ARSONATE: A card-based strategy title that plays with fire
ARSONATE challenges players to figure out the strategy of its cruel card-flipping wager, and isn't afraid to use smoke and mirrors to do so.
ARSONATE certainly starts with an impressionable beginning. The player is locked inside a fire lookout with a masked figure, the Host, who invites them to a game with life-or-death consequences. It's a premise similar to Buckshot Roulette, a stated inspiration for ARSONATE, which innovates on the uncertainty of Russian roulette. Here, the wager takes the form of a card game.
Cards are shuffled and dealt face-down on the table in a grid. At each end is the player's tower. The 'fire', representing flipped cards, starts from the centre. During their turn, players must flip the cards to the side or closer to them, representing the fire's spread. If a player runs out of cards to activate on their side, they must flip their tower card, resulting in a loss. If the player loses, they are offered a chance to survive, but only if they put on the mask and become the new Host.
There's a few mechanics at play to make ARSONATE more varied than merely taking turns flipping cards. Firstly, cards may have one of two properties when flipped: a 'redraw', which requires the player to flip another card, or one of six fire-themed utilities, which grant an object that can assist them. These utilities include hatchets, which allow you to flip cards without triggering their effects; fuel, which lets you flip a card on the other player's side; or a fire extinguisher, which replaces a flipped card with a new one.
There's a bit of strategy involved, and the game ultimately becomes a tug-of-war over which player can flip fewer cards on their side and use more items to tip the balance. Because the items and redraws are randomly dispersed and can be triggered on the opponent's side as well as yours, there is a fair amount of luck involved. This element of chance is used to deliciously cruel ends in the 'Normal' difficulty mode, where the host is known to play dishonestly. My hunch is that the Host has a much closer insight into which cards and items to play.
The theming is delightful here and sets it apart from being a simple card-based strategy game. The game minimises the use of menus, preferring to show the acquisition of items in a cabinet in the corner of the tower. The graphics have a dithered filter that reinforces the mood, and the visual correlation between the game's progress and a fire raging closer has a strong impact. All in all, it's a solid demo, and with the promise of additional game modes, ARSONATE should breathe a little fire into the card-based strategy genre.
ARSONATE is the second game of independent developer Nash, who first developed action-puzzle horror title HAL_4 in 2023. ARSONATE originally saw life as a submission to the Pirate Software Game Jam in January 2024, with the theme It's Spreading being an obvious inspiration to the concept of a wildfire underpinning the game. Since then, clearly a lot of work has gone into the game - the presence of the Host and their improved decision-making is a new addition.
The demo for ARSONATE can be played on Steam or itch.io, with no date yet confirmed for the full release.
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