Fireside

by Aethyna Jun 14, 2024 | 1 Votes | 61 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Strategy , Adventure , Puzzle

Graphics:

Labels:

Cozy , Crafting , Adventure , Pixel Art , Fantasy Setting , Roguelike/roguelite

Platforms:

Publishers:

Nordcurrent , DANGEN Entertainment Fireside is a cozy rogue-lite where you play as a traveling merchant who finds themselves stranded on an island with little to their name. Relying on your bartering skills, you’ll not only be able to help the locals with whatever they need, but you’ll also hopefully be able to help fix the destabilizing spirit nexus so you can finally find your way home. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Fireside is a cozy roguelite where you play as a traveling merchant who finds themselves stranded on an island with little to their name. Relying on your bartering skills, you’ll not only be able to help the locals with whatever they need, but you’ll also hopefully be able to help fix the destabilizing spirit nexus so you can finally find your way home. There are plenty of fun characters to meet and make friends with, a ton of cooking recipes to discover, and upgrades that make every new run that much easier!

Plotline

In Fireside, you play as a traveling merchant, making a sea voyage to hopefully sell some goods and make a profit. However, you realized how bad an idea it was to invest everything you had in this one business trip when the ship ended up wrecked on a pretty remote but surprisingly populated island.

Starting from scratch, you’ll have to gather items along your journey and barter your way to get what you need to fix the only way off the island – the spirit nexus. As you travel around the island, you’ll meet fun characters, many of whom will have requests that you can help with, and plenty of interesting places to investigate and explore.

Gameplay

Fireside offers a unique cozy take on the highly-popular roguelite genre. In this game, you’ll get a map with multiple nodes that are in the form of campfires. You’ll then travel from one campfire to another, collecting anything that are marked on the map along the way. Sometimes, you may even encounter events where you’ll get to make decisions that may get you extra loot… or not, and the occasional side quest like a hermit crab looking for a new shell or a broken rowboat that you can potentially fix up.

The gameplay mainly plays out when you reach any campfire. Here, you can then interact with the other travelers around the fire, by chatting or trading with them. Trading is essentially bartering in this game since coins don’t really have much value here. The value of an item isn’t clearly shown here, but you can get a sense of it by placing the item on the weighing scale. Naturally, you should be able to get a deal if you take an L and offer more or if you try to strike a balance between what you offer and what you take.

That being said, the value you attach to an item may also not be the same as the person you’re bartering with. Some items are valued more than others, especially if the person specifically mentioned that they needed that little something. Fulfilling a barter request usually allows you to get a really good deal, just because you can typically clear out your customer’s inventory by supplying them with a single valuable item that they want. At the end of the day, you’ll only get to bring one item with you back to the hub – the game’s a roguelite, after all! Though, it’s possible to expand the number of slots you get with a hub upgrade (more on this in a bit).

You can even cook a variety of foodstuff over the pot at the campfire, provided that you generally know what ingredients you need. For instance, it’s easy enough to figure out you can get chocolate by cooking cocoa bean with sugar, but some recipes can be trickier to get right. This is why you can sometimes get nice hints from your fellow travelers. Some food items may require more time over the fire as well. For these food items, if you attempt to open the pot too early, you’ll then have to start all over.

Every action you take costs a unit of time, and by default, you only get five units of time per stop at the campfire. However, there are ways to extend the time you get by essentially throwing more wood into the fire. There are some strategies for maximizing the time you have here. For instance, I tend to plan out my cooking before I start trading or chatting with the people around the fire.

Some campfires even have a shrine, which, when restored, will allow you to transport certain items from your inventory to the hub’s storage for some spirit energy. Note that you’ll only get to do this once per campfire visit, and that you’ll only be able to use the spirit energy you’ve gathered during the run (and not the ones you’ve already “cashed out” from previous runs). Transporting things back to the hub can be pretty costly at first, but with shrine and hub upgrades, you should be able to cut down the cost quite a bit.

Now, you’ve probably read about “the hub” so many times and are wondering what the deal is with it. Well, if you’re at all familiar with roguelites, they typically have a hub where you can rest up and purchase upgrades in between playthroughs or “runs”. This is true in Fireside as well. The hub in this game is the place where the spirit nexus is located – the very thing you’ll need to restore to return home. As you restore all the various rundown buildings, including the spirit nexus itself, in the hub, you’ll eventually unlock more features and perks for use for your subsequent runs, be it additional inventory space or the ability to “stay out” longer so you could travel and trade more.

Exploration is also an important feature of the game. The game comes with three separate maps or biomes. You’ll start at the swamps (tutorial) before moving on to the river delta for your first proper run. By helping the locals at the river delta, you’ll then be able to unlock the next map, allowing you to explore new places and meet new characters. Naturally, some maps are larger than others so it’s good to have more time out in the field, so to speak, not only to trade but also to complete the quests you’re given.

Graphics/ Sound

Fireside features the kind of hand-drawn art that’s iconic in many children’s books. The creativity here is off the charts as well – have you ever seen a reverse mermaid? Well, if you play this game, you will! It sometimes feels like the artist tapped into the boundless imagination of a child, not just via the art style used here but also the designs for the many characters in the game. In terms of sound, the game provides a nice selection of tunes that befit its cozy theme and chill gameplay, creating a nice, comfy atmosphere that you’ll get to enjoy as you play. There are plenty of sound effects too, of course, whether it is to indicate an action or to emote a specific bit of dialogue.

Conclusion

Roguelites aren’t usually as cozy as this, but Fireside managed to provide a fun gameplay centered around bartering and questing within the framework of a roguelite. The game also has a colorful cast of characters, each with their own problems that you can then help with, that really bring the world you travel and trade in to life.

So, if you’re a fan of both cozy adventure games and roguelites, playing Fireside is truly a no brainer, but even if you enjoy one of the two, Fireside is definitely worth a try. Who knows? Not only will you find yourself falling in love with the world, but you’ll also find yourself enjoying your interactions with the many characters you’ll meet along the way.

Cozy Hiking Narrative Adventure Fireside Now Available on Switch

by Aethyna Jun 19, 2024

Build connections with fellow travelers at the campfire as you journey across a serene magical world

Cozy Hiking Narrative Adventure Fireside Now Available on Switch

by Aethyna Jun 14, 2024

Fireside is a cozy rogue-lite where you play as a traveling merchant who finds themselves stranded on an island with little to their name. Relying on your bartering skills, you’ll not only be able to help the locals with whatever they need, but you’ll also hopefully be able to help fix the destabilizing spirit nexus so you can finally find your way home.