The Last Campfire
- Genres : Indie, Adventure, Platformer, Puzzle
- Publisher : Hello Games
- Developer : Hello Games
- Players : 1
- Consoles : Nintendo Switch
- Languages : Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese
- Release date : Aug 27, 2020
Another little game that I was waiting for and that got out at the end of August: The Last Campfire! I had gotten very little information about the game, only the trailer discovered during the World Monday on the 17th March 2020 and the synopsis of the game
The Last Campfire tells the story of a small creature lost in a strange place, and that will have to find answers and a way to regain its home.
- A great travel: always go deeper in the region that spreads itself behind the dark forest, and triumph over the hardships that await you there.
- A world to discover: explore wonderful wild expanses where you will meet lost individuals, strange creatures and mysterious ruins.
- Bring back the light: find hope and bring it back with you to illuminate the last campfire.
- A creation from a small studio: this original count has been developed by Hello Games and by the creators of LostWinds.
Those two elements made me fall for the game, and so I immediately bought the game as soon as it was on the eShop.
The Last Campfire, a cute little adventure!
You play Ember, a cute little character that looks like a little blue pillow and that actually is an ember. Don’t you think it looks like a little pillow?
Anyways, you play Ember, a kind little ember that is going to lose itself in a strange world. On her way, she will meet other embers that are like frozen in the corners of a forest, a swamp or a cave: melancholic embers.
Ember is going to help each ember by bringing them the light/flame of hope that they lost to get out of their lethargic state. The embers having found hope again will assemble around the campfires. However, all is not that simple! The king of the forest is not really happy about it. He does not wish for Ember to give hope back to the melancholic embers.
An adventure that will help you think
The Last Campfire proposes a nice adventure that puts hope at the centre of the game. Finding hope and giving hope back to the other embers will be your main mission. As such, the game is a message of continuous hope with a very nice and intriguing scenario.
Concretely, the game is split in 4 chapters: 3 campfires and a labyrinth passage. For every chapter with a campfire, you will have to save a small dozens of embers each level, about 30 in total. To give hope back to an ember, you will first have to find it. Indeed, as the embers are sad and lost all hope, they hide. Once an ember found, you will have to solve a little puzzle in order to gather or give the flame back to the ember.
The Last Campfire, an adventure dotted with enigmas
The game is a succession of enigmas. Each puzzle is the image of the game, that is to say all soft and balanced without necessarily having a strong difficulty. The aim of the game is clearly not to have you stuck. The level of difficulty of the puzzles goes up progressively and allows you to enjoy the game to its fullest.
The puzzles are also present all along the different levels. You will have to make your way through each part of the game, forest, swamp and cave by moving blocks, manipulating parcels or creating bridges… All of that being perfectly integrated in the game’s décor.
You will also have to answer to somewhat bizarre demands coming from other characters living in each of the different places. Each time it is a nice encounter.
Ember, a cute character in a cute universe
The Last Campfire is a game full of softness, starting by Ember, the main character. She has a kind and considerate character with a design and really cute animations. The graphics, decors and character design are also cute and use the Cell Shading that allows to accentuate the cartoon/childish look of them.
The English dubbing is simply magical by its softness and its rhythm. This voice gives the feeling the story is being told for a small children and it sticks perfectly to the game’s style.
The soundtrack is also tranquil highlighting the soft ambiance of the game, and making itself forgotten by moments to let the narrator to tell us the story.
In short, this game is a cocoon of softness that gives hope back even though sometimes it is a little harsh in the subjects it treats. The titles of each puzzle are an important part of the game, I invite you to read them carefully as they give a sense to the puzzle that you will have to solve. A nice work of enigmatization of an emotion.
Conclusion
The Last Campfire is soft little game with a beautiful story around hope. It proposes an adventure very cute in a carefully thought out décor, embellished with puzzles. The scenario is intriguing and pushes the player to ask itself questions all along his journey.
I quite liked following Ember, this little nice ember, in this adventure that knew how to intrigue me and continue the story. I really liked the difficulty of the puzzles perfectly adapted with the game’s ambiance. They are pretty simple but form a nice little chill game. I finished the game in 7 or 8 hours and honestly I would have liked to play one or two more hours.
The game costs 14,99€ on the eShop and is really worth it! I spent a really nice moment and, as such, I can recommend it to you.