Firegirl: Hack ‘n Splash Rescue DX

Yes, but...

I first played it back in 2022. I was amazed by how good it looked, let's be honest, it really is visually appealing. However, I ended up quitting in frustration because I found it unfair and incredibly annoying.

In 2025, I realised that I had never uninstalled it, so I decided to give it another chance. It's still frustrating, mainly due to the procedural level design. Sometimes you die simply because of how the level is generated. Maybe it's an enemy you can’t avoid, a leap of faith that leads to your death, or a mission where the person you're supposed to rescue doesn't show up in time.
The difference now is that I persevered a little longer than I did in 2022. I started unlocking upgrades that gradually made the game a little more manageable. There are still frustrating moments, but it's now less likely that I won't have the tools to deal with them.
The real shame is that I think this game had the potential to be truly great.

So, would I recommend Firegirl? Yes, it's good value for money when it's on sale, but only if you're willing to be patient, as the beginning is difficult and requires grinding upgrades.

It's a fun, relatively short, but unique roguelite about saving people from burning buildings and some other story elements. Honestly nothing really wrong with it, it's fun to play, and looks great. I wouldn't pay full price for this, but it is certainly worth checking out on sale, and deserves more than the review score makes it seem.
A lot of negative reviews seem to be either from crashing or not knowing where to go/dying too quickly and not getting money. I had no crashes so that may have been fixed, and also only died once or twice out of all my runs, and was rolling in money by the end. It's actually quite reasonable and you still get enough money from failing to get you off the ground with a few initial upgrades, and it only gets better with further upgrades as you do more runs. As for the not knowing where to go, eventually you get something that helps you in knowing if you missed someone or not, but generally if you go through neutral doors and not the ones with the fire or exit (until you're ready) symbol, you'll be fine and won't miss anything.
Worth checking out on sale!

I got it off Fanatical for a dollar. I think at that price its a question of is it even worth playing or even a download? I think it is. Game does feel cheap, as in cheap deaths. Games not hard but is unfair and the platforming is annoying. Its appeal is its different, unique and to me because its a roguelite.

I can sum up this game with a metaphor. It's like dipping your toes into the shallow end of the pool, to get a feel, and then before you have learnt to swim, someone tosses you right into the deep end and has you figure it out. That's just how punishing the instant difficulty spike felt to me. In just my first two rooms after starting the game, I would commonly find my self facing a good dozen flame monsters with fire being tossed at me from multiple angles. By the time I saved the first survivor, I was already out of water and down to one heart. Adding to that, it was common to get hit or even killed just because the Goddess of RNG decided to put a fire demon right outside the door of the next room which hit me before I even saw it. This made an often unfair, and frankly frustrating, game to grind through.
But going to the positives, after you start leveling, you almost instantly feel the difference. Areas that felt impossible start feeling easy. And it feels unbelievably good becoming near un-killable and taking all that pent up frustration on the creatures that have been making you their torch lights (I won't say how, figure that out for yourself). Put together the full experience really did feel like being a rookie that had to trial by fire (excuse the pun) before becoming a true hero.
Final thoughts, if you can be patient and are okay failing a few times before getting it right, the game is worth trying. If not, you may want to skip it before destroying your laptop.

Not great, but not bad. Should have been a level based game rather than a rogue-like as the random levels and repetition adds nothing to the game. Core platforming and concept is fun, and the graphics are a nice blend of pixel and 2.5D, and the story is fine, albeit janky. I swear I missed a cutscene or two because the ending and twist just feels out of nowhere.
What really would kill the game for a lot of players is how it takes a while to get up to speed. Until you get some decent upgrades to hose power and water tank capacity, it's damn hard to get through a whole level while saving everyone, and until you start gaining fans at a good rate, getting funds is a slow process. The RNG can also make progress and play annoying as it can take forever to get to the people/items in a level, or you could get them at the very start. Or, you can get the same kind of level over and over and over again. There's four types of levels, and I was only getting one for the first third of the game.
My recommend, get it cheap, real cheap.

FireGirl Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX - 100% Completed Review
Score 5/10 - Get It On Discount Sale
A interesting Arcade Like game about fighting fire monsters in old Retro Style gameplay
Pro's
-Good Pixel Art
-Music is alright
-Decent enough gameplay loop
-Good animation
-Nice throwback to the old Zombies Ate My Neighbors game with the art style of the Npc's
Neutrals (No Score Change from These):
-Despite being a fire fighting game your better off just ignoring most of the fire enemies
-Protag is a bit generic but otherwise fine
Con's
-Way over priced for a 4 hour game
-Lack of common sense sound effects that should have easily been in the game
-Very buggy: Freezes, Savable Npc's sometimes not showing up, Camera often flips out, mouse controls sometimes stop working
-Beginning before you get any upgrades is frustrating, you can't even reach the upper floors without the boost upgrade...
-Story is all over the place and completely nonsensical
Overall this game is just barely passable, it's not bad but it's not good either, it's just average, the game clearly needed more development time to sand out the rough edges, best way to describe it is a Arcade Like game that you would spend a quarter on at the old Arcades to pass the time and i would only get it if you like Arcade Like games and if it's on a decent discount sale, but as always, It's.. Up.. To.. You, and i'll leave it that (^_−).

the artstyle in this game is really cool. gameplay is fun and character is cute.
though get it on sale. the game has way too little content for $20