★★★★★ Art is lovely, enjoying story, BUT one big gripe
Mon Feb 02 2026 J.LoughI played all the scenes that had been released. Scenes are only released weekly, and each scene is only *two minutes* long. And each scene requires a key. So there will be a LOT of waiting and a LOT of keys burned, and I have no idea how long the story will go. The idea of waiting a week to play a two-minute scene is a pretty big detractor.
Otherwise the art is beautiful, and the characters seem pretty well fleshed out. I like that there are six romance options (looking at you, Choices) and they're all pretty different from each other. Curious to see how the story plays out and how the team finetunes things along the way since this is a brand-new app. Best wishes for their success!
★★★★★ Fun, but has issues
Fri Jan 30 2026 v4mpgir1As a longtime choices player, I was really excited for this game, but so far I have a lot of issues with the currency systems. The key limit is 3, which seems like a lot until you realize that keys unlock individual scenes and not the entire chapter. Some scenes are only a couple lines of dialogue, so it’s over in 30 seconds. It’s so frustrating waiting 2 hours for a key to generate just to read 6 lines of dialogue/text and then have to wait again. It’s hard to be immersed and invested in the story. Additionally, each character has a separate set of scenes just to talk/romance them individually. You can access at any time (with some exceptions), but because of this, I don’t really feel like the characters remember those individual scenes in the main story. They feel way too disconnected.
Despite all of this, I find the world building and story interesting (even though I feel like it spells things out a little too much in places where I could be trusted as a reader more). It’s fun, and I appreciate trying to do something different and interesting, since there’s a lot of VN apps now. But unfortunately, those apps are also a lot more generous with in game currency and keys.
★★★★★ Love it!
Thu Jan 29 2026 PreannaDGI’m honestly really enjoying this game so far. The art style is beautiful, especially the main character, and the story pacing feels really smooth and easy to follow. I love that the dialogue feels more adult and realistic characters actually talk like real people and even curse, which makes everything feel more immersive instead of overly watered down.
The short, simple scenes are a big plus too. It’s easy to pick up and play without feeling overwhelmed, and the story keeps moving at a good pace. I also appreciate that it doesn’t feel super pay to win so far. You can earn gems by watching ads at the end of episodes, which helps a lot (though I do wish it gave 4 gems instead of 2, especially when 1 outfit can cost 30 gems)
My only real downside is that I wish we could choose our love interest none of them are really my type 😅 But overall, I’m really enjoying the game and plan to keep playing. Definitely one of my favorites that’s come out recently!
★★★★★ Its good but im highly frustrated
Tue Feb 10 2026 AbelablevableI recently got this app a couple days ago, was skeptical but i really enjoyed the lore and characters. The quality is nice, crisp and clear. The design and art is great, however i have been a interactive story reader for a good while and i fear i might be putting a stop to it soon due to the lack of the ability to build up, diamonds, keys and coons. Us fans of these sorts of these apps understand that the company needs to make money, however you will not gain fans if everything is extremely limited to the point to where we cant even enjoy actually playing it. The romancing scene prices are ridiculous. On top of that we dont even get enough keys to finish a full chapter. We have to wait hours and all we get is a 1 minute play. I dont want to play anymore if i have to finish the book first with no romancing because i have to save. We fans would gladly pay for scenes if you cut the cost down on the diamonds and coins. Also we dont get a fair amount of keys for the amount of time we have to wait. It’s simply, FRUSTRATING.
★★★★★ Refreshing and wonderful start!
Wed Feb 04 2026 🎶JustinHorowitzMusic🎶Finished playing the first chapter and am so pleased with how this game has turned out! Over 15 years ago, some of the creative team for Spellfyre helped create Surviving High School and Cause of Death- two iconic story based interactive apps which were the first of its kind! So I already had high hopes when they announced this project last year! The premise immediately hooked me in and always enjoy a story where as main character I have an adventure to embark on and something to prove with compelling characters to meet along the way. While I do wish format of scenes were longer, this is promising start and I’m thrilled for how this story can take shape! Hopefully this will be an ongoing adventure for a few years like SHS and COD were like! Encourage anyone seeing this to play and enter into the beautiful world that this team worked hard to create!
★★★★★ Great start, much to improve
Tue Feb 10 2026 atlabethFirst, I just want to say how much I love all the writers. Andrew specifically wrote my favorite books at Choices so when I heard about Candlelight and his involvement I knew I had to support whatever the team was doing.
I love what I’ve read of Spellfyre so far. The worldbuilding is super cool and all of the characters are great with a lot of room for interesting character dynamics. It feels a little YA at times with the talyn and bardric scenes (am I messy for wanting dreadbane and bardric to hate each other way more for longer lol) but I’m still into the storytelling.
That being said, the resource system is so disappointing that it sours my view on this whole game. It’s difficult to stay engaged with the story when the scenes are so short, especially when you have to watch an ad after each one because you need coins and gems for anything interesting and they’re not easy to get. Every time I’m starting to get into the story, the scene ends and you have to wait hours until you can get back to it.
Again, I think the story is really good and this app has a lot of potential! I just also think there’s a lot of things that need to be fixed, and I have hope because of the great dev team. Really excited to see where this game goes :-)
★★★★★ Disappointing AI “art” and microtransaction heck
Sat Jan 31 2026 MJBinMDI was so excited for this game. I’ve been following Candlelight Games since they announced their launch. I was a big fan of a lot of the founders when they worked at Pixelberry and was excited to see what they would do with their own studio. I’ve been pretty disheartened playing the game, first because of the obvious AI “art” (which they promised not to have) and the incredibly short scenes (less than 5 min) that each require a key to unlock. To progress friendships you need to spend gems, which cost a lot of money. I’m not averse to spending money on mobile games if you get something out of it, but this game seems designed to make you spend incredible amounts just to progress slowly through the story. The story, while interesting, isn’t particularly creative - certainly not enough to justify paying $$$ for the AI art and gems just to progress the game. I’m pretty sad about this one.
★★★★★ Should have been great
Fri Jan 30 2026 softfallenThere’s so much that I love in this app - I’m intrigued by the story, the setting, the characters. Unfortunately, there’s a big problem with the wait times to get diamonds. You barely get any from watching ads and playing chapters - it can take days to have enough to progress a single ally relationships, and important in chapter moments are gated behind your relationship levels with your allies. I ended up paying for a diamond package and wish I hadn’t - it barely amounted to anything. I understand they need to incentivize ad watching and buying diamonds to keep this game running - but right now, the wait times to get diamonds, the prices per packages vs what you get, and the amount of diamonds you can earn vs how much these scenes cost is horribly unbalanced and will likely result in myself and others having to drop this game if it’s not fixed soon
