[h1]Currently in EA, but fully playable, Panic Mode has some good ideas, and is full of potential, but currently it is too easy, and a little overpriced.[/h1]
As the health and safety officer at Pamperumpel Industries, it is your responsibility to complete objectives and keep your fellow colleagues safe from harm.
Survey the area, install safety equipment such as fire alarms, water tools, early warning speakers, air flow systems, and even try to control the flow of the fire, all in the name of health and safety.
Panic Mode is a casual, health and safety management simulation, where your aim is to aid the escape of your fellow workers in thirteen different scenarios.
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[h1]🕹️Game Play🕹️[/h1]
You are a health and safety accessor. It is your job to install the safety equipment at your disposal to aid in the escape of your fellow colleagues in the event of a fire. Once installed, you can test your plan by running a simulation to see what actually would have happened.
Each area has different equipment, different objectives, and different layouts in an attempt to make the game play varied. Some equipment will be limited in use and some equipment will either be automatic or manually controlled.
If you want to earn an exemplary certificate you will need to complete all of your objectives in one turn, but there are five different certificates depending on what objectives you achieved.
https://youtu.be/W-kVq7WEF4o
[h2]⌚Objectives⌚[/h2]
There are usually three objectives per area. Mandatory objectives must be completed for you to move on to the next building, but there are also non mandatory objectives and special objectives to aim for too.
Typical objectives are things like making sure “x” number of colleagues survive, or all colleagues survive, or a certain named colleague survives; Using only certain items in your arsenal, or no more than “x” number of items; Then there are more niche objectives like protecting all highly valuable equipment, or burning or saving a particular part of the building.
[h2] Equipment [/h2]
Levels increase in difficulty as you progress, introducing new equipment and objectives. You can expect to use the following currently:
[h3]🔥Fire Alarms🔥[/h3]
Fire alarms are initiated by heat sensors and alert workers in that particular room that there is a fire. As soon as they are alerted, they will attempt to escape through the nearest exit.
[h3]🔊Early Warning Speakers🔊[/h3]
Speakers that alert any one in that particular room to evacuate the area. The speakers are controlled by the player. Pressing the button marked “Speaker” will initiate the evacuation drill and colleagues in that room will start to vacate.
[h3]💧Water Tools💧[/h3]
There are three types of water tool.
The [b]Uber Soaker[/b] has a large capacity and when activated by the player will automatically start to soak any fire nearby.
The [b]Uber Soaker Jnr[/b] a smaller version with limited capacity.
[b]Water sprinklers[/b] can be placed on the ground which spray water on nearby objects for a short period.
[h3]🆒Airflow Systems🆒 [/h3]
Fans can be placed on walls to direct heat and smoke out of one area and in to another. This can help set off fire alarms or dissipate smoke outside or to another room.
[h3]🚮Recycling Bins🚮[/h3]
Used to control the flow of fire. When objects get hot, they will combust so the bins can be used to chain objects together, setting off fire alarms or redirecting the fire into a different area.
[h3]💥Flammable Barrels and Heaters💥[/h3]
Barrels explode when hot, causing fire to spread quickly, and heaters initiate fires, useful to melt ice which may impeded a colleagues escape route.
[h3]💣Bomberator💣[/h3]
Combustible bomb like object, that when hot will shoot across the room in a straight line, destroying all objects, walls, and even colleagues in its path. Very useful to create alternative escape routes.
Each colleague has a health bar which depletes when they come in contact with either fire or smoke. They can also get stuck in ice, which needs melting, and some doors can be controlled by the player to stop them accessing one room and directing them to another. If their health bar depletes, they die.
[h1]🤔Overall Impressions🤔[/h1]
[quote][h2]Panic Mode has hardly any bugs and there is a perfectly playable game currently, but it does feel a lot like a demo. Even though there are thirteen levels to play, I got the impression I had come to the end of the tutorial and the good stuff is still to come.[/h2][/quote]
Once you have grasped the mechanics of what each piece of equipment does, game play becomes too easy. It wasn’t difficult at all to rescue all my colleagues on every level and get an exemplary certificate. Future levels need to become much more difficult.
I was expecting Panic Mode to be a puzzle game but it doesn’t feel like that currently. The equipment you’re offered is quite generous and it was only the levels that restricted the amount of equipment that I found remotely challenging. I would like to see more imaginative objectives in the future, like the ones that asked you to burn certain rooms, as I feel just rescuing colleagues would soon get boring. There is quite a lot of variety in the equipment so far. I don’t think they need to add much more, but they do need to make the levels more puzzle like, with clever solutions which challenges the player to think. I didn’t need much planning to execute a successful evacuation. The only difficult part is accessing where the fire will start, and once you know that, you can plan accordingly. You have unlimited retries so trial and error will always make you succeed.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2834809977
There were glimpses of brilliance in some of the level designs, like the levels where you can control the fire direction by burning items and forcing the fire away from your work mates, or channeling smoke with fans. I would like to see much more of that. I also enjoyed the manual interventions I sometimes had to use, like initiating the water cannons, but I don’t understand why the early warning system had to be manually activated, as I just pressed that immediately and watched the workers leave the building before the fire had even started. This is why I think the level design needs to be improved, and I am hoping that now all of the equipment has been introduced, they can start making some clever levels that really make you think.
The workers are very cute and will remind you of The Minions. They bumble around muttering stuff incoherently, much like their yellow counterparts. It would be nice to see them performing comedic activities, or perhaps have a comic introduction to each level with a funny cut scene.
The levels look okay. Perhaps they are a bit basic. There is no decoration outside whatsoever and the interior of the buildings look quite basic too. Each level is set on ground level only. It might be interesting to have more than one floor, or control more than one building at the same time, much like a time management game, where you’re keeping an eye on more than one event and reacting to more than one situation.
[h1] 🍳 Conclusion🍳 [/h1]
[quote][h2][b] [i]Panic Mode[/i] shows a lot of promise and is full of potential. I’m quite impressed with what is on offer at the moment, but currently it is far too easy, and the levels need to be made more complicated and thought provoking.
The premise of the game is a good one however, so I will be very interested to see how they develop the game further. I can recommend the game in its current state, as it is perfectly playable, but its next development loop will be crucial in providing a decent game, and currently it is priced too high for its content. [/b][/h2][/quote]
