Kill it with Fire review - "A fun take on pest control."
You know when you find a spider in your house - a big, ugly, hairy spider that seems to have been living in your own home, happily, for quite some time? And you want to burn down your entire house? So that you can then sleep safely from spiders? Well, Kill it with Fire basically takes this concept and turns it into a game.
What's the twist in Kill it with Fire?
I don’t know why humans are afraid of spiders and really hate them, but in Kill it with Fire, you need to face your fears and destroy the arachnids that are crawling within your house. You have a clipboard of goals for each level, and a bunch of weapons that you have unlocked, but the spiders will be hiding so you will probably spend quite a lot of the level destroying the entire house to ensure they're dead.
You do not care about keeping the house clean. If burning is the best way to get rid of spiders - who cares if your items are forever destroyed? The goal is to get rid of these nasty creatures, by any means necessary. At first, you don’t have very many weapons - mainly bashing spiders with your clipboard, but over time you can unlock guns, fire-based weapons, items that can be used to lure out spiders and more. Some weapons have limited ammo, so you will need to keep an eye out and find new ammo to replenish them with.
Jumping spiders - I mean how bad can it be
But as you find more weapons, you also find spiders that are a bit stronger - ones that jump or need to take more of a beating before they are destroyed. You will also get tasks to complete, through your clipboard, which can continue to build as you find bits of paper about in each of the levels. These papers give you new optional quests, which can then unlock more weapons for you! You can also ignore them if you want - it’s really up to you.
The only actual goal you can’t ignore is finding all of the spiders and killing them. You do have a radar to help you discover them, but they often are hiding behind objects or jumping about, so you will need to keep your eyes peeled.
I, myself, found the gun-based weapons a bit challenging to aim and shoot (especially while fast-moving spiders ran about) on mobile. With a mouse and keyboard, I can see how it would be easier, but on mobile, you’ll need to be a fan of shooters to really enjoy it. I plugged in a Raser Kishi to see if that would help with my gun aiming, and I found that it was really nice when it came to quickly aiming and shooting, but sadly the Kishi wasn’t completely compatible with the game as you couldn’t look around in the game, so it didn’t work fully in the end.
With that said, there are enough weapons that I didn’t really miss not using my gun - I'd much rather feed spiders cheese puffs and then whack them with a frying pan! Some of the in-game text can be kind of small for mobile phones as well, but they aren’t that important anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal.
Kill it with Fire review - "A fun take on pest control."
Kill it with Fire is clearly made as a PC first game, however the game can be played on mobile well, as long as you give it a bit of time. I quite liked the idea behind the game and the number of side tasks you can do.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley