Games Like Wildfire Command '98

You run the air attack. You guide the planes, you don't fly them.

A wildfire is burning and the attack aircraft are yours to direct. You are the air attack supervisor, orbiting above with a radio and a map on a phosphor console. Air tankers, VLATs, and helitack crews check in and wait for your call. Your job is to read the situation, decide where retardant and water will do the most good, draw the lines, and live with how the fire answers.

How It Plays

The fire is a simulation, not a script

Fire spreads faster uphill and faster downwind, through fuel that changes across the map. Grass runs and burns out. Timber holds, then throws embers ahead of itself. Wind shifts, and the line you spent four loads on is suddenly the wrong one. Lightning ignites new starts while you are still working the first one. The fire you were sent to is not always the only fire you leave with.

Containment is measured honestly, as the share of the perimeter with nowhere left to burn, and acres burned is a count of what actually burned. The same fire fought differently becomes a different fire.

What's In It

One sitting, not a campaign

Most fires are decided in under half an hour, shorter if you accelerate time. The score at the end says what it cost: acres burned, structures lost, and whether you ever got a line around it. Try it again or save the replay to come back to later.

From The Developer

I was a pilot in the 90s and flew out of an airport that was shared with a CAL FIRE air attack base. My memories of watching the bombers flying their missions inspired this game. The look and feel is inspired by my favorite early arcade vector games as well as the ATC equipment in use at the time.