Pokémon Bonfire stories
Features:
- Four original stories to play though
- Play the stories in any order you choose
- Multiple protagonists to play with
- TMs to collect in use in other stories
- No need to choose starters or grind through any early game annoyances. Jump into the lives of established trainers
This is a complete walkthrough guide of the fangame Pokémon Bonfire Stories, with developer insights, so yes, there will be spoilers!
This game was originally made and released in 2016, for the Relic Castle game jam. This game is... nostalgic, for me. The whole premise was a conglomerate of specific memories of mine, and although the itch is about scary stories, I really wanted to share that comforting feeling of being around a fire with loved ones. I already wrote about it in the thread back in 2017, so I'll copy paste this:
"Today while eating dessert it struck me that the last time I'd had peanut butter pie was at my grandparent's bonfire.
A few people have said that the bonfire in Bonfire Stories has a really cozy/comfy feeling to it, and that makes me really happy to hear, because I based that feeling off my own that I got at my grandparent's bonfire every October. When I made BS I didn't know that I'd already gone to my last bonfire with them or that it'd already been the last time I'd have Grandma's pie...
Some people may have noticed that while the player character looks like a lady, they're actually set as a male trainer in the metadata; it's not a mistake but just me telling a joke to myself. At the bonfire my grandpa would allways start the night by wearing a costume and often it was him crossdressing. This isn't in the current release, but in my working version of BS the default name for the player character is his. Grandpa allways said, "If I was as cute as you I'd have at least 5 boyfriends" so tbh the offscreen canon is that the player character has 5 boyfriends, I'm calling it.
On a less depressing note, while the tone came from my grandparents, other aspects of the bonfire hub came from time with my friends. The setting is from a night we spent in a field far out of the city. It was so dark that our flashlights weren't much help, but the fire was bright and we had a couple of logs to sit on and roast hot dogs.
On a different night we made s'mores in the backyard; that's where the stories an the characters really came from. In particular I remember Mimi telling a story about a dark hallway where we kept having to choose between 2 doors to go through, and then she'd pause after each choice as if remembering where that would take us (as if the choice mattered) and at the end the choice was between two doors leading to different deaths.
Anyway it's been a year since BS came out during the last game jam, so even though this wasn't a development update I hope it's entertaining or interesting to ya. hopefully next time I'll show off some progress."
Years later I'd quietly make a post on the day my grandpa passed; I didn't really want to talk about it in the moment but it just felt like I should post something... he was my last grandparent. I couldn't go to his funeral thanks to a combination of the pandemic, and the way the rest of his community had treated me. Grandpa's wife, my grandma, wasn't related to me but they'd never made me feel any less than. It wasn't even untill I was an adult, sitting next to my sister and cousin at our grandparents' anniversay party, that I realized... no one recognized us. No one else at that party even knew that my grandpa had been married before. The grandparents who'd allways made me feel loved, kept a framed essay that I wrote at age 9 about our summer vacations in their living room, just... I guess never mentioned I was their grandkid to their neighbors, their church. When we went to our grandma's funeral my sister and I were the only ones crying, and no one even knew who we were. God that sounds pathetic but in the moment it was more embarrassing than anything. You'd think a funeral would be the one place it's socially acceptable to grieve but nah, everyone else there seemed horrified that a couple of "strangers" from out of town were carrying on in such a way. I just couldn't repeat that experience again for my grandpa so I wrote a dumb post on Relic instead.
Okay, heavy backstory over!
The rest of this game's developement was me trying to absorb as much spooky stuff as I could, but it really wasn't untill I read this comment from Pap (post game release) that I realized why my scary stories weren't really hitting.
It's because I like the mystery and intrigue of dark stories, but I'm just not really into the horror aspects, whoops!
