Review The Last Campfire - The more the merrier

Publisher:
Hello Games

Developer:
Hello Games

Release date: August 27, 2020

Platform:
PS4, PC, Xbox One, Switch

Traditional puzzle games often follow a strict process, as they take a single mechanic and extrapolate on it with ever more complex settings. But The Last Campfire is a collection of novel choices and combinations that are straightforward and straight to the point.

Some ideas are a bit too greedy and crammed too much into the game, confusing you for a few minutes and then they give way to other things. In this way, The Last Campfire has more in common with Breath of the Wild's puzzle temple parade. It's not like a cold logic exercise but more of a journey with an element of daydreaming.

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While The Last Campfire may simply give you self-contained levels on a list for you to complete, like Pullblox or BoxBoy! Its world is instead a tangle of puzzles and ancient machines that need to be mastered before you make it through. It can be as simple as enticing pigs to eat animals that stand in your way or the rocky outcrops that are filling the paths to secret areas in the game. 

But in its best moments, this world offers some very good ones: there's a very interesting segment in Dungeons that borrows ideas from Skyward Sword. Besides, the game's graphics are creating a gentle impression of Wind Waker. That proves that the developer has borrowed from the best to perfect this game.

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As different kinds of conundrums begin to pile up, The Last Campfire begins to feel like a love letter to puzzle games of all genres. There's even a slight point and click in the mix as Ember transports inventory across the map to help struggling chefs or fill the endless bellies of hogs. 

The downside to the magpie-style approach is that you're bound to encounter puzzles that you like better, and the constant journey forward also means fewer obstacles. It seems that the designers are so eager to show you the full journey of Ember that they dare not risk keeping you too long on any one level. 

Also, it's odd that some of the more difficult puzzles appear in the first chapter of the game, while the final chapter is where real challenges are needed to push the player to complete. Scattered with hidden chests can add to the difficulty of the journey, but you will easily discover all of them during your six-hour journey throughout the story.

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The distribution of the story is also uneven. While much of it is conveyed by wordless animation, there are continuous narrations from some sly voice that pop up from time to time. It sounds a bit like Bjork, which is a bit distracting, but more awkward is the way it narrates puzzles to try and plot solutions as metaphors for each of forlorn's troubles. 

Often you're so focused on solving the puzzle that the voiceover blurs the background and completely loses the mark. It's like when someone talks to you while you're checking your messages, it doesn't work at all.

Otherwise, it's still a nice Switch version of a game that was originally conceived with iOS in mind. This means full-touch controls in hand-held mode if you will, as well as some pleasant dexterity as you rotate the keys in the padlock and yank the landscape using a magic telekinesis trumpet. 

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That said, the physical controls are still the preferred choice for play, especially when navigating environments that are more difficult to control. The game's clean, simple art style shouldn't trouble the Switch in either handheld or dock mode.

The Last Campfire is a very unusual world and well suited to play during weekend afternoons. Solve a few puzzles on your own and be amazed at what the game opens before us, it may not be a perfect world but the little corner it creates for itself is indeed comforting and comfortable.

The Last Campfire is an unusual free-form puzzle adventure with conundrums of all genres. Although some of the puzzle designs deserve more attention, what the game has to offer is really a refreshing and extremely rhythmic tone. This is proof that Hello Games doesn't need to build a huge universe, but still creates extremely entertaining games.

Jessica Tanner

Update 05 January 2022