Blue Fire: Void Maker

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yeah, nice

"Blue Fire: Void Maker" is something I debated on hammering for being software published as a game, because technically it is... it's a tool for making games rather than a game itself. It's called "UGC" or "User Generated Content", and this is a particularly awful and unpopular version of it. This software toolset can, however, get you into games so I guess it counts as a game? Anyway... it's really bad at it, with a crappy UI, unpolished tools, and no fun whatsoever. What do you do in the game? You can play game levels (platformers) made by people who aren't software developers. Personally I like this approach, and I'm applying it to other parts of my life, too. From now on I'm going to only eat food made by people who can't cook, I'm going to get my dentist to fix the brakes on my car, and the next time I need life saving surgery I'm going to get the homeless crack guys living in shopping carts under the bridge to do it. Or maybe, you know, jobs should be left to the people qualified to do them. Including game development. In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D graphics which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. Now onto pricing and value. This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. In terms of public reception, the "free" price tag didn't help. This peaked at a handful of players and then immediately cratered. With a peak count of less than 50 gamers (out of over 130 million gamers and over 40 million daily logons), it’s safe to say the PC gaming community has collectively decided to ignore this, probably because of the reasons supplied in this review. Given that this free game won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library? Give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.

i thought it was a dlc story, but you make levels instead. not what i wanted ♥♥♥♥. 10/10

Fun.

This is one of the laziest executions on what could've potentially been one of the coolest UGC platformers. Blue Fire is an amazing game and when I first heard about it I was told there was a level creator, which is technically true, but it's a completely separate game. I don't think making this a free spin-off that has to be a separate download did it any favours on any front, considering that the paid full game has WAY more reviews. Not to mention that this being a separate executable means that any changes made to the core has to be manually updated for both titles, and I don't even need to make that a hypothetical. You can't even set your Windowed resolution here, whereas you can in the main game. Considering they made this a separate game, you'd think they go the extra mile to trim down some of the RPG aspects of the game and de-clutter the existing menus? Nope, you still get to see an inventory menu with hundreds of empty slots, a useless progression menu that shows all the Quests and Voids in the real game, and the start pause menu being the same without necessary functions like a restart button where the REAL pause menu you're supposed to press is on Select instead of Start. I am not much of an artist so I have not tried the actual tools yet, so I cannot comment on the state of that, but some of the levels I tried were pretty good. Unfortunately, the discovery is pretty bad so it's hard to find good levels that capture the essence of the original game. You can only view random(?) highlights, newest, and top levels. The majority of the top levels are either tech-focused challenge levels or super casual levels that don't give you all the items, so anyone trying out random Voids to see if they want to buy Blue Fire won't get a good impression of the great mechanics of the game. The overall package is a fumble, but you can have fun with it if you dig really deep.