Bonfire Peaks review – we'll burn it down together
He burns his belongings.
It’s hard to imagine what has happened for a man to think there are no options left other than to take a box of his stuff – a box of cherished memories, I think, although we’re never formally told – and shove it into a bonfire. It’s harder still to imagine how it must feel to keep doing it, over and over and over again. Does it get easier, do you think? After the second time – the tenth time, the fiftieth time, the hundredth time – does it stop hurting? Do you stop feeling it? Or does every box stuffed into the flames make your heart ache just that little bit more?
Bonfire Peaks review
- Developer: Corey Martin
- Publisher: Draknek
- Platform: Played on Switch
- Availability: Out tomorrow on Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC
You’ve no idea the number of times I’ve zoomed in, peered a little closer, trying to decipher what it is he’s burning. It feels important to me, somehow; the key to unravelling this mystery. I think there’s a poster or photograph in there? A man in a white hat. Plus a shoebox, perhaps, and what may or may not be a cuddly toy. I don’t suppose it matters, really. One man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that.
We’re never properly introduced, but this nameless, expressionless, yet grimly determined man intrigues me. I’ve always had a thing for the mute protagonist – I do so love the stoic, silent type – and he goes a step further: not only never speaking, but never emoting, either, given he doesn’t even have eyes. That didn’t stop him from getting here, though. It didn’t hold him back from jumping into one of those swan pedalo things and just keep on peddlin’ – alone, and in the dark – until he pulled up beside a moss-strewn dock at the foot of this mountain.
He settled himself down beside every cold, dark campfire and watched as it sparked into life, opening a portal between this place and a puzzling otherworld. Without a word – without a flicker of emotion – he steps through them. He just wants to burn his belongings.
