire Swap is beautiful in its simplicity. The pixel graphics are cute and pleasing to look at, with subtle animations that give the game life. The environment changes as you move through the worlds - ranging from earthy, forest landscapes, to arid deserts and cozy farmlands. Rather than reusing stock images for each type of tile throughout, the game makes sure to provide enough variation to keep it visually pleasing.

The 8-bit music is repetitive but pleasant - not falling into the trap of being too cloying or annoying. The soundtrack is actually quite zen and relaxing...but if you do get sick of it, it’s easy to jump into the settings and hit mute.

Wildfire Swap would do wonderfully as a mobile game, and I hope to see that from the developer in the future.

While I burned my way to the end of the game as quickly as possible (a task that took a few hours), I bypassed tons of levels along the way. In addition to the levels off the beaten path of each world, several of the worlds also feature “b-sides” - offering even more difficult puzzles with their own unique mechanics. I look forward to going back in and extinguishing every challenge Wildfire Swap has to offer.