There was one final goal I had when designing this game, and that was a personal challenge to use gen 5 tiles. At the time I was really unimpressed with them, and quietly judged the other games and public resources using gen 5 tiles as looking gray and dirty. So I thought by working with them I could come to appreciate gen 5 more, or at least make something gen 5 that I did like. Maybe it's silly to challenge myself like this, but it keeps me interested! Plus I really thought that the more detailed and "realistic" (compared to using an artstyle from an older generation at least) look would be better for a horror tone than a more colorful stylized look.
Game start!
Booting up the game, the protagonist has already found their way into a secluded spot somwhere in the forest. I allways like to get stright to the gameplay without frontloading the player with a bunch of info and cutscenes, so almost immediately you get to choose which adventure to go on. Just walk up to one of the characters around the fire and ask them to tell a story!
This could be in any order, but I wrote and developed 'Flashing Lights' first, so I'll be starting there.
Flashing Lights
This is the story we get to hear from Spencer.
I think this story is almost everyone's favorite, at least from the feedback I've gotten. I'm really proud of it because this was definetely the most inspired story and the first one I worked on, but it'd be nice if I could get the other stories up to this level of quality. I mean, it's just a little lame that there's such a clear favorite. Let's get into it.
Flashing Lights has this nice little setup dialogue to establish the situation before throwing the player completely in. This scene was fun to put together.
The driving scene is just an animated autotile for the ground, and the camper van has a small bounce animation. The player's character has already been setup for the story, but are completely hidden by the camper van's graphic.
I think something this story has that the others are lacking is character connections like this. These two already have a relationship and can banter a bit. It gives the player something to care about.
There's a couple story seeds planted in this room already. If the player examines the Espeon on the bed, their character muses if the poor thing is using its' psychic powers even while it sleeps. This Espeon is named Dealer, and belongs to Ellie, the protagonist's partner.
The other detail, which is a more obvious hint that there's already something amiss going on here, is hidden in the trashcan that the player can only access onve Ellie leaves the room.
Yeah, something's off here. how could there be so many daily logs already?
I'm not sure most people notice this detail, but both here and during the opening scene with the camper van, the dialogue box was displaying in the center of the screen. I did this to show whenever there's a bit of a fourth wall break, and the storyteller is directly narrating something. At some points I'd considered doing this more often, like having the other characters from around the bonfire chime in more, or even throwing in an entire scene where the player briefly cuts back to the bonfire for some commentary, but I thought this might get a little confusing or could just ruin the tone.
As the player explores around town, there's not much going on but there is general sense of discomfort among all the townspeople. In one house, a psychic feels like he's suffering the side effects of using his psychic ability too much. In another house, a man asks for help on behalf of a little girl suffering from migraines. A woman stubbornly continues to care for her plants while waiting for all this strangeness to end. A man paces his home in the dark, unable to rest.
There's a library where the player can scan some of the shelves to fill out their Pokédex, but I actually crashed my game when trying to read the dex afterwords, oops!
The librarian repeats the exact same thing about both Pokémon in the room with him. In the final house, there's no humans but there is a trio of Elgyem watching TV together, how cute.
At the bottom of the map, Ellie is waiting for the player to check in with her.
Speedrun strat: You are fully capable of lieing.
Ellie and the protag head back to the camper van for the night, and Ellie reveals that Dark-Type Pokémon aren't suffering from the mysterious headaches that everyone else has. Her theory is that the headaches are being caused by psychic powers.
For the record, she's right. Of course our protagonists don't know that yet but the player gets a glimpse at night.
The lights outside are red, yellow, and green because those are the colors on Elgyem's and Beheeyem's fingers.
Most of what's going on in this story becomes pretty obvious by reading a few Pokédex entries, so I'll just list them here:
Elgyem:
- "Rumors of its origin are linked to a UFO crash site in the desert 50 years ago."
- "It uses its strong psychic power to squeeze its opponent's brain, causing unendurable headaches."
- "If this Pokémon stands near a TV, strange scenery will appear on the screen. That scenery is said to be from its home."
