Whoah, this has caused me some real retro flashbacks this morning. Well I say retro, but Xbox360 at least – are we classing that as retro these days? Either way, manny of you won’t have seen a game before where you set up and control fireworks displays. Not me, I used to be obsessed with a game on the 360 called Boom Boom Rocket on Xbox Live Arcade. It was made by Bizarre Creations who also brought us Geometry Wars.
Now, technically, BBR was a rhythm game, and you had to explode the fireworks in time with the music, but it was absolutely beautiful and sounded great, too. So when Burst Noir – the only other fireworks game I have ever been aware of steps forward, well it’s going to make me dig out Boom Boom Rocket once more, even though I had, until 10 minutes ago, forgotten it existed.
However, Burst Noir is not a rhythm game. Rather than simply handing players a box of virtual explosives and encouraging them to make as much noise as possible, this one is closer to a fireworks-show editor. Different rockets and effects can be arranged along a timeline, allowing you to control precisely when each one launches, how much space there is between explosions, and how the various colors and shapes work together.
Essentially, you get to become the person responsible for designing the sort of big fireworks finale most of us only ever get to stand around and watch.
We went to a “big” display last year and paid a fair bit of money to get in. It lasted under five minutes, and everybody demanded their money back. Don’t be those guys.
Once everything is arranged, the entire display can be played back against a nighttime landscape of mountains and water, complete with reflections of your handiwork below.
There is quite a bit more structure here than simply messing around with a fireworks sandbox as well. BURST NOIR includes 24 missions built around different restrictions, including limited budgets, available fireworks, launch counts, and timing requirements.
Completing these challenges unlocks more fireworks to use, gradually increasing what you can do with subsequent displays. It sounds like a neat way of teaching players how to put together something that actually resembles a professional show rather than firing every rocket simultaneously and hoping for the best.
The timeline system also means identical collections of fireworks can potentially produce very different results. You can leave long pauses between individual bursts, build rhythmic sequences around particular colors, or cram everything together for the inevitable enormous finale.
There are also 20 original music tracks available to accompany your displays. FerioWorks says none of the music has been registered with YouTube Content ID, so streamers and video creators are free to publish and monetize footage containing the soundtrack.
BURST NOIR supports Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud and HDR, with interface support for English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
BURST NOIR – Fireworks Simulator is available now for PC via Steam, normally priced at $9.99. A 10% launch discount currently reduces that to $8.99.
If you have ever watched a massive fireworks display and thought you could have timed the finale better, this might finally be your opportunity to prove it.
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