Light No Fire - Fantasy No Man's Sky? Or More Than That?

Nov. 21, 2024

Light No Fire – Fantasy No Man’s Sky? Or More Than That?

Light No Fireis set in a rich fantasy world where adventure, survival, exploration, and building come together. The game seems to center around an open-world journey on a massive, Earth-sized planet that’s chock-full of lore and hidden mysteries. When the devs say “fantasy,” they really mean it. Think rideable dragons, giant hummingbirds, and even rabbit-like villagers. It looks like a place where you’re not stepping into the role of a classic hero but more of an explorer, piecing together the world’s secrets on your own terms and at your own pace.

The focus seems to be on giving players the freedom to carve out their own path through its procedurally generated landscapes. The game is also said to feature deep lore that unravels naturally, with players discovering ancient ruins, abandoned settlements, and strange artifacts to learn more about the world’s lore. Though there isn’t much information about the story and lore at this point. Maybe we’ll probably get to know more about it as the game’s release gets nearer. That’s usually how Hello Games handles their updates, like what they did with No Man’s Sky. What we do know is that it really does feel like the devs want to capture that sense of adventure, charm, and imagination that’s inspired by classic fantasy worlds. Alongside the constant fight for survival, you’ll be able to build, craft, and explore a world thick with mystery.

Light No Fireis mostly about exploring a single, massive Earth-like Fantasy planet that is procedurally generated to deliver an expansive and diverse environment. This is very different from No Man’s Sky which kind of spreads its focus across countless alien worlds. Instead, this game directs all its attention into creating one incredibly detailed planet. With what looks like different kinds of biomes, climates, and terrains, the world does look huge. So much so that they said exploring it on foot could take a lot of months in real life. The generated world is supposed to have everything from mountain ranges and oceans to dense forests, deserts, and even oceans. Yes, they also showed that you could go diving to explore underwater in the game. Each area was designed to present its own challenges and resources just like in the real world. With such a huge world, you’d think exploring it on foot would be a huge pain and you are right. Luckily, the trailers for the game showed us several things I assume we will be able to use to explore, like ships, giant hummingbirds, and even dragons!

Now, with the game supposedly planning to give players the freedom to explore the world on their own terms, the world’s procedural generation will most likely have an important role, and the world will be full of surprising encounters. Since the setting is Earth-like, though, the plants, animals, and terrain will likely feel familiar, even if there are some unique twists.

And since the devs are aiming for a sense of realism, Survival mechanics might also play a big role inLight No Fire. Based on the trailers, you’ll be able to gather resources to craft gear, shelters, and tools to handle whatever challenges the game throws your way. The crafting and building systems seem like they could be pretty detailed too, and it looks like you’ll be able to set up everything from quick campsites to more permanent bases. Managing your resources would be very important so I imagine you’d also be spending a lot of time scavenging for food, water, and other essentials, figuring out how to adapt to the different environments you encounter.

Speaking of crafting, the one feature that I hope they will perfect in this game is the crafting system. This is a survival game so you’ll definitely be relying on crafting a lot. And they’ve shown us some of the items we could craft, like weapons, and I assume armor as well, along with how we can modify our bases. I just hope that they give it some depth and complexity while keeping it simple enough so that it wouldn’t feel like a huge chore. But seeing how they handled crafting in No Man’s Sky, I think they’ll be able to pull it off.

Building and customizing a base seems like it’ll be important too. You’ll probably be starting with something simple, like a hut, but can eventually expand into a fully fortified home base with storage, maybe even crafting stations, and defenses. And maybe you could even grow your own food too.

Weather and the day-night cycle could also have a real impact on what you’re doing. Like, if it gets dark out, it could make predators more active, making night time explorations a bit more challenging on top of having little visibility since you’ll probably only be able to illuminate the dark with a torch or a lamp. And if a storm hits, it could maybe flood lower areas or just make getting around tougher, so you’d need to adjust your plans on the fly.