Beheeyem:
- "With its psychic powers, it rewrites its opponents' memories. You, too, may have already had your memories rewritten."
- "Apparently, it communicates by flashing its three fingers, but those patterns haven't been decoded."
- "Sometimes found drifting above wheat fields, this Pokémon can control the memories of its opponents."
'Flashing Lights' is a story of a first encounter with Elgyem and Beheeyem, and our protagonists are already stuck in a kind of time loop caused by the Pokémon interferring with their memories. Ellie and the player character are suffering the least of the effects so far because their own Pokémon have been able to protect them, but they can't continue like this forever. Only the player's Umbreon is completely immune to psychic influences.
Chris's Story: Broadcast
Now that we're back at the bonfire there's no real wrong way to go, but for the sake of keeping this walkthrough organized I'm gonna move clockwise to the next storyteller.
This person with the guitar is named Chris, but they don't have a story to tell just yet...?
It's cut off from the player, but parts of this story are actually in the game already if we poke around. I don't remember this story at all, so I'll be rediscovering this as I go. The first place to check out is the map where the player character gets teleported.
It looks like the opening scene is done, and a couple other maps are set aside to be used, but aren't set up yet. There's this map, which is suppossed to be inside of the Goldenrod radio Tower, and the player character begins the story standing in this room with a line of fellow news reporters.
The boss is just ending a meeting, informing the player that they and Ellie have been assigned to "go to the Ruins of Alph and film a puff piece about the new room they discovered". It's a routine assignment, but since the ruins are full of annoying Pokémon like Zubat, the player gets to pick one partner Pokémon off the desk to take with them.
There's a lot of Pokéballs here, but I think a couple of them are just visuals that are used as part of the cutscene. The actual choices are between Chikorita, Cyndaquil, Totodile, or Mareep. They all have special movesets defined, and have their hidden ability.
There's not really anything more in the game that I can look at, but I'm starting to remember where this went.
The point of this story was to use two main mechanics: a Partner trainer and the randomized dungeon generator. The player was suppossed to be a cameraman following with their reporter partner Ellie, but during their trip to the ruins they would get lost on several undiscovered floors and have to find a way out on their own. I remember there was more though, let me look up the design document.
There was going to be bosses, with tile puzzles (those ones on the wall that the Ruins of Alph is known for).
- First note: Ellie, playing the role of the partner trainer who double battles alongside the player for this entire story, would have a Togepi.
- Togepi's moveset changed depending in which starter the player chose, so it could provide a helpful weather effect.
- There would be bosses, with tile puzzles (those ones on the wall that the Ruins of Alph is known for).
- One of the major plot points of this story is that the player character is encountering Steel-Types, which were completely undiscovered.
There's a lot of notes crossed out concerning which Pokémon exactly would be acting as the bosses, and how many there would be. There's also no mention of what happens to our protagonists in the end, just that this story is the origin of Steel-Types being discovered in Johto.
I guess that's it! A lot of the details would have been worked out during the development phase, depending on what felt best when combined with the random dungeon generations.
Lynn's Story: Ice Princess
Back at the bonfire, the next person in our clockwise roation is Lynn! Sadly, her story isn't playable either, but there's quite a bit of it already included in the game. Her story is called 'Ice Princess' but the working title was allways like 50/50 between that or 'The Huntress'.
After just a tweak to let us play this story, we can see the opening! It's just a bit long for a singular .gif, so I broke it up into three of them.
Our protagonist lives on a snowy mountain, and has been chosen as some kind of ambassador. It looks like this character Lynn is pretty jealous about that position though, and immediately challenges us to a battle.
Lucky us though, we have a Mienfoo so it's easy to take out Lynn's two Ice-Type Pokémon. Nice!
After the battle our travelling party heads out of town. There's actually come kind of error here that froze the game up, but the next place we go to is a simple route where we get free reign to travel up the mountain.
