HAPPY  BIRTHDAY, FIRESTARTER  🎉🥳!

Hello there, it's been a while!

When we made FireStarter during a game jam in 2021, we only had small ambitions on its content, but we truly wanted to tell more about forest ecosystems.

BIG NEWS

We are proud to officially announce that we are currently working on a FireStarter 2, featuring much more complex systems, allowing a wider variety of gameplay situations.

While FireStarter focused on the process of a forest "rebirth" (that was the theme of the game jam) after a wildfire, in FireStarter 2 we are looking forward to raising awareness about climate change in various forest ecosystems.

What to expect?

To do so, we plan on making bigger terrains to bring a new gameplay element: wild fauna.

Instead of burning a constantly regrowing forest without any consequences, we want to let players observe the consequences of such an act on the forest ecosystem, as the first victims are obviously the animals, losing not only their source of food but also their home in the catastrophe.

Also, this can be detail for most of you, but we are working on the brand new super duper cool game engine that is Unreal Engine 5! 

We are not aiming for that hyper mega ultra photorealistic graphics that the game engine can offer and is selling to everyone, but we'd love to experiment with it and see how far can we exploit its various useful tools.

When will FireStarter 2 release?

FireStarter 2 will obviously take some time to release. We are aiming for Summer 2023 but can't say precisely at this point. 

However, in order to shorten the wait and collect user feedback, comments, and critics to make FireStarter 2 a better game, we wanted to give a fresh look to our good ol' FireStarter as we worked on the basic structure of FireStarter 2 and allow an early release of a fully functional FireStarter 1.5 

wow so cool ! (or should I say "hot" ?🔥)

What to expect from FireStarter 1.5?

This early product proposes heavy improvements to the core features of FireStarter, that FireStarter 2 will be based on:

• Hexagonal terrains (because hexagons are the bestagons, fight me)
• New fire logic (burn smarter, burn better) 
• The water cycle (from rain to ground to cloud and over again)
• Better wind control (because this wind rose from FireStarter was hard to use, let's be honest)
• Stronger temperature system for a better season management (Climate Change incomiiiiing!)
• As well as much more minor Quality Of Life features and tweaks... (we never have enough !)

When will FireStarter 1.5 release?

A quarter, or so, of the work is done on FireStarter 1.5. At this pace, we hope to deliver it by the end of October 2022, but if we need some extra time, we would prefer not to get further than the end of  2022.

Where can I stay up to date?

On the brand new FireStarter 1.5 Itch.io page of course!

Please keep in mind that most of shared images are Work In Progress and many things might change until official release !

We are also planning on creating a Twitter account for smaller announcements but we'll let you know as soon as it's ready.

Stay tuned and keep having fun on FireStarter while waiting for his little brother to come out!

Thank you so much for giving FireStarter a chance.
See you later!