Bonfire Peaks

$28.95 | bonfirepeaks.com | PC, PS4/5, Linux, Mac, Switch

Leaves plenty to think about – and to burn.

The Bonfire Peaks setup is simple. Our unnamed protagonist has left for the woods to burn all his possessions, and it’s your job to push, drop, or slide the crates of his belongings into a fire. In this block-y, voxel world, you can only move forward, backwards, or pivot on the spot. Any block you’re holding will swing round as you turn too, so space is key. Early puzzles set the stage simply on how to navigate and manipulate that space – like how to be sure to climb stairs backwards, so you don’t brick yourself in.

As Bonfire Peaks progresses, it introduces new elements – longer bricks, conveyor-belt like streams, and Indiana Jonesesque pressure traps among them. Unlike the smooth onboarding at the start of the game, the introduction of these complicated puzzle elements can feel disruptive.

The puzzles in Bonfire Peaks are tricky. They’re full-on headscratchers, and failing a few times is a necessary part of troubleshooting your way through to the correct approach. So building a rubbish bridge didn’t immediately signify that I wasn’t supposed to be building a different, better bridge – I just thought my bridge was bad.

Bonfire Peaks’ care to neither frustrate nor condescend contributes to its meditative feel. You only need to complete a few puzzles per zone to progress. It’s a quick tap of a button to undo a careless mistake – or to capitalise on one that triggers an ‘aha’ moment – and you can undo your way all the way back to the beginning of the puzzle, if you so choose. It’s a careful balance to keep you in your element.

Any individual puzzle in Bonfire Peaks is good – brilliant, actually – tightly crafted, using every part of a puzzle map for necessary bottlenecks, obstructing height, or escalating stairways precisely as needed. Its world is beautiful, and as a collection of puzzles, it’s incredibly smart. If only its uneven progression and selfconscious story additions didn’t make for as rough a climb.

Charming – but without establishing its tricks, it risks leaving less fluent puzzlers behind. Ruth Cassidy ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Above left: The view from my failed ascent. So close, and yet, so far.

The beautifully lit voxel art style amps up the atmosphere.

Above: You have to sit under waterfalls.