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The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands

Build, survive and discover.

Ratings

Age

9+

Category

Roleplaying

Languages

English

The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands is a minimalist survival and settlement-building game. Players start with a single bonfire in a snowy wasteland and must gather resources to build a village and attract workers. Each day is spent managing tasks like woodcutting, mining, and crafting, while each night brings dangerous monsters that test your defenses. The game features a beautiful, clean aesthetic and a meditative soundtrack. As you progress, you'll build ships, explore new lands, and delve into a mysterious cave to uncover the final secrets of the forsaken lands. It offers a unique blend of strategy, management, and adventure.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

83/100

The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands is a hauntingly beautiful survival-adventure game that excels through its atmosphere and minimalist gameplay loop. It manages to make the simple act of gathering wood and building a fire feel significant through its striking art style and a sense of impending dread that arrives every night.

The progression is expertly paced; you start alone and cold, but slowly build a thriving community. Watching your settlement grow while defending it from mysterious nightly creatures is incredibly satisfying. While the game's ending requires some careful exploration of the cave system, the journey there is filled with wonder and tension. It's a perfect 'zen' survival game that balances peaceful resource management with high-stakes defense, all wrapped in a gorgeous, snowy aesthetic.

Dinsun reviewed on: Wed Feb 25 2026

Features

1

Build your own settlement from scratch

2

Survive nightly monster attacks with strategic defense

3

Manage workers and resource production cycles

4

Beautiful minimalist 2D art and atmosphere

5

Explore and discover new lands and secrets

6

Unlock advanced crafting like steel forges and ships

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

The game's conclusion is reached by fully exploring and completing the challenges within the mysterious cave found late in the game.

Ratings & Reviews

Engaging concept that loses steam
Sat Mar 10 2018 ankalime

I loved playing this game at first. Gathering resources and crafting have always been the parts of MMO games that I enjoyed the most. But right at the junctures where this game should become more interesting, it fails. I reached the point where the scouts found a cave, and when we encountered a beast, my two warriors allowed defenseless me to attack it and get killed without backing me up. Why can’t the main character wear armor and have a weapon too? Then I achieved the ability to build a ship, and I did... except no ship ever appeared, even though the resources were spent. Right around that time, I also had the option of building a steel forge, but after I built the non-existent ship, I found I couldn’t build anything. Te option to build the steel forge was gone, and there were no options to build anything else... so that effectively ended the game for me. My only other gripe is that the text is a bit hard for me to read, but I’m visually impaired, so that may only be me. I really like the tone te music and the graphics set. With a little work, this could be an awesome game with some longevity as new areas are added.

Great Game. Little confusing. Little short
Thu Mar 15 2018 Smartiebros

Game is great loved the art love the style. These are the games I like to find that beautiful to the eyes with deep game play. Game can become a little confusing when your not paying attention to the words on the screen when it tells you what it’s for or what it does. Game add a bit of exploding to figuring out how things work. I managed to beat the game with in a day or 2 probably cause I reached a state where both my guards and warriors where fully geared and it didn’t take much to survive the night or the caves and all I had to do was set my phone down while the game progressed. Think I did that for couple of hours and by then upgraded my titan 50 on armor and 50 on weapon. Was going to go for 100 on both but decided to progress the game to see what happened next. Might think of progressing the enemies to a harder state, but almost unnecessary. I would definitely love to see more games like this where you just kinda figure things out and the game give you a beautiful artsy style game. We don’t always need some 3d nonsense all the time. And I always felt that games for phone should be more picturesesk then being these full on 3d impactful games. Over all great game. Cant wait to see more. Keep it sweet and simple. With the exploration and color.

Great game! Please add more to do after the end game
Fri Apr 20 2018 Desilou2002

I thought the game was great, bought it about a month (around when it was released) or so ago and beat it within a few hours, I really enjoyed the time that I spent upgrading the village and (spoiler) fighting the big boss at the end. But after that, I thought there would be more, maybe another land to go to our a possibility to expand my village even more. By there wasn’t, I've waited this long to leave a review hoping their would be more added. However, there hasn’t been since the last time I beat it, I got bored and upgraded the titan to 30 armor and weapon levels thinking it would be fun. Naturally it was, but after that I got very bored with it. Maybe add more things to do? Examples like traveling to new lands instead of just trading with them, add secret loot or maps leading to treasure or something into the caves instead of just simple loot that I could easily get from my villagers. All and all, a 10/10 game, I would love to see the developers do more with this! I’m sure many other people feel the same way I do.

