Firefighting Simulator: Ignite

TLDR: I enjoy the rest of the game, I really do. And I dont know if the Devs decided "Oh we cant have the AI do all the work" and made them as useful as pissing against the wind with your mouth open. They stand in place because they detect a fire and hit the wall in front of it until you do your job and then they hit a ceiling. They will be downed and never help each other. Or You. I understand that the idea is to force people to play with randos? But Imma be real. Id rather piss against the wind with my mouth open. Do not recommend unless you have dedicated friends or decide to cheat somehow.

Memory Match Sim ❌ The Core Issue - This game forces memorization. Forcing players to fail a run just to memorize static layouts. The Gameplay Loop: - First run is blind guesswork. - Correct guesses feel unearned. - Zero reward for good intuition. - Replays are just memory tests. - Feels like a rigid speedrun. The Verdict: - Physics look great. - The gameplay loop is unfun.

As a medically retired firefighter/paramedic who spent 14 years in one of the largest fire departments in the country, this game hit me in a way I wasn't expecting. The moment I stepped into the station and walked through the bays, I got chills. No, it's not a perfect 1:1 recreation of the job, and no video game ever will be. You can't replicate the weight of the gear, the heat, the adrenaline, or the camaraderie that comes from doing the real thing. What Firefighter Simulator: Ignite does exceptionally well is capture the feeling. The sights, sounds, routines, and atmosphere brought back memories I haven't visited in years. For a few hours, I got to walk the bays again, answer the call, and be part of that world. If you've never been a firefighter, it's a fun and engaging simulation. If you have worn the gear, there's a good chance you'll find yourself smiling at the little details and appreciating the respect the developers clearly have for the profession. It's not the real thing, but it's about as close as you can get without pulling on turnout gear and climbing onto a truck.

This game doesn't get the proper maintenance and updates it needs to be sustained, the AI have began to just stop working and it becomes unplayable.

The AI is hopeless. The previous game's AI wasn't great, but it's night and day better than this. Unless you've got 3 friends to play it to, you'll have an incredibly frustrating experience in the second half of the game where you stop being able to carry the fire yourself.

[h1] Firefighting Simulator: Ignite : A Promising Firefighting Simulator That Still Needs a Lot of Improvement [/h1] As a firefighting simulation game, Ignite has an interesting concept and a lot of potential. The idea of responding to emergencies, driving fire trucks, rescuing civilians, and managing dangerous situations is genuinely appealing. However, after spending time with the game, I found many issues that seriously affect immersion, especially regarding vehicle handling, AI behavior, station design, equipment limitations, and mission variety. [h2] The Fire Truck Driving Experience Is Extremely Poor [/h2] The biggest disappointment for me is the driving system. Almost every fire truck in the game feels like it has no ability to steer at all. The steering wheel feels extremely heavy, and turning the vehicle is much harder than it should be. Even when driving at a very low speed, the trucks still suffer from severe understeer when entering corners. I have more than 500 hours of experience in [i] Euro Truck Simulator 2 [/i], and I usually receive silver ratings in driving challenges in this game. I am not expecting a ladder truck with a long wheelbase and a massive weight to handle like a sports car. However, the current vehicle physics in Ignite simply do not feel realistic. Real fire trucks are indeed difficult to drive. They are heavy, tall, have a high center of gravity, and require a larger turning radius. These characteristics should absolutely be represented in a simulator. However, difficult to drive does not mean almost impossible to steer. The current physics feel like the vehicle's weight is concentrated too much on the driven wheels, while the steering wheels have almost no grip. As a result, the truck loses front-end traction even at reasonable speeds, making normal cornering frustrating rather than challenging. I also think the game misunderstands the meaning of "responding quickly." Firefighters do need to arrive at the scene as soon as possible, but speed is not the only priority. Real emergency vehicle drivers must balance speed and safety. Driving too aggressively and causing an accident would only create more problems and delay the rescue. There have been real cases, such as recent fire truck accidents in New York, where emergency vehicles caused serious crashes during responses. These incidents show that emergency driving is not about simply going as fast as possible — it is about arriving quickly while maintaining control. https://youtu.be/2c8PZihiX8g?si=tHWqmK4nmvPwuAhD I hope future updates can improve: Steering assistance and responsiveness; Weight distribution and tire grip; Differences between vehicle types; Low-speed maneuverability, especially for large ladder trucks. [h2] AI Teammates Are Extremely Inconsistent [/h2] The AI teammates are another major issue Sometimes they are incredibly incompetent. They get stuck, fail to find paths, or cannot complete simple rescue tasks. But at other times, they behave as if they have wallhacks, instantly locating trapped civilians without any realistic search process. This inconsistency completely breaks immersion. One of the most frustrating moments happened when I was knocked down by an explosion during a mission. I called for help, but my teammates simply ignored me and did not attempt to rescue me. Watching your own team abandon you in a game that is supposed to focus on teamwork is genuinely frustrating. The AI should be one of the most important parts of a firefighting simulator. Good AI teammates should make the player feel like part of a professional rescue team, not like they are fighting against their own squad. Future improvements should include: Better pathfinding; More realistic search behavior; Proper rescue priorities; Better reactions when teammates are injured or incapacitated. [h2] The Fire Station Feels Empty and Lifeless [/h2] The fire station should be the player's home base, but currently it feels more like an empty building Although the game includes areas such as a gym and a cafeteria, many of these places feel like decorative objects rather than functional parts of a real fire station. There are too few interactive elements and too little activity. A real fire station should feel alive: Firefighters maintaining equipment; Crew members preparing vehicles; People relaxing between calls; Training activities; Mission briefings. Instead, the current station feels large but empty, like a showcase building rather than a workplace. [/h2] Too Few Tools and Too Little Mission Variety[/h2] Most missions are simply fires, and players repeatedly use the same small selection of equipment. However, real firefighters respond to many different emergencies, including: Vehicle accidents; High-angle rescues; Chemical spills; Flood rescues; Hazardous material situations; Search and rescue operations. A true firefighting simulator should provide more diverse scenarios instead of repeating the same type of fire mission. [h2] The equipment system also has some strange limitations [/h2] Players cannot carry two tools at the same time. If this limitation exists because of weight management, I could understand it. However, the problem is that the game allows players to attach a large saw to their belt. If firefighters can carry a heavy saw this way, why can't they carry a Halligan tool and an axe together? Real firefighters choose their equipment based on the situation. They do not repeatedly return to the truck just because they need a second tool. [h2] Environmental Interaction and Destruction Need Improvement [/h2] For example, when breaking large windows, the glass always breaks into the same fixed number of pieces. It feels like a scripted animation rather than realistic destruction. Different tools and different impacts should create different results. Another strange design decision is that players can only break certain glass objects with an axe. In the previous game, the Halligan tool could also be used for forced entry and breaking obstacles. Removing this ability in the new version feels like a step backward. The most important part of a rescue simulator is the interaction between tools and the environment. Without deeper interaction, missions start feeling like a repetitive checklist instead of real emergency response. [h2] Conclusion [/h2] Despite all these issues, I would still give Ignite a positive review. Creating a firefighting simulator with this level of detail is not an easy task, and the developers have already achieved something that many games in this genre fail to deliver. The game has a solid foundation and a lot of potential. I hope the developers continue improving the existing systems and adding more depth in future updates. A great firefighting simulator is not only about arriving at the scene quickly and putting out fires; it is about teamwork, decision-making, realistic procedures, and adapting to unpredictable situations. Ignite is not a perfect game yet, but it has taken an important step toward becoming a truly immersive firefighting simulator. With continued support and improvements, it could become an excellent game in the future.

