The Thinkathon is underway, and this time we get a new DLC for an already-great thinky game: Bonfire Peaks: Lost Memories. We’re also giving you the chance to win free Steam keys with our giveaway, so be sure to sign up to our newsletter and check out all the other amazing entries! Having played the original Bonfire Peaks, I was very excited to check out the episodic continuation by Corey Martin. The gorgeous voxel art and calming soundtrack surround you as you burn your possessions in this lauded puzzle game’s DLC that features brand new mechanics, out now!
Bonfire Peaks introduced several simple yet clever mechanics. You push, pull, and use your environment to manipulate 3-dimensional wooden blocks. The goal of each puzzle is to carry a particular block, a box of your belongings, to the bonfire to burn them. The DLC expands this premise with an interesting upgrade to an already present mechanic — arrows can now shoot vertically, allowing the player to fling boxes sky high and fix them together into even more complex arrangements.
At once cathartic and challenging, Bonfire Peaks manages to balance its difficulty by giving you a lot of choice over which order you progress through the levels, even allowing you to skip many of them. I often found myself stuck, leaving to do another puzzle, and then coming back with a newfound sense of understanding. The tight, innovative puzzle design really pushed me to think outside the box (pun intended), and the joy of discovering what was right in front of me cannot be encapsulated by a single word.
As I travel from the original overworld of Bonfire Peaks to the next, more vibrant, island overworld, a certain familiarity washes over me as I use boxes from completed campfires to climb higher still. I sit by a ledge, and let the ocean breeze wash over me again.
Bonfire Peaks: Lost Memories holds a special place in my heart as much as the base game did. The puzzles often reminded me of playing virtual Jenga to reach my goal, and no doubt the release the hold his memories have on him is something we can all relate to, in a way.
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