Game profile
Firewatch
As a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness, players talk over radio with their only contact while a mysterious plot unfolds around abandoned camps. The relationship between the two characters carries the entire story.
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What kind of game this is
At its core this is Adventure, set in the present day. Visually it is deliberately stylised rather than photorealistic, and the overall tone stays somewhere between light and heavy. The world is open, so wandering off and ignoring the main path is part of the deal. It is built around short sessions, which makes it easy to pick up for half an hour.
Difficulty stays forgiving, so progress rarely depends on your reflexes. The narrative carries the whole thing, and the mechanics serve it. It is a single player experience from start to finish. It is available broadly, on 4 platforms. It sits in the budget bracket.
What stands out
- Strong dialogue
- Mysterious plot
- Beautiful wilderness setting
This fits you if
- you want to live through a story, not just play a system
- exploring for its own sake is the point for you
- you usually have thirty to sixty minutes and want that to be enough
- you like getting lost and ignoring the main objective for hours
- the writing matters more to you than the mechanics
- you want zero frustration and no difficulty wall
Look elsewhere if
- you need real difficulty to stay interested
- you skip cutscenes and want to get to the gameplay
- you want something that lasts, this is over after 5 hours
- you want to play it side by side with someone
How long is Firewatch?
About 5 hours in total. That is roughly 3 evening(s), so you can realistically finish it this week.
How the rating ranks
Critics settled on 79 out of 100, which puts it above 25 percent of the 1276 games here and at rank 909 overall. That is the lower end of this database, critics were more reserved here than with most titles. The number does not tell you whether a game is exactly right for the right evening, though.
For comparison, Adventure averages 83 points across the database, so this one sits 4 points below its own genre. The figure rests on 1223 collected ratings.
Released in 2016, so it has 10 years behind it. Usually cheap by now and the rough edges are long fixed.
The facts
- Release year
- 2016
- Genres
- Adventure
- Playtime
- approx. 5 hrs.
- Difficulty
- Relaxed, forgiving
- Story weight
- Carries the whole game
- Play with
- Solo
- Setting
- Present day
- Visual style
- Stylised
- Price bracket
- Budget
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
- Critic rating
- 79 / 100
Direct comparison
| Genres | Release year | Playtime | Critic rating | Price bracket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firewatch | 2016 | approx. 5 hrs. | 79 | Budget |
| Deer & Boy | 2026 | approx. 6 hrs. | n/a | Budget |
| Road 96 | 2021 | approx. 7 hrs. | 83 | Mid price |
| Gone Home | 2013 | approx. 3 hrs. | 74 | Budget |
If you liked this, try these
- n/a Deer & Boy Shared: Adventure, Present day
- 83/100 Road 96 Shared: Adventure, Present day, rated higher
- 74/100 Gone Home Shared: Adventure, Present day, shorter
- 88/100 Kentucky Route Zero Shared: Adventure, Present day, longer, rated higher
- 88/100 Night in the Woods Shared: Adventure, Present day, longer, rated higher
- 80/100 Planet of Lana Shared: Adventure, rated higher