Her Name Was Fire demo playthrough (Nextfest Oct 2022)
1This was the first demo I downloaded this week during Nextfest. After Lone Ruin had an extremely strong showing in this genre during the previous Nextfest (which I actually snoozed on until someone pointed it out afterwards), I was naturally keeping my eye out for promising top-down shooters this time around.
Unfortunately, this is another game that is off to a decent start but feels like it may be releasing too soon. Her Name Was Fire absolutely invites tons of comparisons against Lone Ruin (both are twin-stick shooters, both involve killing enemies to pick up resources to level-up and pick from a random assortment of perks)... but it falls on the losing side of every single one, in spite of the fact that Fire is days from release, while Lone Ruin's demo was "early alpha" and still soundly wins in every category. (It's possible I'm comparing apples to oranges here, and Fire isn't quite aiming for the same effect or audience as Ruin.)
The biggest issue is that the core gameplay loop quickly feels monotonous and is not nearly satisfying enough to have you wanting to come back for more. Enemies feel extremely spongey to the point where neither primary attack available in the demo feels like it cuts through them nearly quickly enough, given the pace at which they spawn. Granted, this may be somewhat intentional, as this game clearly aims for a heavier "horde" mechanic. But it's easier to notice when enemies _don't_ die than when they do, even at the very start - enemies turn white on damage, but quietly disappear into a black puff of smoke when they die, which easily blends in with other enemies. The game includes screen-shake, but it triggers when you fire rather than specifically on impact, which makes it more annoying than satisfying - thankfully, this effect can be turned off.
On top of this, there are some control issues. Fire has a "hold to continue cast" option - effectively auto-fire - which would ordinarily be an absolute necessity to prevent hand fatigue, but becomes a liability on gamepad because for some reason this option causes the right stick fires whenever you are aiming, even without holding the trigger. You don't fire whenever you move the mouse, so why would you fire when you use the right stick? This defies an extremely basic principle of shooting games whenever cooldowns are involved: setting your direction is a separate action before you commit to firing.
Also inexplicably, on controller you can use either the right trigger or bumper to shoot, but only the left bumper (not trigger) works to dash. (Maybe that's reserved for some other function not seen in the demo?)
Additionally, at least on mouse, there is consistently a problem with your shoot input being dropped after you choose a card upon leveling up, and possibly also during cutscenes when you approach a server, so you end up unnecessarily wandering around with your finger up your nose for a few seconds until you realize and correct for the game's bug.
Her Name Was Fire has simple visuals, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as simplicity could lend itself to clarity. Unfortunately, enemies are all on the same color palette as the background, which prevents them from standing out as much as they could, making it possible to smack into outliers that you've lost in the noise when the horde gets particularly thick. The simple backdrops also somewhat contribute to the game's monotony, though to a lesser extent than the damage-sponginess of enemies and the lack of satisfying DPS and kill feedback.
Her Name Was Fire seems to rely a lot more heavily on additional passive attacks, compared to other shooters that give you multiple weapons to actively juggle. The problem is that most of these passive attacks only trigger a random percentage of the time when your cast starts, and you don't always have direct control of where they'll aim either, so they feel somewhat unreliable - and like everything else, they don't feel particularly effective against spongy enemies with near-invisible kill animations.
Boss battles might be the one area where Fire seems particularly competent - go figure, it's the one place where the horde doesn't factor in whatsoever, and the game suddenly feels more like a proper shooter. Some bosses seem to be more interesting than others in terms of their variety of attacks; I'm hoping some are just not fully developed yet in the demo.
It's possible that Her Name Was Fire is going for something more along the lines of Vampire Survivors (which I've never played) than a more versatile twin-stick shooter. If its price tag matches upon launch, that might be reasonable. For my part, I'll stick to holding out for Lone Ruin while I continue to scrape away at my existing backlog.
If you want to get an idea for Lone Ruin, which I was frequently comparing this to, you can find my video from the previous Nextfest here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1jrz47P3WE