Firefighting Simulator: Ignite released on Steam yesterday, and since then, I’ve racked up 5.6 hours of playtime. During that time I’ve completed 3 of the main missions, and 5 side missions. There’s ultimately quite a lot of thoughts I have about this game, so I’ve broken it down into easy to read sections depending on what’s important to you.

Graphics and Atmosphere

First up, let’s talk about the graphics and atmosphere, which is sort of a mixed bag in my opinion. The simulator is built on Unreal Engine 5, and it terms of the general world graphics, it does look good. Buildings have a good style to them, and the general layout of the city is good, but there were some issues I quickly ran into.

Texture Loss

Within the first couple of minutes of gameplay, I noticed that the rigs in the game have a weird issue where the lettering on them becomes very blurred. This issue was also present in some of the trailers and mission gameplay videos released by the developers, though I really would have thought this would be fixed prior to release.

Mirrors

The image below should very clearly show the issue, but I have mirrors set to their highest settings, and yet they’re still shockingly bad.

Water and Foam

Okay, this one is definitely more important than the previous two, but for a firefighting simulator where your main gameplay element is a hose, the water and foam textures urgently need improvement.

From a distance, foam has a very grainy look to it, and in my personal opinion, it looks more like snow than foam.

Water on the other hand is slightly more subjective, and it can look good under certain lighting conditions, but other times it doesn’t look good at all, with it appearing like it’s just a bright white texture as in the first water image below.

The water grounds effects are also pretty minimal, which isn’t what you’d expect when blasting a fire with tons of water.

Emergency Lights

Now for the last bad in this category, emergency lights. This is by far the most disappointing part, graphics wise, for me. I don’t know what it is about Unreal Engine simulation games involving emergency lights, but they never seem to get it right.

The lights are faded, don’t react to the environment how they should, are far too slow, and don’t represent what a real emergency vehicles lights would look like.

Audio

Audio is, unfortunately, another mixed bag. The environmental and fire sounds are actually quite good, and I really do like them. The city also doesn’t feel dead when driving around, so the audio in that respect is also good.

Sirens

But alas, where it disappoints again is the simulation aspect. The sirens on the trucks are quite frankly terrible. They are extremely quiet, don’t sound like they’re in the same environment you are, and don’t fit the equipment.

Anyone that’s seen a US fire truck also knows that American Firefighters love their Q sirens, but these are non-existent in the simulator. The developers have stated this is due to a copyright issue, which is understandable, but as for the other sirens…

There are sirens on the loading screen that sound much better compared to what’s in the actual gameplay, which begs the question as to why they managed to get the sirens correct in the loading screen, but not in the gameplay. I do believe they are actually the same sirens, or very close, but the ones on the loading screen just seem to have a much better mix.

Below are two comparison videos, and you’ll immediately hear that the loading screen sounds much better.

Dispatch Audio

In the last negative area of the audio section is the dispatch audio. Now, this is something that’s also going to be vastly subjective depending on the type of player. If you’re someone who doesn’t care too much about the in-depth simulation side of things, you likely won’t care about this, but if you’re someone who’s looking for a true in-depth simulation, this is something that is definitely a let-down.

In the real world, a dispatch center will tone out a station to a fire. This is usually something along the lines of “[Unit Numbers], [Call Type], [Location]“. For example, “Engine 7, Ladder 7, Confirmed Residential Structure Fire, 123 Street“. This will vary department to department, but the idea remains the same.

While the simulator does have dispatch tones, they aren’t realistic at all for any fire department I know of. Also, from a pure gameplay perspective, I don’t understand why it says “Unit 7”. Unit 7 doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere else in the game, and it should really be the apparatus type, e.g, “Engine 7”.

You also respond with another AI unit, which is never mentioned. It could be referring to the station, but why not say station? It’s something very minor, but feels odd nonetheless. Furthermore, it provides no specific information about the call…but more on this below.

Then there’s the dispatch to player voice lines when actually getting in your vehicle and responding. Again, the general speak here is completely wrong, but I can understand the reasoning behind it from a gameplay perspective. The issue is that it’s practically the same lines said over and over again on every single mission/call. I really wish they would add some variety, as I’m already over hearing the voice lines, and I’m not even half-way through the main missions.

AI

In the game options you can set the level of automation you want your AI teammates to have, and you can provide them tasks using the command wheel. The automation options within the settings are:

• Wait For Command (No automation – Waits for player commands)
• Build Supply Line (Automatically establishes supply lines, then waits for commands)
• Autonomous (Always looks for a task to do automatically)

I don’t have too many thoughts on this system, but I do know that the AI in general needs urgent work. They tend to get stuck when doing a task, and in once case, they got completely stuck on one of the missions I was on, simply staring at the ladder truck the entire time even after trying to give fresh commands.

The secondary squad also responds with you to missions/calls, and it has crashed into AI traffic every single time without fail.

Hoses & Pumps

Aside from the graphics, which was touched on at the beginning of this post, I do like the hose and pump system. It’s very much a plug and play system, with you attaching a hose and being ready to go, and I think that’s pretty okay given a full-blown pump panel system is probably outside the game’s scope (again, more on this later).

The one improvement I would like to see in this area though is water doesn’t seem to have much power to it. It feels like a notch above a garden hose, which obviously isn’t the case with real fire hoses.

Calls

Fire calls are exciting, but only make up a small percentage of calls firefighters actually run, yet they’re the only calls that currently exist in the simulator. I’d love to see some more variations, such as car accidents, in the future.

This may be something that’s already planned, because the Year 1 Season Pass banner on the Steam Store page shows an expansion pack scheduled for Q3 2026, and it has a car crash icon, but that’s a long way off.

General Realism

To end off this review, I want to touch on realism, as the sim is self classified as a simulator, and I think the best way I can sum up Firefighting Simulator: Ignite from a simulation perspective is that it doesn’t understand its identity yet.

In some aspects, it seems like they’re aiming for a high level of simulation, but in other areas, they’ve really dropped the ball, and it feels more like a fun game that doesn’t take itself too seriously that you can play with a couple of friends. Looking at the reviews and steam discussions, it seems like a lot of reviews are split right down the middle between these two groups of players.

There’s a fine balance they could strike with a couple of game options, but I think it’s probably too late for them to backtrack.

Engine Number Assignments

I’m not sure how the developers didn’t realise this was an issue, as any amount of research would quickly show there shouldn’t be two engines responding with the exact same call signs.

As an example, at the start of the game, there’s:

• Engine 7 (You)
• Engine 7 (Again, but this time as a 4 Squad which you can’t control – they simply sit at scenes)

But once you unlock them, there’s then:

• Aerial 72
• Aerial 73

Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and in my mind, the way it should work is:

• Engine 7
• Engine 72
• Aerial 7
• Aerial 72

Again this is something very minor, but it’s something that should have been very obvious to the developers, and something that I think falls back into that issue of the game not understanding its identity yet.

Forced Parking

Lastly, another glarlying obvious issue that the developers should have noticed was the forced parking. I personally think you should be able to park anywhere, but, some of the forced park spots are just far too close to fires. Take the picture below for example.

I can’t imagine that a real truck would ever be parked this close to a structure fire.

Conclusion

Despite all the negatives listed in this review, I do like and enjoy the simulator. It’s something I’m sure I’ll keep playing, at least until I finish the main missions, and It’s a vast improvement over the last Astragon firefighting sim, Firefighting Simulator – The Squad.

Main missions take about 45 minutes in my experince so far, with side missions taking around 10-15, which I think is a good balance.

The game also features modding support, which is great for replayability, though I do hope the developers keep up with updates.