And who knows, they can take it even further with survival stuff like managing your body temperature. Maybe if you’re exploring a freezing mountain, you’d need to craft some warmer clothes to handle the cold. Or if you jump into the ocean, you’d have to switch into dry clothes after to avoid getting sick with hypothermia. Obviously, none of this is confirmed, but adding things like that could really make survival feel more interesting.

Combat seems to be more hands-on compared toNo Man’s Sky. Based on what we’ve seen, when you run into hostile creatures or other threats, you can fight them off with swords and bows, and I think you’ll be able to craft so many more weapons. There’s even the possibility that you might be able to use magic since they showed a character with a staff. Although that staff could probably just be used to whack enemies, but hey it’s a game that is also heavy on Fantasy, I mean, you could ride dragons here so being able to use magic might not be the most outrageous idea.

As for NPCs and NPC settlements, we don’t really have much information available on them, but the trailer did show some rabbit people bowing down to the characters in what looks like reverence, so I guess there will be some objectives where you can help some people out and maybe the game will have some sort of relations system with these people that could help improve your standing with them and help you buy and sell stuff from them at a better rate. I’m just guessing here so take it with a grain of salt.

And then there’s multiplayer. We’ve seen how the trailer has multiple people working on building structures and it has been confirmed that there will be co-op. The game’s Steam page is also listed as multiplayer so there’s that. What we still don’t know yet is how they’ll pull this off. Will this be like No Man’s Sky where it’s pretty much a single-player game but with multiplayer features that you can toggle on and off? They did say we’ll be playing on a huge planet that could fit all its players, and Sean Murray, Hello Games’ director also described the game as an open-world game with no boundaries and that they’ll let everyone play, so I’m guessing you can just create a party with friends and build bases and quest together and you could probably run into random players if you look hard enough, though it probably won’t have a dense population like in MMOs.

The development ofLight No Firehas been pretty mysterious so far, with Hello Games only sharing bits and pieces about it. Unlike the lead-up toNo Man’s Sky, which went through some well-known challenges at launch,Light No Fireis being kept much more under wraps. It looks like Hello Games has learned a lot from their past experience and they’re being more careful this time and only revealing details when they’re confident about the game’s progress. This way, they’re not making promises too early, which does help them avoid the same pitfalls and gives them more time to makeLight No Firethe way they want it.

There’s no release date yet, but it’s clear Hello Games is in no rush. They’re probably focused on finishing the game at their own pace instead of releasing something that is half-baked. The game is being built on their own engine, which has been improved sinceNo Man’s Sky, so they might be able to push things even further in terms of visuals, procedural generation, and how the environment reacts to what the players do. I just take the fact that they’re staying quiet about a lot of the game’s details to show they’re really focused on getting it right before making any big announcements.

As for whether it’ll come to consoles, they haven’t officially said anything, but given Hello Games’ history of supporting multiple platforms, it seems pretty likely. For the future updates, considering how they’ve keptNo Man’s Skyalive with tons of post-launch updates, there’s a good chanceLight No Firewill get similar treatment. If it launches successfully, we can probably expect regular updates, new content, and improvements based on player feedback.

Multiplayer or co-op features have been confirmed, so it’s clear thatLight No Firewill have some focus on player collaboration. With this in mind, there will likely be specific content designed around co-op experiences, though it’s hard to say exactly what that might look like just yet. It probably won’t include large-scale activities like raids or anything similar, but we’ll have to wait until Hello Games shares more details. Given their track record withNo Man’s Skywhere they gradually introduced multiplayer elements, it’s very likely thatLight No Firewill continue to improve on multiplayer, adding new content as updates come to keep players engaged over time.

From what I’ve seen so far,Light No Firehas a lot of potential to be something amazing. The idea of a massive world to explore is honestly something I find really exciting, along with how there are Fantasy elements mixed into the game. I mean, riding giant birds and dragons to gather resources and explore unknown lands is straight out of anyone’s wishlist. Let’s just hope it doesn’t hit the same launch issues thatNo Man’s Skyhad back in the day.

Castielle

Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.