Firehold

A fire is moving across a hillside and you have crews with hand tools, and only a little hose. Tap ground and a crew walks there and scrapes it down to bare dirt. Fire cannot cross bare dirt.

The catch is where you are allowed to scrape: only next to something that already will not burn: burnt ground, rock inside the border, water, or dirt you cleared earlier. You cannot draw a line across the map and wait. You have to grow one from an anchor, which means committing to a side before the wind has told you which side mattered.

THE WIND DECIDES AFTERWARDS

Every line you dig is a bet. The wind swings on a timer you can see, and it will sometimes hand you the flank you spent minutes digging and sometimes hand you the other one. Nothing is hidden from you and nothing is decided in your favour.

THE SECOND ACTION IS WATER

Tap Run hose and every square the lay can reach lights up. Tap one of them and the ground goes wet. Tap the button again to change your mind. A lay starts at water and extends from ground you have already wet, and you get six a shift.

Dirt is slow and permanent, water is fast and temporary. Wet ground dries out in twenty-six seconds. Lay it too early and it is gone before the fire arrives; lay it too late and you were digging when you should have been running hose.

A SEASON, NOT AN INCIDENT

Shifts get harder on things you can see (more cabins to protect, a bigger fire at the start, a longer walk in for the crews, faster wind swings), never on a multiplier working quietly against you. Clear a shift and you choose: rest the crews back to full, or call in a fourth crew and leave everyone else tired. Crew condition carries between shifts, and a loss ends the season unless you fight that same fire again.

HOW TO PLAY

Tap to send a crew to dig, drag to draw a longer line, and tap Run hose, then tap ground, to lay water.

With a mouse, click and drag the same way. There are no keyboard controls.

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