Great game, very short
Sat Apr 21 2018 JxCor10

For $4 the game is kind of a rip-off. I finished this game within 2 days of getting it and beating the final boss was easy. I loved the style and the thought put into the game, however it was very fast and it felt at times it was getting a little repetitive. Every night I would be attacked by those weird dungeon dog creature things and I would have to restart the day. Then I would fortify my defenses, a lot, and then only one wolf would come. I think the story should be a bit longer and add some crafting things to do with meteor shards and gems, and whatnot. All in all it was a good game that I recommend you get, it was very addictive(I can say because I beat it in 2 days) and challenging at times.

Fun, but cost doesn't portray the game fully.
Sun May 27 2018 chil3nopulento

I feel this game is pretty enjoyable. You can progress steadily making the right choices, but at a certain point it's just getting more recources and not dying. You're not discovering anything new. And it's pretty early on in my opinion. I have not completed the entire game, but from what I've seen so far I believe that it shouldn't cost as much as it does. I hope there will be many updates to come. My favorite part of this game is the atmosphere and finding out what villager should do what and even it all out to create a steady flow of recourses with minimal casualties as well. Speaking of casualties, I believe there shouldn't be such a strong flow of monsters. Your village can't grow in population because your villagers keep dying by constant monsters that get larger in number and strength. You also lose the equipment that your guards have upon death, which then you have to use MORE resources AND give up certain jobs for villagers that'd be helpful and then just send them to their deaths instead. I do think it's a good game, not great. But it'd be better if the cost was lowered.

Ok game that feels like it is missing something
Wed Mar 14 2018 Ksigftw

I just finished the game with maybe 2-3 hours of playtime (or 36 days in game). It was interesting at first with the same feeling of “A Dark Room” but begins the fall flat at some point. I never really felt like there was anything to explore except the cave and even that was basically have enough warriors with you to kill everything and it’s all one button linear fights. It lacks the adventure and exploring part of a dark room while making the resource management part of the game a chore. Since each worker can be equipped with gear to make them better (nice touch) it becomes tedious to make sure the right workers are in the right jobs and they are properly equipped. When your character needs to do a job or build something but it’s on the other side of your village, it basically will take him half or a whole day to walk across the village to get the task done. The end game is equally disappointing and takes maybe 2 seconds to complete with a one button fight again that requires no skill or strategy. The story becomes almost pointless and you have no investment in your character, the “titan” or any resentment toward the evil God. In summary this game should be .99c or $2 but right now it’s too expensive. The developer needs more time on this game to further flesh out a compelling story with investment in the characters and more endgame content. My recommendation is don’t buy this game until it is overhauled.

Good, but too vague after discovery
Fri Mar 23 2018 skuban

A pretty version of A Dark Room that falls down on discovered item description. When you make a break through sometimes there is an onscreen comment about what it can do (don't miss it because there is no way to see it again) others are just 'You can now make X'. I understand the purpose of not laying it all out, but there also needs to be some way to know if X is better than Y. For instance, is a sickle better than an axe in a fight? Should every guard have the latest weapon or is a weapon mix preferable because some weapons are better against certain enemies? No way to know. There are enough variables like guards being tired or 'brave' or not all running over to fight (bug?) that trial and error isn't that definitive on WHY you succeeded or failed (e.g. guard died).

Stop Complaining
Wed Mar 14 2018 Tham77x

This game is all around pretty solid. The reviewers saying their villagers die too fast and the game gets boring. Can’t understand what a survival game is meant to be. At times it’s hard and repetitive but the point is to push through all that to complete the game and feel a greater sense of satisfaction. However, there are some bugs that could be fixed fairly easily through updates. One of these bugs is that sometimes “Exhausted villagers went to sleep” scrolls across the screen the entire night and I have to wait until morning to get useful information about my scouts.

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