Flashing Lights

Review

(Early Access Review. As an early access release, you can expect bugs, needed content and optimization. If you are not excited to play the title in its current state and to help support the title to full release by reporting bugs and requesting additional content, you may want to wait for further development.)

Everyone over the course of their childhood has dreamed of being a community civil servant at least once. You may have wanted to be a heroic firefighter, saving buildings and lives. Maybe a police officer patrolling the roads, keeping them safe and fighting crime. Or perhaps a paramedic who is trained, for one thing, to save lives when they are in danger. Now you have an opportunity to do any of those things and fulfill a childhood dream. Choose your occupation and your vehicle and hit the road while you wait for incoming calls from dispatch! Then do your civic duty to the best of your ability. Good Luck! Many lives are dependent on you.

Released June 7, 2018, this is the first release on Steam by the developer Nils Jakrins, and is published by Excaliber Games. It is an early access, indie, simulation, with single player and multi-player/co-op gameplay. The title doesn't feature controller support, but it did work fine with 360 controllers. Made with the Unity engine, the game has modern graphics. There is no soundtrack for the title. There is also no tutorial for the title, but it has intuitive gameplay, and it is not hard to figure out what to do.

While there is a lot of work to be done still, it has a very interesting concept and has been updated on a regular basis. Collision & physics need additional tweaking, sluggish movement controls need some work, and there are some clipping issues. Also needs NPC tweaks and additional models and scenarios. Still, it is quite playable - it just needs fleshing out and polishing. I have the utmost faith the developer will finish the project in a timely manner and make it everything they dreamed it would be. With many hours of replayability and a fair price, it is sure to have you give your money's worth of gameplay!

We have had a lot of fun exploring the game. One of my sons wanted to play also, so I have shared play time with him and now he wants a copy for himself!  I definitely love the concept of the title; being able to play as a Police Officer, Firefighter or a Paramedic is something I believe many people would like a chance to experience. Using real-world tools to save lives in a multitude of real-life scenarios has a lot of appeal for sim players. In multiplayer you can team up with other players on the servers to accomplish tasks in a proficient manner. For being early access, the game has a fair mp base; the last 30 days has seen an average of 64 players and a peak of 224 players. Of the10 countries that there are servers for, we found the US east coast to currently be the most populated.

You can start out in any of the professions you would like, load in and set up your character, choose your vehicle and loadout then hit the streets as you wait for your services to be needed. Your radio squelches and dispatch has a call for you; you accept and promptly turn on your lights and sirens and head to the call. The functions you will need to perform will depend on your class and the call. This is not GTA (though it may have a feeling like it); this game is dependent on a reputation system. Crashing into cars or general unprofessional behavior will result in loss of reputation! Successfully completing calls will increase reputation. I must, we did go into the single player just to test the car’s speed and handling, and gained a rather large negative reputation for doing so - but all in the name of testing (lol)!

Looking forward to seeing what the future holds for this title. I can see large server-wide scenarios coming to life that will require multiple players to tackle, working together. The possibilities are endless.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!