Budget puzzle titles are a dime a dozen these days, what with their widespread adoption by casual gamers and those that simply aren't interested in hours upon hours of gameplay that hardcore games can offer. The beauty of a puzzle game, when properly implemented, is that you can either play for a few minutes or through the game in one sitting and still feel entertained either way. One of the biggest strengths FireFlower has as a puzzle game is that not only can you sit down for just a nugget of time to solve some puzzles, at the same time there is a very clear sense of progression from the beginning of the game to the end of the title's over 40 levels.

FireFlower, as you can probably imagine, is a puzzle game based around matching groupings of flower pieces with the same pattern on the board. The game board itself is hex based and filled with various flowers, with each flower taking up a single hex. On the right side of the game board there are three boxes containing your current flower pieces, and on the left there is a vase with a sunflower in it with a water level that represents your current time remaining to complete the level. At the bottom of the game board is the player's score and a trash can used for discarding puzzle pieces to swap them out with another containing the same number of flower pieces, albeit in a different order. Swapping pieces out in such a manner lowers the water level in the vase by a small amount though, so it should only be used when absolutely necessary.

To put a puzzle piece onto the board you must first pick it up by left clicking on it from the box on the right, then moving it into position with the mouse. Left click rotates the piece counter-clockwise while right click rotates the piece clockwise, with a total number of 6 different positions any given puzzle piece can be oriented in to fit onto the board. Once you have found a matching pattern on the board you simply have to hover over it and the piece will snap into place. Occasionally if you have a bit of luck you will accidentally find a matching place on the board for a puzzle piece on complete accident by letting it hover on the board as you look for its place, but given that each piece has 6 possible orientations this is rather easily taken as a simple matter of luck and you can't simply sweep the board in hopes of finding a match very quickly. If you hold a piece for 15 seconds but still cannot find it's match one of two things will happen; either it's spot on the board will take on a very gently strobing red outline so as to not be too much of a dead giveaway or the trashcan will illuminate to signify that there isn't actually a place on the board to place the piece and it must be exchanged. At least, that's what the tutorial mentions, as in actuality there wasn't a time found where a piece didn't have a home on the board and the game seems to do a pretty good job of making sure such a thing doesn't happen.

Every five levels a new flower is introduced into the gameplay which is either added to the current types of flowers that inhabit the board or outright replaces them, everything from daisies to roses, or if you are not botany-inclined you'll simply (as I did) refer to them as the blue flower, the orange flower, etc. This is another area that FireFlower does well in, each flower has a distinct look both by color and shape so that there is never any confusion as to exactly what flowers you are looking at. About halfway through the game fireflowers, the game's namesake, are introduced into the game. At this point a few of these flowers are placed at random on the game board, and every time you place a piece on the board one of them blooms. When a blooming fireflower is clicked upon it explodes sending fireflowers flying in six directions and any that contact a placed flower tile will remove it allowing part of a piece to be placed on that tile again. Given that you can't place the flowers nor do you necessarily know where you will be placing your puzzle pieces they aren't quite as powerful as one would think by reading their description, but rather are useful to use all of them to clear off as much of the board as possible when dealing with a large, difficult piece.

FireFlower is a very colorful game, and on any given level the variations between the looks of each type of flower makes for an interesting game board to look at. The graphics in FireFlower are largely simplistic in the way of special effects, but an overabundance of such effects would harm the game's down-to-earth (pun unintended) and welcoming theme. Still that doesn't mean that FireFlower is without visual flair as the vase on the left of the game board is a very well done render, buttons all have a glossy surface to them, and placed puzzle piece tiles slowly rotate in place and are both slightly larger and slightly brighter to signify their status as a placed piece. Subtle effects, such as butterflies covering the game board when paused, serve as a quite beautiful and fitting solution to having players simply pause the game to look for their piece placement.

The same theme of simplicity is also applied to FireFlower's audio palette, though this time to some detriment. The sound effects are all fairly well-done and very well used, and everything from placing and rotating pieces to clicking buttons and using the trashcan all have unique and identifiable sound effects. In the music spectrum each of FireFlower's three game modes only has one song attached to them which plays over, and over, and over. It's not that they are of poor quality, as the Adventure theme music is a very well composed piece. Rather, it's a matter than a slightly expanded play list (or the ability to add a play list of your own) would be a welcome change. On the other hand you can easily disable the music, leaving the sound effects on full, and simply use your music player of choice in the background so it's not as if you are absolutely forced to listen to the same song repeatedly either.