There's wild Pokémon to catch and a couple TMs to pick up if we want, but eventually we reach the peak of the mountain.
Once we're there, we have this ceremonial battle against Articuno, the mountain's guardian. It doesn't matter if we win or lose though, either way Articuno gets upset and blows everyone off the mountain.
The rest of the game involves the player trying to navigate their way out of the ravine they fell into. Along the way they'll have to solve ice puzzles and try to find the rest of their travelling party, while being hunted down by an aggressive Froslass. The cool thing about ice puzzles in this story is that they get more advanced than just sliding on ice between rocks. There's often big holes in the ice the player has to avoid or they get a game over and have to restart, and occassionally there's a Pokémon on the ice like Snorunt, which the player can use to maneuvuer with like another wall, or they can battle it to clear a path. Pretty often they'll have to do both.
I cheesed the game a bit more and was able to get this rough draft of a cutscene.
There's some sound effects that make it feel slightly smoother than this .gif, but it still needs work.
After the protagonist wakes up in the ravine, they're able to find a bag next to a hole in the ice. The bag was clearly from someone who was part of their escort team, and from it they're able to salvage an Absol, and a handful of items. They get to navigate about 3 ice puzzles before reaching that scene with Nathan, and then two more before meeting the next travelling partner.
After that the maps really aren't finished, but there's this big outside one.
The rest of the story is suppossed to involve the player slowly working up the mountain while going in and out of several caves. Meanwhile it becomes more and more clear that Froslass is stalking them, and that she's not working alone.
In the design doc there's notes about how Lynn, the rival from the opening fight, was suppossed to interrupt the battle ceremony with Articuno, and that's why it got mad enough to blow everyone off the cliff. The killer froslass then, was actually born of Lynn's jealousy and frustration. This aspect got downplayed though, as Lynn wasn't meant to be the only Froslass, it would slowly be revealed that there were actually multiple Froslass who were freezing and keeping humans as their trophies. Our protagonist didn't know it, but when they were chosen as the ambassador, they were locked into the same fate. They were allways going to end up either a trophy or another Froslass.
A really cool setpiece for this story was going to involve a really long ice puzzle. See, at least in the version of Essentials that BS was built in at the time, NPCs couldn't walk onto sliding ice like the player can. So I could set a Froslass to follow the player at incredibly high, unavoidable speeds, and create high speed chases across the ice. The Froslass wouldn't be able to interrupt the player's ice puzzle solving untill the exact moment I needed them to.
I was pretty far along in this story and fully intended to release it, but I think this was around the time that I experienced some file corruption. What's left here now is just what I was able to salvage and re-create, but for the most part I needed to completely rebuild Bonfire Stories, just to find where all the corrupted parts were. This is freaking tedious man, and unfortunately there's no one more qualified to do it than me. Just getting some playtesters to report on it isn't enough.
Duplicates
Kat has a story called 'Duplicates'. This one was pretty inspired by a completely different game called 'The Beginner's Guide'. I won't spoil or talk about that game here, I'll just say that there's a small section where the player has a pretty relaxed moment in a cabin. It's a mini game where they're tasked with small chores while carrying on a conversation with an NPC. Now that's a pretty simple mechanic so of course I had to Pokémon-ify it a bit. In my initial drafts, the protagonist's Minccino had a slightly different moveset, and instead of battling other Pokémon, the player would "battle" dirty objects around the house in order to clean them. That ultimately got scrapped for time though since I was making BS for a jam deadline.
Thanks for reading! :)
Full game credits:
Other help and special thanks:
Special thanks to Ava for being an excellent, A+ playtester
All of Relic Castle; every single person who's ever offered encouraging words or taken the time to write serious critiques, you make the fan game community a wonderful place that I'm so happy to be a part of.
Big huge thanks to everyone mentioned on this credits list. Whether we're best friends or never met, your work is appreciated.
And thank you to all of my friends; you allways brighten my day just by existing, and make me want to do my best.
