Lately, it seems like there have been a whole lot of 2D survival games where you have to keep a bunch of people alive by micromanaging their daily routines, or maybe that’s just because I’ve played more of them in the past month than in almost six years of reviews. But hey, that’s a good thing because I’m really liking The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands thus far; it kind of feels like a combination of a clicker and survival game, with the addictive sense of constant growth and peril that goes along with that. During the day, you’re scavenging for resources and trying to balance food, wood, and numerous other supplies required for your little settlement to survive and grow, while the nighttime is when the guards come out to deal with the nightly beast attack. It’s actually quite a simple game once you get the hang of it (thus far, at least), but one that I’m finding it easy to lose large chunks of time to nonetheless.

My first play session

The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands—which I’ll henceforth be referring to as TB;FL half for my own amusement and half because referring to it as either “The Bonfire” or “Forsaken Lands” doesn’t feel quite right—has two difficulty settings at present: normal mode and hardcore mode. Hardcore mode claims to have permanent death, so I decided to go with normal mode instead to make figuring things out quite a bit less painful. That’s a good thing, too, because while things went smoothly for a few in-game days as new people showed up to help with work, a giant spider attacked on the sixth day and cut through the main character and his guard like butter. I definitely wasn’t expecting to have to repel a building-sized spider, much less one that can body slam everyone at once. Reloading my save, I took some people off of other jobs and made them guards, ensuring that a grand total of four people would be attacking the giant spider at once. This worked to defeat it, though I still lost two people in the process. Thankfully, two more people showed up to replace them the next day, and the following night’s attack consisted of regular, harmless monsters.

My second play session

There are a handful of things I’ve already figured out. While the main character can be sent to either gather wood, work on the farm to create food, or work in the iron mine (once you’ve built it), they’ll always come back with just one piece of wood/food/iron. That’s why using others is so handy; workers can be outfitted with equipment, and while you often have to figure out what does what, getting everyone equipped can allow them to become much more productive. Carts in particular can be used for several of TB;FL’s different jobs, enabling workers to bring back 5 of their resource rather than 1. Miners can be given pickaxes, farmers can be given scythes (as can guards, which helps them to fend off monsters early before you can make them swords), and guards can be given armor and weapons. Affording the things you need to build early on when you’re hauling back a single piece of wood per trip is daunting, but having three people rapidly bringing back 5 pieces of wood each is a huge improvement, and doling out jobs to workers with complementary traits—those who are listed as strong become guards, those who are wise typically decipher ancient texts to become alchemists, etcetera—while being mindful of your current needs and how everything is balanced can be immensely satisfying.

I’m still figuring things out, too. This play session ended in me sending my warrior and alchemist with the main character to check out a mysterious cave that a scout found, only for everyone to be killed by a monster they had no chance of defeating. Dungeons like this are probably best saved for when there are more warriors available. Another thing I’m figuring out is that while the nightly monster attack has become harder over time and included increasingly more monsters, it’s not a straight line of difficulty. Sometimes there are easy nights where a handful of wolves go down fast. Sometimes you get some enemies who attack hard and can easily kill a single guard, but who go down quickly against a group. Of course, the possibility of a night with a spider necessitates keeping a bunch of your strong workers assigned as guards either way. They may sleep during the day and produce nothing, but the main character isn’t going to fend off a spider or group of enemies on his own.

A more accurate name for this game might be “The Bonfire: Safety in Numbers.”

The post The Bonfire – Forsaken Lands: Progress Log #1 appeared first on Killa Penguin.