Hello everyone, Steve here!

It's been a while since any kind of post happened here, the reason behind this is that we're mostly modelling nowadays - check out our NPC, Wolfie, the fox, who sits like a dog - but there's a key feature in Blue Flame that I haven't talked about.

First, let's start with a bit of a refresher, Blue Flame is heavily inspired by Dark Souls and a key mechanic in it is the bonfire mechanic. Basically bonfires in Dark Souls serve as a checkpoint from where you can start your journey again if you somewhere along the way or you can rest at a bonfire replenish your estus flasks. Either dying or resting at a bonfire resets the enemies in the game world. Blue Flame's bonfire mechanic is very similar but different in a few key places.

In Blue Flame, the checkpoints (who would have guessed it, it's also a bonfire) work in almost the same way as in Dark Souls - refreshing your potions, resetting enemies -, but two crucial things differ:

• If the area boss is dead, the enemies won't respawn anymore
• If there's no lit bonfire nearby and you die, you've died permanently

Let's talk about these two things a bit more in detail

If the area boss is dead, the enemies won't respawn anymore

Why is this an important thing? In Dark Souls if you reach a point in the game where you can't advance anymore because you're too under levelled then you can always farm the nearby mobs around the bonfire to get more souls and level up. Since Blue Flame doesn't have a leveling mechanic after you're done with a part of the game - i.e. killed a boss and ready to move on to the next level - apart from the health potions, that cap out at 5 at max, the mobs only exists as a nuisance stoping you from backtracking and exploring freely.

If there's no lit bonfire nearby and you die, you've died permanently

While permadeath isn't the goal of Blue Flame, this small touch of you'll die if you didn't lit a bonfire gives an extra challenge for those who want them. There isn't something that you could really gain from not using bonfires other than the bragging rights and shiny achievements, but we all know that being in that top 1% of gamers who completed X of their favorite game is a big thing for them.

Thanks everyone for tuning in, what's your thought about this approach of the Dark Souls bonfire mechanic?

Steve