What happens when you take an internet meme and try to turn it into a full game? You get Kill it With Fire, which is exactly what it sounds like. Whilst there is some potential for a good game here, this one is way off the mark.  

You play as an exterminator sent into various locations to deal with spider infestation by any means necessary, regardless of what you destroy. You’ll also have an increasingly ridiculous arsenal of weapons at your disposal. You’ll start off with a simple clipboard and eventually end up with Molotov’s, rocket launchers, assault rifles, and much more.  There’s not much of a story as you might expect, and that’s perfectly fine. The focus is completely on just slaughtering spiders by the dozens. 

The core idea of Kill it With Fire is very simple. You spawn in a map and in order to progress, you’ll need to find and kill a set amount of spiders to unlock the next room until you reach the end of the level. Spiders can be hiding anywhere; under tables, in desk drawers, and pretty much everywhere else you’ve ever seen a spider before. Killing them is fairly simple, usually only taking about one or two hits before they die. That’s about it. Initially, there is some fun to be had with the game. Chaotically smashing up and burning down a house without a care in the world to kill some spiders can feel satisfying. As can turning around looking at the chaos and thinking to yourself, “that was a job well done”. 

However, the novelty of the game wears off very quickly and all you are left with is a fairly average hide-and-seek style first-person shooter. Kill it With Fire lacks any basic challenge, with dumb spiders that often get caught on the environment and lack any strategy to defeat. It almost immediately becomes a chore. That’s not even mentioning the optional objectives that have you doing a variety of tasks around each map that can further unlock more weapons that will help you on repeat playthroughs (though I don’t know why you would want to replay this). These side objectives often revolve around completing simplistic puzzles or moving certain objects from one room to another for whatever reason. They aren’t fun and just feel like a poor attempt to add some replay value and variety to the game. 

Kill it With Fire went for a very basic, simplistic design aesthetic, that somehow manages to look awful even on the Xbox One X. With devastatingly bad textures, dull visual effects, and a brightness level that could be best described as blinding. Seriously, it can be a eyesore to look at. It’s especially bad when you’ve got white spiders appearing on a bright environment, making them really difficult to see. There are also some big framerate drops that happen whenever you cause some fire effects, which is a big part of the game. Thankfully, it doesn’t make the game unplayable. 

Kill it With Fire is basically an internet meme turned into a full game, with increasingly ridiculous weapons that consistently one-up each other. This game could have been a lot better, but the whole approach feels lazy. It features a dull and repetitive gameplay loop, uninspired level design, and terrible objectives that undermine the basic concept of killing spiders, not to mention the abysmal graphics. It feels like this game was built purely because of the memes and to attract the streaming and YouTube crowds, just like Hello Neighbor and other tinyBuild games released in the past. 

 

Graphics: 2.5 The Xbox One X version looks quite bad, with a horrendous art style and a brightness level that is way higher than it should be, even without adjusting TV settings.	Gameplay: 5.0 The gameplay has some novelty value and is very easy to pick up, but lacks variety or challenge.
Sound: 5.0 Nothing really notable about the sound design. It’s there and it’s harmless.	Fun Factor: 4.5 Kill It With Fire might provide an hour of fun, but that quickly fades away.
Final Verdict: 4.5

Kill it with Fire is available now on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch.

Reviewed on Xbox One X. 

A copy of Kill it with Fire was provided by the publisher.