This year’s Epic MegaJam came with the theme “Here We Go Again”, and it immediately sparked (pun intended) an idea for our two-person team. The goal was simple: Instead of going for something narrative-heavy or overly complex, we wanted a tight, replayable loop that captures the feeling of repetition – both exhausting and oddly satisfying. That’s how our little top-down firefighting strategy game was born.
In the game, you lead a small crew of firefighters responding to building fires. Each mission is a bit different, but lasts just a few minutes. You assess the situation, deploy your tools, and try to contain the flames before everything goes down in smoke. Then, as soon as you exhale… the alarm goes off again – “Here we go again”!
During the jam, I also built an interactive fire / burn effect in Unreal Engine specifically for this project. It became the visual heart of the game – a flexible, overlay material system that simulates spreading fire across tiles and dynamically blends between burned and intact materials. Here’s the effect in action:
