Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue

My first hour with Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue felt like catching a glimpse of something great through a lot of smoke. The concept is genuinely original: a 2D roguelite platformer where you race into procedurally generated burning buildings, chop through doors and debris with an axe, douse sentient fire monsters with a high-pressure hose, and use that same hose as a makeshift jetpack to blast yourself between floors. The ticking three-minute clock per run creates real tension, and when the moment-to-moment flow locks in, it is legitimately exhilarating. Rescuing trapped civilians and cats, then watching them show up at your firehouse as unlockable upgrade vendors, gives the repetitive loop a small but satisfying heartbeat. The problem is that the execution fights the concept at nearly every turn. The water-hose jump is the game's signature move and also its most frustrating one. You have to stop, let pressure build, then time the boost precisely, all while the clock drains. Level geometry does not always cooperate, and running dry mid-jump frequently ends a run for reasons that feel unfair rather than instructive. The four environments on offer, apartment buildings, a hotel, forests, and runaway trains, cycle around quickly, and the procedural generation is not varied enough to disguise how thin the pool of assets really is. Most players will clock the main story in four to five hours, and while optional post-run grinding extends that, the limited scenario variety starts to wear before you get there. What keeps it from being a write-off is the visual and audio charm. The 2.5D art style, pixel sprites set against lit 3D environments, looks genuinely attractive, and the way ambient light shifts as you extinguish fires is a small but impressive touch. The fire monsters themselves have personality, from swooping fire-birds to exploding mine-blobs, and the arcade-style announcer who shouts when you rescue someone captures the energy the game is going for. The upgrade loop, while shallow compared to genre heavyweights, does deliver a steady drip of improvements to health, hose range, water capacity, and run timers that make later missions feel meaningfully different from the opening grind. It is worth noting that this original PC release attracted a mixed Steam reception and that Dejima later released a revised version called Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX with rebalanced difficulty and redesigned levels. If you are considering a purchase, research which version you are actually buying, because the raw Steam page version reviewed here is the rougher of the two. The early hours are a real slog before upgrades bring the controls into a manageable state, and players with low patience for RNG-heavy progression will bounce off before the game finds its footing. For the right player, someone who enjoys short arcadey roguelite runs, does not mind grinding through an uneven first few hours, and finds the firefighting theme novel enough to carry them through the repetition, there is a fun game buried here. Everyone else should wait for a discount or skip straight to the DX version if it is available on your platform.

Alex · Scout Team

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