There’s a softness to The Last Campfire that permeates everything it’s doing. From its main characters that look like knitted Jawa puppets, or the clay-like world that refuses to have any sharp edges, to the accessible, but satisfying, puzzles or the game’s heartwarming message.

This warm blanket of a game comes in the form of a timid fairy tale. Its creatures — allegedly inspired by Brian Froud, but really only retaining the more pleasant aspects of his work — are presented as towering versions of common animals with distinct personalities and intelligence, as if seen from a child's perspective, not informed by scientific knowledge. And they give most of the charm to a fairly dull backdrop, mostly composed by regular rocks, regular grass and regular dirt.

The allure that is lacking in the landscape is compensated by its interactive elements, that not only uses the platform it was primarily made for (the phone) to give weight and texture to your actions — something Chris Symonds and Steven Burgess probably brought from their Wii days —, but also seamlessly integrates (some of) the puzzles to the environment very elegantly (interweaving this with other puzzles that happen on isolateds screens, like Breath of the Wild shrines). That provides a good variety in types of interactions, but at the same time limits its complexity, as it is not building on a single idea again and again, the ceiling is lowered.

In that somewhat clunky way only video games know how, the puzzles here tell a simple but sincere tale of empathy as a source of hope against paralyzing fears, be of acceptance, the uncertain future or the inevitable end. It shows how those worries are shared among all of us, whether you are a shy sock puppet or a helpful robot, and are better faced together.


“It matters that we try”
“It matters that we fail”
“It matters that we hope”

Ok, three big things and one weird tangent.

Big Thing 1. I’m yet to find something in a video game that I get more pleasure from than moving quickly and precisely in 2D platformers, and my god does this game do traversal like a dream. Despite its somewhat overwhelming controls you never feel outside of the character, it's floaty when you expect and sharp when you want, always flowing beautifully between the many traversal options it presents throughout the game that consistently complements the previous ones.

It's obviously very similar to Blind Forest, and doesn't introduce anything as groundbreaking as the Bash, but honestly I could just do this forever and never get tired of it.

(also other games should totally just steal Bash, what are you waiting for)

Big Thing 2. So, I have this long standing silly debate with some folks I know about whether Ori is a metroidvania or not. The crux of my argument against it is that the game has no real interest in exploration, it is very linear, guided and progression always comes from story. But Moon Studios clearly loved Hollow Knight, and while I appreciate the added complexity to combat and the quirky characters with charming voices populating the world, it still isn't a game about exploring. And that becomes very clear when you look at how the map guy works. While in HK he is basically just selling you paper so you can draw your routes, making it so you can only see where you’ve already been through, here it's like he’s the one playing a metroidvania and just selling you the results of his work after he’s done.

I really do love these games as platformers, but they got nothing on really good metroidvanias, and trying to double down on that without really committing to it just seems like a waste.

Big Thing 3. It’s wild how they’re just straight up repeating the same tricks from the first game with the story here. Kinda feels like they can’t do anything other than ‘first five minutes of Up’ type of storytelling.

Weird Tangent. Is this the best Spider-Man game ever made!? I really think the only way we’ll ever come close to replicating the acrobatic, fast paced and precise mobility of that character in a video game is by limiting the movement to two axis. The 3D games always reduce the more extravagant traversal scenes to cheap QTEs because it would be impossible to control a character in situations like that, but we do it with Ori all the time! And he crawls on walls! And has this glowy rope thing he shots at stuff to get closer and he fights animal-like beings and… you get the idea.