Firestone – Idle Clicker Online RPG

In 5 minutes of gameplay, I came across several red flags.

Number 1 : The tutorial shoved me in the in-game shop. Yes, within the first 5 minutes, the game shows you the shop. At least treat me to a drink before you pull out a dozen condoms from your pocket; Jesus.

Number 2 : The very first arbitrary timer (that the game desperately tries to hide by immediately shoving you forward back to gameplay), is 8 hours.

Number 3 : The game "gave me" 50 gems and immediately tried to get me to spend them on skipping a 30 minute arbitrary timer.

That's when I closed down the game to wait out the 30 minute timer instead, which I had to do outside the game.
All that in 5 minutes.
If you lack impulse control, STAY AWAY. You are their target demographic.


Oh look the devs responded.

1) There is 0 consumer-friendly reason the daily free rewards are in the shop. Don't try to hide it. We all know it's to build a habit of going to the shop and bring down the mental barriers so it's easier to get the player to spend.

2) The 8 hour arbitrary cooldown on the spirit upgrade. You should know, you put it there.

3) Big whoop. That doesn't change the fact you expect the player to immediately spend whatever the amount is to proceed with the game. And that the tutorial literally does not allow you to say "no thanks I'll wait".

I've never said anything about the game not being F2P friendly.
I'm saying that in the first 5 minutes of gameplay, I came across red flags. Red flags that suggest you designed your game to make money off of people that lack impulse control.

No I don't want to join the discord. If you think I misjudged the game, that is on you for having a bad onboarding process.

March '26 final update, after 1 very active year, when I sunk too many hours and finally collected all the achievements:

Firestone. An exemplary representative of the free-to-play games, that don't even hide the fact they want to milk you dry. Surely, if you play actively, enter the game every day, 7 days a week, at least one time every 6 hours... You'll gather many random gacha chests to have your dopamine level high enough. However, when you look at the overall progress on the server, when you check the PvP, the ladder of the 'primo' players, you'll find that your 'huge step forward today, with that new mythic quality sword', leads you nowhere close to the place where you were just a week ago. Because... Money. And you know the funniest thing? The devs are starting a 'new server', about 3-5 times a year. Every new server is a new opportunity for the dedicated players, to push the ladder to the first places, faster this time. Thus, every new server certainly receives a main sponsor players, who form the top guild, who gets all the cream from a constant cycle of game events. And when the cash flow from some 'server' thins, the devs just merge it with another server, to shake up the swamp of a couple hundred regular players, mixing them with another couple hundred to increase competition between them, and provoke... more donations!

Plus, if you haven't been active for a month or more... You'll be very lucky to not have your character deleted completely! Most likely, you'll just not get any progress - like you definetely should, when you are playing an idle game! So, after all those years I know this game and follow its progress, it still lies in its name, to all potential new players.

So, if you ever wanted to play a game that's only willing to interact with you as a port prostitute, offering some dubious satisfaction with game progress in exchange for hefty donations from your pocket, as long as you have the money and health to play such games... Well, Firestone will happily take both. But don't expect her to remember you if you disappear for a long time. After all... It's just business.

Below is the text that I wrote in 2019, after the first brief acquaintance with that game:

The first hour into the game is very nice. Good visuals, good user interface... You have things going on smoothly, you feel the progress, you are unlocking new stuff piece by piece...
And then you hit the wall. Somewhere around level 50. And now you have to reset your progress, to transfer it to some red gems. Turns out that those red gems help you accumulate more money while you do your restart from level one. And at the same time, you need that new money plus accumulated red gems to invest in upgrades! And that's how you are supposed to play: 50 levels -1 hour grind, restart, then 1 hour more to get to level 52, then again restart, make it to level 55... After 16 hours, I'm at level 67, and yeah, have to restart once again.
Know what? I've seen that rhythm before. In Clicker Heroes after level 2000, in Time Clickers after level 400, and so on. The point is - the wall was introduced much later in the process and the duration of one cycle was much longer in many other clicker games. And when for every cycle of restarting you need to click more and more... It is not an idle game, by definition.
I can easily grant to Firestone developers that they have made nice-looking clicker and very good bait and hook! But... people, it's not an idle game. Firestone actually expects you to check things every 10-30 minutes or less, or to play it full-time. But why do you have to do this, when you have so many more games around, of much greater capabilities?
Oh, and I've said the UI there is good, well, it's intentionally botched sometimes, like when you accidentally click buff bottles, or some other buttons, especially ones that leads you to the store where you need $$$, over and over again.
All in all, it's a 5.8/10 mark from me, and the sincerest downvote. The devs asking of too much, even if my time is expendable, I still don't have enough to invest it into endless and fruitless 2-bit time loops.

Jan '20 update: Okay, the devs actually reworked the game a bit. Chat, multiplayer options... duh. Well, the overextended levelling process and the main gameplay loop (with unbearable timings) are still there. The player still needs to do constant manual clicking to achieve any visible progress. So, the word "Idle" in the title is totally out of place. "Firestone clicker", now with the chat option. Maybe it will evolve into something bigger one day, but anyway, it is farther from idle games with every update

Do you enjoy games with a massive pay wall? Do you enjoy an extremely predatory play style that relies on your wallet to enjoy content? Do you enjoy games that bring nothing to the table and are just generic copies of most idle phone games? Then look no further!

**Updated Review:

After further updates to the game, yes, it got worse. The cash grab is back with more vengeance than ever!

* step 1 make third server
* step 2 destroy populations (already small) of old servers
* step 3 cash grab as much as possible before the game collapses
* step 4 abandon game, remake with new graphics to suck money from unsuspecting players
* step 5 repeat step 1.

Does this sound familiar? Yes it's just about EVERY pay 2 win game on App stores. This method of development is EXTREMELY predatory and will drain your wallet and leave you with nothing once the game is abandoned, avoid AT ALL COSTS.