I have been cycling through a lot of games lately that have very busy interfaces and give explicit instructions on every aspect of the game. Through unskippable tutorials and heavy hand holding, it feels like these games force feed you the info they think you need to be convinced to not uninstall their app. Xigma Games latest offering, The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands [$3.99], is an effervescent tonic to the plague of over information we seem to be in the midst of.
The Bonfire is a game where you will be directly and indirectly navigating the choices of a settler who is setting out to combat a great evil. You start by gathering raw materials and making crude structures by yourself. As you build places to work and sleep, wanderers will visit you willing to live and work in your village. It is your job to apply your burgeoning workforce in a balanced way to the tasks of protection, gathering, exploration and supplying. The game cycles between day and night where night cycles tend to focus on how well fortified you are and day cycles being the primary working time. The control scheme is minimal and helps accentuate a design philosophy championed by games like Alto's Adventure [$4.99], Monument Valley [$3.99], and Prune [$3.99].
The immediate goal set forth in The Bonfire is survival and construction, and is highly reminiscent of another fantastic mobile game Kingdom: New Lands [$9.99]. The controls really mesh well into the idea that you only have control over so many things as a...