Review: Fireside is an interesting premise, but it feels like spinning your wheels

When we first saw Fireside, it was hard not to draw comparisons to the art style of Rick and Morty. As a long time fan of said show, it made me want Fireside on sight. While cartoony art styles are popping up a lot lately, Fireside calls to the gritty, late-night Adult Swim version of myself.

The imperfect lines, the odd character designs, and, most notably, the amorphous pupils all drew me in.

So, did I like it or was it all surface level for me?

Fireside

Fireside throws you out to sea right from the start and I do mean that literally. You play as a merchant named Knick – unless you change the name like I did – who is trying to expand your business overseas. Unfortunately, you get caught up in a storm that tosses your ship around and eventually sinks it.

Thankfully, you heed safety guidelines and had a life boat available that you managed to get into just in time. Sadly, luck isn’t really something you have in abundance and that boat also sinks. 

At this point is where you’re given your first choice in a long line of choices you’ll be prompted to make. Do you grab the timber log to cling onto in an unforgiving sea or do you grab – let me check my notes here… ah, yes – the burlap sack? 

1 Burlap Sack has been added to your inventory

I took the timber because it seemed far more useful to floating toward land, but if I’m honest, I think you’ll end up as a cast away on this island regardless because there wouldn’t be a game otherwise. 

What it does change is whether you crawl up on shore with a timber log to trade or a burlap sack.

How lucky, yet unlucky, you are that as a merchant, you have washed ashore an island that is not only booming with other castaways, but with a flourishing barter system that is ready for you to capitalize on.

On this island, you’ll find that moving around the island is a bit turn based. There are campfires set up on a map that you can choose to go to, but you can only move to the next available campfire. Even if you’ve been to a place before, you’re unable to teleport around.

By moving from campsite to campsite, you’ll meet a host of characters that you can trade with, talk to, accept quests from, and get recipes from. 

Most of your gameplay will be in trading, but you have to very precise. Not only do some people want certain items, but you have to trade equal value for trades to be accepted. For instance, if you want nails – a rare commodity – you may have to trade several things for just that one building material because it’s more useful.

You can generally guage how fair a trade is by a set of scales the trade system uses. Generally, when the scales are in balance, your trades will be accepted. However, value systems are individual. Just because you think it’s a good trade based on your own scales does not mean that your recipient agrees. 

Pardon me, but can I interest you in this lovely, common shell?

So, how do you get items to sell? Technically, you forage. Your map will have two campfires that you can move between and there will always be an item on the path that you pick up along the way. Luckily, it tells you what you’ll pick up, so you can plan accordingly.

Don’t let that make you feel secure in your empire, however. At some of these campfires, you’ll notice a small shrine that is connected to the spirit nexus.

Oh, sorry, did you expect this to not get magical?

The storm that brought you in to this island also damaged some of the shrines. You’re told that it’s usually a way to talk to people from across great distances and even a way to send things across the lines. This seems like a perfect way to get help, except that when you touch the shrine, you’re sucked into a spirit nexus. 

Here, you meet an incoporeal guardian named Knack. It’s at this point that if you didn’t rename yourself to Sugar as I always do, that you’d far more appreciate the given name Knick.

Or, perhaps, that’s just me.

Being pulled into the nexus itself isn’t strictly supposed to happen, or I simply misunderstood the usual use of this space. Either way, due to the broken shrines, we become entangled at our core with Knack. So, if he gets sucks of energy, so do we.

Here’s where things start getting tedious as all hell. 

Since you’re tethered to the spirit nexus, you drain the energy in it by being in the real world. This means that your moves are limited if you don’t want to die.

Not only can you only move 5 spaces – maybe less since I immediately upgraded the shrine – but you can’t carry all of your items. 

Oh, sorry, you wanted that? Too bad.

At the start, you can carry one item back and forth with you to the nexus where you can store it in a chest or you can keep it for trading. Everything else on your person is yeeted into the void. This means that if you want to get anything useful, you have to make it happen within those five moves.

I mentioned upgrading earlier and that’s going to be your basic goal for trading. Scattered throughout the occupants of the island, the tradesfolk have building materials that you need to upgrade the shrines and the spiritual nexus itself.

Updraging is incredibly important because it’s the only way to not only fix the link between you and Knack, but it’s the only way to get more moves on the map and open up more options to bring items into the nexus.

It’s not all lost, however. If you can get to one fo the shrine spots, you can use a shrine to send at least one item through the nexus – more when you upgrade. However, it will cost you health on your soul energy.

What’s a soul energy, you may ask? Well, it’s equally as important as trading, so why is it taking me so long to mention it? Put simply, this game is hard to explain and I’m trying to do it in an easily digestible way.

When you do trades or help people with their individual quests, you’ll fill up a bit of a bar. This is where you can see your soul energy. When the bar fills up, you’ll be given a coin and these coins are needed in upgrading things around the island. So, not only do you have to worry about building materials, but you have to manage this as well. 

The power of Friendship! Fuck yeah!

So, what fills this bar? Quite simply, gratitude and kindness. Yup. It pays to be nice to people. We should be doing this anyway, but here it, literally, pays.

Why doing fair trading, talking to and helping people, as well as finding them very specific items they may want, you fill up this bar. It happens fairly quickly if you’re not a butthead, so you should be fine. We only have kind readers here.

So, you trade for building items, you show kindness for soul energy. What else is there? Well, as you move through the maps, sometimes you get a pop up that tells you something about a person or creature you come across and it gives you an option. Most times, these will give you personal item quests.

I’ve mentioned that a few times, so it’s probably time to explain further. Personal item quests are individual. There’s a turtle that wants a bandana, a pirate who wants her peg leg bag, etc. These items can be obtained by trading and unlike regular items, these don’t take up inventory space, so you’re incapable of losing them.

By returning these lost items to the person, you get soul energy and usually some aid needed with other personal quests. For instance, there’s a mermaid that is half dolphin, half person who is picked on for being different. By helping the pirate get her peg leg bag, she owes you a favor and agrees to recruiting the mermaid.

So on, so forth, trading over, and over.

I’ve spent 1500 words just trying to explain the mechanics of this game, but I haven’t talked about my own personal thoughts.

So, do I even like Fireside?

Yes and no. 

I like the art style and the quirky characters. Hell, I even like the premise of the game. But, damn is it tedious. 

I felt like a hamster spinning my wheels just running circles from one campsite to another to pick up items that I can trade in hopes of being able to bring building materials back to the nexus.

It felt like a never ended fetch quest that I was getting punished for by losing items.

Unless you keep something really good to barter, you have to make a few moves just to get items to trade and by the time that five night comes around, you’re not exactly flush with items.

It was grinding without seeing enough progress and maybe that’s just on me.

It’s not a bad game, not by any means. It’s just not for me.

If you want to try out Fireside for yourself, it’s on Steam or Nintendo Switch for $14.99. If you want to check out a review that fit more to my personal enjoyment, you can check out my constant recommendation of Smushi Come Home.