Game Review: Kill it with Fire
I stand in front of a bookshelf while unseen stringed instruments pluck a tense tune. A subtle duet of a crescendoing violin and the scuttling of tiny feet. With a shaking hand I pick up a framed picture of a face I don’t recognize. As I turn it over, slowly, I begin to see a twitching hairy carapice. I throw the picture and it smashes against a cheap looking vase, breaking both. I pull out a cast iron skillet and start smashing everything on the bookcase, hoping to kill my prey in the mayhem. When everything on that shelf is broken and thrown to the floor, I pause. In that moment, the scuttle of tiny feet resumes. I pull out a can of gasoline. This, it seems, will require a much larger response.
Kill It With Fire, from tinyBuild and Casey Donnellan Games LLC, is a very simple game: you kill spiders, that’s it. In order to move to the next level you must kill a minimum number of spiders, but you can’t take damage, so “winning” the game is just a matter of spending enough time in each level to search out and smash the required amount of spiders to unlock the exit door. This game is all about complete and utter destruction, the catharsis that comes from turning a pristine space into a wasteland of chaos. The levels all take place in the same town, and they are all places that represent the calm retreat of white suburbia: a white walled suburban home with attached garage, a farmers market, a zen garden, etc. If that’s got you feeling calm and subdued, then good. Now burn it all down, there are spiders to kill. You might call it a simple game, or a direct one, but whatever word you’d search for, “dull” wouldn’t be it. I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun with a game.
In addition to killing spiders, the game presents you with a list of side-tasks to complete in each level, and I do mean an actual list. In fact, the clipboard that the list is attached to is one of your first weapons. Most tasks are hidden on physical pages found throughout the levels. Completing tasks will unlock special areas that usually lead to a new weapon or at least more ammunition for the ones you have. Tasks don’t feel like chores, but instead encourage the player to explore the levels and see what the developer has hidden around the maps. Because the tasks ultimately add to the chaos and fun, at no point did I ever feel like I was just checking boxes on a list, even though that was what I was literally doing.
Completing all of the tasks in a level will unlock that level’s “boombox challenge”. These challenges result in EVEN FURTHER chaos, as the game will spawn an infinite number of spiders for you and demand you kill them in a certain way. The damage you cause is persistent, as is your total number of kills, so even though I would often have to retry the challenges 5 or 6 times before getting it right, I took a certain glee in surveying all of the damage, and raising the number of spider kills into the hundreds.
You can gain access to additional abilities and equipment, which range from useful, like the ability to hold more weapons at once or the ability to sprint, to the useless but funny. One item I equipped made me laugh out loud when I realized the joke the developers had played on me. However, these unlocks come from finding batteries that are hidden throughout each level, which slows the game down unnecessarily. I think the developers use the batteries as a way to encourage exploration, but it's wholly unnecessary; the levels are well designed and encourage plenty of exploration on their own. It shows a lack of trust in the developers' own abilities, and the game wouldn’t suffer for removing the battery hunt mechanic and granting access to the abilities in some other way.
Ultimately, progressing through a level does require clearing gates by slaying enough spiders, with the final exit always requiring the largest number of spider-kills. The seriousness of your arsenal increases with each level, starting with said clipboard and the classic hairspray and lighter combo, and escalating to silenced pistols and c4 explosives. The weapons are well thought out, but my one issue with them is the accuracy of the aimed weapons. Often, I would shoot at a spider, at what appeared to be dead center, and instead the spider would scuttle away unharmed. This was particularly infuriating when the challenges required you to use an aimed weapon, like the shotgun or shuriken, but even without the challenges I found myself preferring weapons that let me do damage in an area, like flames or explosives.
The spiders themselves get progressively creepier and more combative too, starting with your basic black spider and leading to spiders that leap at your face, spit webs to obscure your vision, or even raising formerly dead spiders to fight on as zombies. It keeps the gameplay fresh and exciting, and on top of it all spiders can also be changed to other types by feeding them various flavored baits if you’d prefer a different kind of challenge.
Kill It With Fire is a short game, with less than 10 levels, each of which can be completed in 10 to 15 minutes. However, I assure you, the time is well spent. The challenges are hard but optional, and the tasks from your clipboard just add to the overall destruction of each level and don’t feel like chores meant to pad out the play time (I’m looking at you Ubisoft). This game is mindless fun, and if I still haven’t convinced you, you can try out two demos: Heatwave, and Ignition. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
- The Clever Coyote