It's... okayish. Poorly made, I feel. The AI of your NPC teammates has the collectrive IQ of a kicked-in basement window. They keep spraying water into empty corners and walls, and when you tell them to go into a room where fire is, they arrive and then just instantly waddles over to another room not on fire. And holy gallore of refusing orders all the time, and abandoning orders. It takes forever sometimes for an NPC to break open a door. I swear I first successfully got someone to spray with the aerial ladder hose the first 10 hours, but for some reason they just stone-cold refuse to ever do it again. Playing on medium seems too unchallenging, and hard difficulty seems unfair. What do you even do with a backdrafted room with a victim inside where there are no walls to break down or roof ventilation to saw through? You're basically set up for failure. It's very, very annoying when you want to pick up a tool. Sometimes you have to hit E several times for something even happen. Like there's a refusal on your clicking, or some kind of irregular delay, i dunno. This also applies when you respond to a mission, and you wanna hit E to put on your fire clothes, and you very well may accidentally dress and then undress. My muscle memory is just not writing after 10+ hours in this game. I've just resorted to stealing an NPC's attack line hose (lol) because it's very tedious setting up your own with all this in mind. Oh, and the hitboxes for all sorts of things you wanna click is a COMPLETE mess. I wanna control the ladder- whoops I switched to foam again. I feel like I'm being stalled all over the place because I have to figure out how assemble this line THIS, figure out how to get to the roof and get some even dumber victim NPC down to the ground THAT... Your water from your attack line also fails to reach some crowded areas, like under a table because a chair is in the way. You have to be so-very precise where to aim while you flood the same area with 500 liters of water. Some missions take literal forever with imbecile NPC to no help, as you extinguish a room, you go to another room to extinguish the flames there, then the room you just exinguished is full-on on fire again because a tiny pocket of fire under a table or something re-ignited everything again, and AGAIN, and the NPC are busy spraying an empty wall outside or having a telepathic conversation in another empty room while spraying empty walls. Graphics settings are also a fiasco at times. Sometimes you enter a mission and your screen is just completely white/bright. There are only reset-graphics settings as a work-around as of now. The lack of water physics is a bummer. Firefighting is with water, right? There should be a huge magnitude of used water all over the ground and floor during a mission. I'm not an expert with firefighting but... It's not a bad game, but dude. some real bug fixing is in order.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☑ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☐ Worth the price ☑ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☑ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☑ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10 I've sunk a lot of hours into this, and it is a lot of fun! It has some bugs, and can get a little annoying when you can't find that last ember to put out so you can declare victory, but the biggest road block is the AI teammates. They are completely braindead at best, and a hindrance at worst. The best way I've found to mitigate this is to have your teammates auto-focus on rescuing victims, and you get a head start on the firefighting. If the devs can fix/improve on the teammates, then this'll be a solid 8 or even 9 out of 10! ---{ Steam Review Template Author }--- ☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template