My Fire Is Bigger Than Yours: in the third act, upgrading your fire lowers your income

The title is the best sales pitch of the week, and it states the programme exactly: your campfire is in competition with the Sun.

Not because the Sun is attacking you. Because it is bigger, and that will not do.

What you do

This is a physics-based incremental game. You throw objects into a fire, keep it alive, and grow it while the Sun tries to drown it out with light.

The run splits into three phases, and the escalation is a delight. You start on a campfire. You found a cult to feed the flames. Then you expand operations to the Moon.

Around that, over two hundred upgrades that change how the fire grows, spreads and reacts. You can specialise in one type of fuel, chase cascading reactions, or build the perfect automated layout.

That last option is the game's best find. Placement matters: the fire destroys what surrounds it, so you have to site your resource sources out of reach of the thing you are growing. It is a layout problem rather than a rising counter, and it is what separates this from purely abstract incrementals.

One player sums up the first two thirds better than I can: at first it was just a campfire, then the Sun got grumpy, then my fire got bigger, then the Sun got angry, and finally it was gone.

They add a line I am keeping: never underestimate the rain.

And then phase 3

This is where the game breaks, and it breaks in a way that is particularly galling for its own genre.

An incremental game rests on a single contract: upgrading must make you stronger. That is all. You accept repetition, grind and absurd numbers because the curve never comes down.

Yet in the third phase, taking an upgrade that grows the fire can reduce your income. The reason is mechanical: your now-enormous fire burns the installations producing your resources before the multipliers have time to apply. You improve, and you earn less.

One player puts it with cruel precision: this is the first incremental game where taking an upgrade decreases the amount you earn.

The problem worsens because build space shrinks sharply at this stage. The area under the fire disappears, so structures you place burn immediately, and you find yourself unable to progress at all. Several players, across several languages, describe exactly the same dead end.

Two imbalances compound it. Electricity is judged strong enough to break everything else. And the upgrade choices are too thin to call it building: you take what is available, there is no route to draw.

A labelling problem

Something else needs flagging, and it is not a matter of taste.

At launch the game offers a mode selection. Two of the three modes read "coming soon".

The game is not sold as early access. Several buyers say they would not have bought it had they known, and they are right to say so: a game whose modes are two-thirds announced as forthcoming should carry the corresponding label.

Add finishing irritants: achievements that do not match the stats page, one hundred per cent completion described as broken by a player who does that professionally on video, and stretches where the upgrade list fails to appear at the end of a round, forcing a restart.

What remains true regardless

I do not want to bury this game, because that would be unfair.

The idea is good. Pitting a tiny flame against the Sun out of pure ego, with a cult in the middle, is a premise that needs nothing else. The first two phases work, they produce the rising pleasure you want, and the layout system is genuinely creative.

The price is 4.79 euros for around three hours, which is the norm for short incrementals and deserves no complaint.

And the studio, Punch Pancake, is shipping updates. One player mentions constant fixes and announced plans. The phase 3 problem is a balancing problem, not a fundamental design one, and balance can be fixed.

What I make of it

There is one thing an incremental game cannot afford, and this is precisely it. You can forgive it for being repetitive, ugly or short. You cannot forgive it for punishing progression, because progression is the entirety of what it sells.

The score reflects that and nothing else. The first two thirds are worth the asking price comfortably. The last third cancels the contract.

There is a demo, and it is the right reflex, with one caveat: it covers the part of the game that works. Several players describe loving the demo and buying immediately, before hitting what comes after.

If the studio fixes its third phase, this will be a very good little five-euro game. As it stands, it is an excellent beginning followed by a chore.

Did you beat the Sun or give up on the Moon? Come and say so on the InsertCoins Discord.