Nuclear Blaze (Switch)

There’s a really cute story behind the development of the action platformer Nuclear Blaze. The game’s creator, Sébastien Bénard, wanted to make a video game his three year old son could play, even designing it around firefighting because his child was really into firefighters. Something very human got in the way of that original vision though, and that’s the unexpected directions your own imagination can take, the developer eventually realizing the game he was making was no longer accessible to the intended young audience. Rather than trying to dial it back, he pursued this muse and also added a small dedicated Kids Mode to have the best of both approaches, but despite the development tale being charming, it also might have lead to some of the issues with Nuclear Blaze.

Nuclear Blaze kicks off with an enormous fire, your specific firefighter ending up the one sent in to investigate the source of the blaze. While the others are outside handling the inferno, you enter a strange secret facility there are no records of. While nominally your work is to find what’s causing the fire that still rages through some parts of this clandestine laboratory, you also begin to find troubling reports and evidence of some anomaly, although the game’s short length ends up shooting some of the ominous nature of this anomaly in the foot. The game doesn’t have too long to set up its mystery nor does that mystery have enough depth to be dished out in small chunks, the player likely left wondering what more there is to learn when the game has already given you most of the important details. Some of the hints of what lies deeper in also feel a bit wasted due to the game’s short length, the game setting up secondary concerns that barely feature in the levels and have a pretty minor impact on how the game is played.

Part of Nuclear Blaze’s failings come from the standard way you’ll be interacting with its world. As a firefighter your main tool is a hose attached to a water tank on your back, your tiny character able to put out fires with a bit of sustained spray. Water refills exist in the facility and the game usually doesn’t strain your ability to access them much since without them you’d be unable to interact with the world, although sometimes you may need to shuffle back to the last one you found if you get sloppy. Levels are pretty small though and perhaps too big a focus was put on pure fire fighting. It’s fairly common to enter an area and the main concern is a mostly uncontested effort to climb around and spray all the fire. Standing in fire is of course dangerous, your firefighter only able to handle a single bit of damage usually before they’re out and you need to retry the current challenge. However, while fire spreads if it’s left unattended, that shouldn’t normally be a threat to you, it more a way to encourage you to clear out a room for reasons other than the fire doors that only open once the task is done.

Nuclear Blaze does iterate on the core firefighting a touch, a few hazards existing like electricity you want to avoid spraying or areas where rubble will keep dropping if you don’t calm the flames above. This mostly just means you are a touch more selective on where the hose is pointing, and a lot of stages feel like you’re just climbing around to grab keys or turning valves to enable sprinklers as you open the way onward. The nuclear part of the game’s title almost plays an interesting part, some of the few levels in the main campaign with some heavy pressure being ones where fire threatens to set off some nuclear-powered equipment. However, Nuclear Blaze can’t seem to balance the sense of urgency behind this concern. Oftentimes the threat of a nuclear blast is quite imminent when you enter an area, meaning you have to be quick to douse the flames and help things cool down. However, because of the short timers, the game doesn’t seem willing to strain you, meaning you can overcome this issue fairly quickly any time it arises. At best, at one point, three areas threaten a nuclear meltdown and if you don’t keep nearby fire from spreading it can potentially lead to one of those being in peril once more, but with how much of the game’s name it takes up, Nuclear Blaze’s nuclear meltdowns hardly feel as important as the anomaly deep within.

Nuclear Blaze’s climax does at least manage to do something the rest of the game struggles with, and that’s provide a more focused and exciting challenge. It’s not just about spraying out fires as a more active threat is introduced that requires more movement, reactivity, and use of small but meaningful mechanics. The last major challenge of the campaign ends up memorable as a result although it feels like it should have been the first of many similar encounters instead of the only instance of a truly involved challenge. This issue might fall on the game’s reticence to give you interesting abilities though. When you start off you really can only spray your hose forward, Nuclear Blaze withholding commonsense options like spraying the hose upward or while hanging on a ladder for later and leading to early levels feeling like they have even less to work with for it. The dodge roll is a meaty addition though, although besides opening up how well it can hide some of its secret areas or collectable cats, its main use in the regular game is rolling through a danger you can’t otherwise deal with in an interaction that is not much different than just jumping over a pit in a platformer. There is always going to be a bit of satisfaction in play because firefighting is the kind of task with easily represented progress and the game even cools down a level’s coloration as a pleasant marker that you cleared out the flames, but your firefighting options don’t really give the game room to evolve, especially since it doesn’t have many puzzle elements to make your work more involved.

