About
*Work in progress - any suggestions or additional content ideas let us know.
FIRESTARTER is a vertical-scrolling arcade shooter with ship customization, branching missions and multi-part bosses. It includes a five-episode campaign and 59 levels across campaign and contract missions.
Gameplay
Build your loadout from 19 ships, 58 weapons and 36 sidekicks. Equip front and rear weapons, upgrade shields and generators, and improve weapons through 11 power levels. Reactor capacity affects both sustained fire and shield regeneration, so equipment choices matter.
Fight through shipyards, asteroid fields, crystal shoals and industrial worlds. Dodge bullet patterns, collect equipment and destroy individual boss components to weaken their attacks.
Game modes
- Campaign: Five episodes with branching routes, secrets, hangar upgrades and collectible story datacubes.
- Contracts: Freelance missions with objectives, equipment rewards and five reputation tiers.
- Arcade: Complete an episode using weapon pickups and limited spare ships.
- Timed Battle: Three-minute score challenges.
- Co-op: Local two-player arcade and online co-op. Local players can link ships for combined weapon attacks.
- Kiln Siege: Turn-based artillery with destructible terrain, deployable units and two victory conditions.
Lore and setting
You play as Rook Ashgrove, callsign FIRESTARTER, a freelance pilot on the Halcyon Verge. The Kindling Combine transforms dead planets into habitable worlds using enormous atmospheric burners.
When your wingman uncovers a powerful mineral and is killed for it, you reclaim your impounded ship and turn against the Combine and its wildfire-control AI, PYRE.
Recovered datacubes expand the setting through personal accounts, corporate correspondence and dry humour.
