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Fire Flower
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Graphics & Sound:
When you first launch FireFlower, you'll notice that it is a beautiful game, as long as you like flowers. Each level consists of at least 3 different flowers. Every 5 levels, you unlock a new flower for use. The flowers are all beautiful, but very unique, including roses, clovers, daffodils, and sunflowers. They're all different colors and shapes, so it's easy to tell them all apart. The game's timer is also beautiful. Instead of just having a time countdown, FireFlower uses a flower in a vase. Each second that goes by, more and more of the water is used by the flower. As it starts to run low on water, the flower slowly wilts. When your flower runs out of water, it dies and your time is up.
The background music in FireFlower is just that, background. It's just really there to provide an alternate to silence. There's no real need for music in FireFlower, it simply keeps you from being bored by silence. |
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Gameplay:
FireFlower has 3 modes: Adventure Mode, Relaxed Mode, and Arcade Mode. When you first install the game and click Play, the only choice you have is Adventure Mode. You start out Adventure Mode at the beginning of a maze. Each level you beat brings you one step closer to the center of the maze where the FireFlower grows. A level consists of a board full of flowers, a timer on the left side, patterns of flowers on the right side, and your score at the bottom. The objective is quite simple. You just pick up a pattern, and match it to flowers on the board. You have to match all the patterns before the timer runs out. Once you beat all 50 levels, you make it to the center of the maze and have completed the mode.
After you've beaten Adventure Mode, you unlock Relaxed Mode as an option to play. Relaxed Mode is exactly like Adventure Mode, except if you don't beat the timer, you don't lose the level. You simply don't get any bonus points for that level. Once again, when you complete all 50 levels, you're at the center and have beaten Relaxed Mode.
After Relaxed Mode, you've finally unlocked Arcade Mode. The concepts are still the same, but the timer runs much faster, and the patterns get harder. As in the other two modes, if you leave hints turned on, after you pick up a pattern, if you haven't matched it anywhere after some time, if there's an available spot, it will start flashing to show you where it will fit. If there's not a spot, the trashcan will start flashing for you to throw it away and get a new pattern.
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Difficulty:
Honestly, FireFlower is one of the easier games I've played in a long time, at least until you unlock Arcade Mode. Adventure Mode and Relaxed Mode are essentially the exact same difficulty, the only difference being that Adventure Mode is timed. It is possible to fail Adventure Mode, but really difficult to do so, especially if you leave hints turned on. With hints, you can wait until it flashes where to put the piece for almost all pieces and still have enough time to complete the level. Relaxed Mode is the same thing, except even if the timer runs out, you still don't fail the level. Your only punishment for not beating the timer is that you don't get any bonus points. Arcade Mode is at least more difficult. It works exactly the same as Adventure Mode and Relaxed Mode, but the timer runs a whole lot faster.
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Game Mechanics:
FireFlower is a very simple game to play. You click on a pattern of pieces, move it over to the board, and it'll automatically connect to the board when it matches that pattern. If you want to rotate the pattern piece, you can left click to rotate it clockwise and right click to rotate it counter clockwise. To throw it away, just click on the trashcan. If you need to pause your game, just click the Pause button in the bottom left corner. Be warned though, butterflies will fly out and cover the board so you can't use the pause to cheat the timer. Overall, I found FireFlower to be a little boring until I unlocked Arcade Mode. There wasn't really a challenge to it, but it is an easy game to play and a good way to relax for a while. Since the puzzles change every time you replay a level, FireFlower provides infinite replay value.
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, Pentium II 500 MHz, DirectX 7.0, 64 MB RAM,
10 MB drive space |
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Test System:
Windows XP, Pentium M 2.26 GHz, 2 GB RAM, DirectX 9.0 |
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