Wildfire is one of those games where the developers had a bunch of really good ideas, but didn't know exactly how to execute them. At it's core it's a great little stealth platformer where you play around with sight, sound and three of the four elements to complete your objective, which usually consists of finding the end or rescuing people. The music is good, the graphics are beautiful, the animations are lovely. So the presentation is great. However when it comes to the gameplay, there are a few issues. For example, the optional objectives often clash with each other. There are levels where you have to throw enemies into a crematorium, burning them to ashes, but at the same time you get also get bonus points for not killing anyone in a level. You can reach these milestones in different playthroughs I think, but it's still a little strange, as it seems like a clash of game design, though you could see it also as a "play your own way" type of deal. However viewing the only the gameplay, it works really well. The AI of the enemies make sense, they act in a predictable fashion (which is way more important than "realistic" AI). You get plenty of ways to deal with them using your elemental powers, although they all feel a little samey, and the levels themselves often tell their own story using notes and environmental design. The power curve in the game is kind of screwed, you don't get enough levels where you are fully powered and the levels expect that. There is a new game+, which I think is good because you don't get enough levels where you can play fully powered up. The story is neat, but nothing special, it's mostly a vessel to carry the gameplay and push you from level to level. I can definitely recommend this for fan of stealth games, it's a love letter to those. For everyone else I can recommend it if you're interested in being a witch with elemental powers and want to support a team that clearly cares about the game they make.
From a gameplay perspective, Coma has little to offer: A 2D exploration through a korean highschool, you can't do anything else but go left or right and interact with objects. There's no challenge to it. You can use a flashlight, but I found it unnecessary. The monster chasing you isn't special either, if at least it's AI were more sophisticated and it had a persistent place in the world so you could logically try to avoid it (think Alien: Isolation style) while it grew more and more powerful with time as the game claims, but doesn't happen gameplay-wise. The sprite changes, but it doesn't actually do anything new. Exploration is dull, as the enviroment is sadly fairly uninteresting. For me, someone living far away from South Korea, a legitimate look at a highschool there would be very interesting, instead you're running around in a dark building and you don't get to actually see how the school runs. It's drawn well, I guess. The animations could be more fluid though. Story-wise, which for me could excuse the gameplay, *if* it were good, is sadly as dull as the gameplay. The characters are stereotypes, the notes around the building are uninteresting and don't give a good enough look into an entirely different culture to excuse to bad characters and plot. I couldn't even bring myself to finish this game, and stopped, what seems to be half-way through. The driving motivation (to get out of the school) isn't strong enough as I don't care about the player character at all. Considering the game advertises itself as "showing the stressful life of a highschool student in South Korea" it spends very little time in the real world. I'd rather have the mistery be more subtle, grounded in the real world so you get to explore the school while it is intact, get to experience those stories you keep reading the notes about. That's the problem: The notes (the only "lore" in the game) tease interesting stuff, but you don't get to see it.
