Your ranger walks a square loop round a radio mast while wildfire fronts creep in from every side. Hold to slow down and cut a firebreak into the stretch underfoot, release to sprint to the next fire. A front that reaches an uncut stretch scorches the mast.
👆 Hold to cut · release to run ← All gamesFireline drops you onto a hilltop clearing with a radio mast at its centre and a square patrol track running round it. Your ranger never stops walking that track. Out in the pines, wildfire fronts flare up on every side and creep inward, each one aimed at a single stretch of the loop, with a countdown floating over the stretch it will hit. The only thing that stops a front is a firebreak, a strip of bare soil you cut into the track before the flames arrive.
Hold anywhere and the ranger slows to a walk and cuts the stretch underfoot, turning it from green to brown. Let go and the ranger sprints. That is the whole trade: cutting is slow, running cuts nothing, and the loop only goes one way. A fire on the far side may need you sooner than the one right in front of you. A full break stops a front and grows your chain multiplier, and finishing a cut in the last moment before the fire lands is a close call worth a bonus. Cut too early, though, and the grass grows back. A full cut that regrows without stopping anything is a wasted cut and resets the chain. A front that reaches an uncut stretch crosses the line and takes one of the mast's lights. Lose them all and the run is over.
About twenty seconds in, the wind arrives and swings to a new side every eight seconds. Fronts on the windward side burn in faster, and wind-blown embers start landing on the track ahead as hot spots. Running through a hot spot is safe, but try to cut through one and your ranger stops to cough in the smoke while the fires keep coming. Chill gives the mast four lights and slower fronts. Normal and Hard give three, but Hard's fronts burn in faster and up to four at once.