It is rare that I write a scathing review of a game, piece of music, film, or art. I think there is merit in most things, and everyone is trying their best. This is the exception to the rule. The Firestorm Is Coming is a game I bought in the Steam Sale for 92p. It offers a balloon ride that sprays water underneath it to put out fires. I thought it’d be an interesting 2D physics air balloon platformer. Instead, I was ripped off.
There are 25 levels in the game, but making it to the end will be a chore. Around 1 in 3 times, your balloon, or some fires, or some objects like spinning blades in the air won’t load in properly, forcing you to reload. To do this, you’ll need to select pause and restart, and this introduces a near game-breaking glitch where the menu flashes faster than an epilepsy warning, and every sound effect starts pinging off in your speakers. It is a slog to get the game working at all.
If you can rescue yourself from that, you might be able to get your balloon off the ground using one button, and spray water with the other. Water is tightly regulated, and you’ll need to put out all the fires and land your balloon safely before the water or the fuel runs out. Sometimes the water hits the fire and puts it out. Sometimes it doesn’t. If you steer your balloon near it, you’ll definitely catch fire, though, so make sure you can land quickly. Missing any fires will result in a defeat screen appearing and the level restarting, but the defeat screen sometimes gets stuck on screen for your next go. The level of sloppiness is poor, and the gameplay itself is so barebones, it isn’t worth wrestling the game for.
Then I noticed a Steam review about the developer GamesForGames…
GamesForGames appears to be taking existing games or game developer tutorial builds, asset flipping them, and publishing them as their own. Whether the original creators are getting compensated, I’ve no idea. None of these titles are getting decent reviews, and they all seem incredibly basic and overpriced. Frankly, I felt scammed. I will not be touching anything from this developer or publisher again, and I suggest you don’t either. I’d like to know more about their development practices. I’d like to know how they let something so broken get published. I’d like to know if they can sleep at night if this is intentional. Avoid at all costs.
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