Bonfire Peaks from Corey Martin and Draknek & Friends is a very chill voxel-based puzzle game about closure. Learn more about it in our Bonfire Peaks review!
Bonfire Peaks from Corey Martin and Draknek & Friends is a very chill voxel-based puzzle game about closure. After you arrive on a swan boat, and once you start your climb, you will notice a variety of bonfires ready for you to light them up. Approaching each one will make the fire burn so that you can interact with that level and commence your puzzle solving. Some boxes will have your belongings in them, while others need to be carried around so that you can use them as stepping stones to reach a new spot.
You can move with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, moving the camera around each area with the right one. The R1 and R2 buttons are for zooming in, while the L1 and L2 buttons are for zooming out. You will need to burn your belongings by getting close to the fire and pressing the X button to pick them up, and then drop them onto the fire to watch it all burn. Some boxes will need to be used as stepping stones to reach higher areas before you can take your belongings for that stage to the fire. If you want to undo a move, just press the Circle button. You can press it as many times as you want until you’re back at the beginning of the puzzle.
The game has a nice difficulty curve, with new elements added at a steady pace to keep the puzzles from feeling too similar while also teaching you new skills to help you during this relaxing experience. You will soon find yourself having to use boxes that are twice as long as the regular boxes, which you’ll have to use to create stairs you can climb in order to burn your belongings. You will notice that these large boxes can be stuck inside of walls to create a path to climb, or how a small single square gap won’t keep you from getting your box of belongings to the fire.
Fire can burn one box and then burn the box with your belongings. You might run into levels that have poles sticking out of the water, which will make it trickier to navigate them while carrying your box of stuff. You will end up finding switches that can trigger deadly arrows that will fly towards you. Sharp spikes are always bad news, so be sure to stay away from them. There will be blocks that will crumble under your weight after walking over them once. And once water is added into the equation, things will start to get particularly tricky!
As you solve each puzzle, a box will materialize out of thin air. Each of these boxes can be used to gain access to more levels since you’ll need to place them to reach higher ledges or pile them up to create stairs in the “overworld” that will lead you to more puzzles. Some areas of the overworld require a set number of boxes for you to create the stairs that are needed to reach the next area, but the good news is that you don’t need to complete all levels to have enough boxes to reach the summit.
The game has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy, and the good news is that none of the trophies are missable! You’ll get some trophies for progressing through the game and finding some new puzzle elements to use. Other trophies will pop as you find specific items outside of the puzzles, such as a car or a saxophone. As for the rest of the trophies, they will require you to work on specific objectives that can be completed on some levels in particular. For example, there’s one for riding a box as it moves over the flowing water.
Bonfire Peaks is a fun and very chill voxel-based puzzle experience that you can play at your own pace. You don’t need to complete every single puzzle to get to the top, but there are over 200 puzzles for you to take on, and I highly recommend that you go through every single one. They’re bite-sized puzzles that can be completed in under a minute if you know what you’re doing but don’t worry if it takes you longer since sometimes some steps will just need to click before you realize where you were doing something wrong. Bonfire Peaks is out on PlayStation 4 with a $19.99 asking price.
Disclaimer
This Bonfire Peaks review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Draknek & Friends.
