Fire Point [PC]

The title screen is a great representation of what can happen in the actual game.

Fire Point is a freeware puzzle-platformer by Cesque and Aeron released in 2013 about the perils of being a firefighter in a world filled with insane pyromaniacs and the worst fire safety imaginable.

This game writes its own snarky captions!

You play as an unnamed firefighter trying to save people (and cats) from burning buildings and put out the flames in them. From the start of the level in your fire engine, you're equipped with a fire hose, which is very powerful but has a limited range due to the hose, and a ladder. There are a few items scattered among the levels: extra ladders, fire extinguishers, and fire axes. They're all used for puzzle-solving, either getting to new heights due to high windows or broken stairs, putting out flames, or breaking breakable doors down. You need to save a certain amount of people and escape yourself in order to clear the level. The fire slowly spreads on a fixed timer in the upper-left corner, and will burn anyone who touches it, including yourself.

The game features 12 levels (plus a secret bonus level!) with a nice variety of puzzle-solving and tight platforming, being probably an hour total for the main game. Practically no level plays quite the same, especially with the hectic final level. You're not required to save everyone on every level, but it is doable and is usually faster anyway than waiting for the flames to slowly burn their way through. The controls are satisfactory, although trying to place ladders and throw people can be a little finnicky. You can only throw people when there's a certain amount of room in front and above you, and you never have enough room when you actually want to throw them through doors and windows and the throw distance is slightly too long to throw them into some gaps in the floor. Ladders flip around and land at whatever angle they end up resting at when falling, but you throw the ladder slightly in front of you instead of where you are. Climbing the stairs and ladders at least work better than you expect it to. It really only gets to be a problem on the bonus level which requires some insanely tight throws. The rest of the levels' puzzles are at least okay, although unless you're going for best time you can largely ignore them.

You will learn to hate the guys who automatically run back and forth like the guy on the right.

They're not particularly difficult puzzles nor is the platforming very difficult (sans the bonus level), but trying to save everyone can definitely get a bit tricky at times until you learn an actual route. There's a lot of ways to approach the levels, either being cautious and meticulously taking out all the flames, or going gung-ho grabbing and tossing people like everyone's favorite firefighter with a reckless disregard for life. I do have a small complaint with this though; one of the game mechanics is that people are supposed to escape if there is an open ground-floor escape route (one of the NPCs outright says it) but this almost never works in most of the levels, nor is it used. It's only really frustrating on the bonus level which requires a very awkward solution due to it, but it sure would be nice on the other levels too. The game keeps track of your clear times so you can try to beat your best on each level.

The graphics are charmingly simple; they do their job but they're nothing special. The music (all by Aeron) however, is absolutely fantastic. It screams freeware, but in a good way (my personal favorite being 'Puncher'). It's not reuploaded anywhere, but all the files are there in the game's folder readily available.

Of course, the absolutely absurd writing and story is great too. All the fires are started in the most ridiculous manners possible by people with less than zero knowledge of fire safety, megalomaniacal pyromaniacs, and sometimes just by physically impossible mechanisms too.

In all, I highly recommend anyone play through it; it's a very high-quality and fun game! The original download for the game is missing, so I took the liberty of hosting it on the Internet Archive.