Kill It With Fire Review - Indie Arachnophobia Inducer.

Content Warning: This game is heavily focused on spiders, if you have arachnophobia I suggest either preparing yourself or turning off the video. They are unavoidable in this game and are core to it. Hello there I am Tolvo and I have been given access to a review copy of Kill It With Fire, a game published by Tinybuild and developed by Casey Donnellan Games LLC.

This upcoming game is sort of an action puzzle focused first person shooter. I use the term first person shooter lightly here since it does control similar to one though it's really far more focused on puzzles, merely how you aim and kill spiders is done through standard FPS control schemes.

There are guns though largely I find they're not too useful other than for ambushing spiders. Kill It With Fire appears to be based on a classic joke regarding spiders, to "Kill it with fire." This game takes it to the satirical extreme and while it is short I imagine quite a few people can get a kick out of it.

I found most puzzles pretty engaging with some providing a decent challenge in regards to figuring out how to set up a scenario allowing me to accomplish my goals. in each level you get a list of goals that show up on your checkboard, you're able to find more goals to complete by searching levels for glowing lists and orders.

Some of them can be quite hard to pull off like killing two spiders at once with a double barrel shotgun. Others are a bit more puzzle oriented like dropping an anvil on spiders to kill them. Overall I enjoyed the goals though at times you could mess yourself up a bit if you use explosives to clear a room, since you can fling objects into out of reach areas.

So do take care when using them. I should mention at this point I have arachnophobia myself, it doesn't always trigger in regards to fictional spiders if they are cartoonish enough. The spiders in this game appear to be some sort of robots at least as far as I can tell.

They spark, they flash with light when hit, and make various electrical and mechanical sounds. This is likely how it has a family friendly rating despite the carnage that takes place. Two spider types however did cause me issue, there is a spider that when killed is akin to being pregnant with tiny spiders bursting out of its belly.

Another is the jumping spider which does not harm you, though it likes to jump right at the camera and can be startling. You cannot actually take damage in the game, though it can still be alarming and disturbing to those with a phobia. Additionally the music for when spiders are active is designed to send shivers up your spine, to make a sort of audio replica of the skittering spiders do.

It may help to play with the music turned off. The game is quite short, you can beat the campaign in perhaps under an hour if you ignore optional quests and just kill spiders. I will note that it took me a few hours to beat as I went through trying to complete as many objectives as possible.

It seems geared towards a completionist mindset and perhaps even speedrunning. You can press a button to delete all save data which will be helpful for those wanting to speedrun the game over and over. I'm unsure if all spider spawns are the same but I have spotted quite a few that are, which could mean we may see some fun speedruns of people darting through this game picking off every spider precisely while blazing through levels solving puzzles.

It does give you a time after each completed level, I think this is where most people really into this game will find their fun. Kill It With Fire has a very simple story told mainly through actions and the environments, I did not actually notice any spoken words my entire time playing through it.

This works for the game, in general its minimalist approach did not cause me any confusion and I could quite easily glean the tone of situations. For those interested in a story heavy game I'd say this is obviously not one to go into for that, but if you just want some silly puzzle solving and spider crushing this is the game for you.

The array of weapons can be quite fun with some not having too much use like the hedge trimmer. Most others had plenty of situations where I found them handy especially when different spiders have different weakness. Fire in general is obviously the best choice however the exploding spdiers are immune so at times you do have to mix up how you're tackling situations.

Most of the utility upgrades I found to make too little of a difference other than the radar which really helps out with clearing levels. Each level features a gauntlet and while a few are quite easy to complete, especially when they're fire or purely number of kills based, ones that require a lot of precision I really struggled with myself.

I am more of a Souls-like player so perhaps my shooting skills are simply lacking, but ones focused on using guns to kill spiders I simply could not complete. Each time you fire a gun it causes the spiders to increase their speed and dart around far more often.

Given how tiny and fast they are I simply gave up after quite a number of tries accepting that I was merely not enough of a shooty gal to take on the eight legged creeps. At the moment its unclear to me if others will struggle as much as I did with it, and it wasn't helped by the fact that my hands shake when I play this game due to my severe phobia of spiders.

To note: I do actually consider using fire whenever I see spiders that disappear because I panic so hard not knowing where they went. For technical aspects the game does struggle a little bit. My laptop is not too powerful but it did chug just a bit when there was a lot of fire or during massive explosions.

However it did run in 1920 by 1080p quite fine for the most part. Audio sometimes would cut out and I do wish the game had more options but it does have a lot of what most would desire like key rebinding, window options, audio sliders. There's a good number of languages available.

While getting footage for this review I noticed a lot of the weapons an explosions are effected by the music slider not sound effects or anything else. I'm unsure if this is a bug or not but it is something to possible keep in mind. As well recording software appears to be heck with this.

I tested both Streamlabs OBS and OBS Studio and there was a massive downturn in performance when recording software was even open. OBS Studio effected it far more than Streamlabs for some reason with the same settings, so keep this in mind if you plan to record or stream footage of the game.

A main thing I noticed it lacking was a colorblind mode as some spiders are recognized mainly through color. Most do have individual profiles but if you can't see red and are wondering why a spider won't die to fire that's because it is an exploding spider which is red.

Secrets often use very light blue highlights when you mouse over them which may looks like the regular pick up highlight for those who struggle with seeing blue. This game is made by a very small team working under and with Casey Donnellan. They actually put out a little bit about those behind the game on steam and I'll be linking it in the description so you can get acquainted with the team and know who was behind precisely what.

I'll also put it on screen so you can pause the video to read about them if you'd like. Cara Curley I noticed the most in levels due to how much her picture stood out and how adorable it is with her cat. Alex Nichiporchik as well from Tinybuild really stands out with pizza in hand, you can see I actually tried feeding his picture a pizza slice in case there was secret there like it was a triangular key from New York.

Casey is of course listed last with this being his first project with him at the lead, I actually love getting to learn about the people who are behind a game and I love when people get credit for their work. Would I recommend Kill It With Fire? Are you looking for a seriously challenging puzzle game with hardcore time attacks and other challenges? If so I'd say no.

Are you into solving some casual puzzles while you kill a bunch of tiny robo spiders while exploring small but dense levels? If so yes. It's only 15 dollars USD and prior to release is even on a 10% off sale putting it at 13.49 dollars USD, for that price if this is up your alley I definitely recommend it.

As well if you tried the demo and enjoyed what you played but wondered if things ramp up or not, I'd say it does. It gets progressively better as new weapons and gear unlock and even the less practical weapons are fun to toy around with. And many I'm sure will enjoy it's rather, explosive, climax.