There are two extra modes in Nuclear Blaze though, Kids Mode tying back to the game’s original purpose and definitely representing that idea in its design ethos. Kids Mode does not require you to aim your hose, your firefighter will aim at nearby flames automatically when you’re spraying. You can’t die, and the main goal is to rescue a bunch of kitties scattered around the small stages, the jumping even handled automatically when you approach some place you need to leap to. It has its own set of unique levels for this, and while it’s not a reason to buy the game because there are so few and the action so simple, it is a nifty idea for a side mode in a game. Many kids see their parents playing a game and wish they could try it even though they don’t have the skills yet to tackle its trials, so having a mode that caters to that feels like a nice extra touch that could be added to many games. The main game actually makes itself more accessible too with a range of options you can toggle to make it easier, things like slowing fire spread, increasing how many hits you can take, or preventing yourself from running out of water potentially able to ease the annoyance of how quickly you can die or just letting young players breeze through the adventure invincible and unstoppable.

Hold My Beer mode tries to offer the opposite experience though. A harder variation of the game unlocked after completing the original campaign, this mode has some new mechanics and new areas to explore, but it can’t quite overcome the game’s limited ability to challenge its simplistic firefighting. You have a few new things like automated turrets you can short-circuit or limited-time sprinklers, but the turrets are often just dodged and then sprayed when they’re not just a nuisance, adding difficulty but not enhancing the way areas are experienced really. The rate fire spreads is also cranked up here, this usually meaning levels take longer not because there’s more to do, but because there might be a bit of flames you can’t reach initially that keep encroaching and require occasional attention so they don’t get out of control. While the game does generally need to be more difficult, achieving it by being more tedious was a poor choice, the levels often feeling too stiff and inflexible so all you can do is spray your way forward rather than facing major consequences for poor firefighting or having some unique way to interact with the environment.

THE VERDICT: Nuclear Blaze is a firefighting platformer that can’t seem to cook up interesting ways to realize that concept. A few promising gameplay angles are barely touched on, the mysterious anomaly at its story’s core doesn’t drum up enough intrigue, and too many levels lean on just clearing away fire to reach more spots filled with flames. The dodge roll at least gives it a little something, but even that doesn’t get put through its paces, the heavy focus on straightforward hose spraying not compelling enough to sustain an already very short game.

And so, I give Nuclear Blaze for Nintendo Switch…

A BAD rating. With the main adventure likely to take less than two hours to clear even with its unforgiving one hit kills, Nuclear Blaze needs to do something attention-grabbing to justify jumping in. Instead, it putters around trying to think of level layouts that spread out the fire-fighting but don’t challenge it in new ways. Some ideas almost seem promising, sometimes busting down a door leads to a burst of fire you need to protect yourself from, but it’s always possible to do so thanks to slow motion when maybe leaving a fire unattended too long could have caused some problems like a small scale detonation or the introduction of new dangers. The rubble dropping ceilings seem like they’re on the right course but they’re underutilized like most things that shake up the formula, the game really in dire need of something deeper to focus on than just putting out the fires around you. More of those potential nuclear meltdowns could make this a speedy game, more moments where you need to spray carefully could make this a puzzler, there is even room for combat in this style, or at least tackling fires that spread in more unusual ways since the game is already leaning into science-fiction elements with the facility you find yourself in. Nuclear Blaze doesn’t commit to anything though, not making interesting new mechanics robust enough to make things like Hold My Beer interesting, and ultimately, it could almost be said the Kids Mode and main mode are going for similar thrills. The main adventure has you actually aim your hose and work to find those cats hiding in levels, but it’s not pushing you enough with its more challenging design, it just sometimes lays things out in ways that will kill you rather than a death being the result of failing an interesting challenge.

While I commended Sébastien Bénard for chasing the idea he felt more passionate about than the firefighting game for kids, Nuclear Blaze  might also have suffered from trying to build not from personal inspiration, but from trying to appeal to that firefighter-loving child. I’m sure concepts like the unknown event in the laboratory ended up being one of the things that split this from the original focus, but it appears gameplay concepts were not nearly as key in making Nuclear Blaze into a game for older players. Sometimes clearing out the little burning rooms of the underground facility scratch that simple itch in our heads of seeing danger go away, but looking past that, Nuclear Blaze feels rather plain, not mustering up strong ideas to give us much more than that very basic enjoyment of fighting fire.