Great potential… – FireCraft Review

This game could have been great with a bit more care. As it stands, though, it would have been better off as just a fireworks app, with no game around it at all. The half-baked game that is there detracts from the fireworks simulator underneath. And with a bit more polish, the game could have been great, too. For one thing, a bit more care to the user experience would have done wonders: 1) There is no tutorial or manual. I don't mind games that ask me to experiment and learn on my own except… 2) It is very easy (if not inevitable) to screw yourself over while experimenting to learn the system, leaving the game unplayable unless you uninstall and reinstall. (If losing your materials for not liking your test-firing is not a bug, then it is a terrible design decision.) This is compounded by… 3) The UI is incredibly touchy, which results in many, many false clicks. Which might not be so bad except… 4) There is NO way to take back an action, even obvious ones like pulling a bullet back out of an unfinished rocket. Combined with the previous 3, this means you are constantly accidentally getting yourself stuck in situations where the only thing the game will let you do is expend your limited resources until it becomes unplayable. Beyond that, the gameplay lacks any gameplay to speak of. The scores given to performances are never explained, and there's never any stated goal, so there's no way to improve or get better at the game. The game isn't COMPELLING. And thus it feels like merely a token impediment to enjoying the more satisfying fireworks-creation and -exhibition aspects. This app had so much potential, and as a custom fireworks simulator, it works well. But you have to suffer through the horrible UI and the "game" to use it, and that ruins the whole package.
Review by Arashikou on FireCraft.