Mr. Rescue

About the game

A building is on fire and people are still inside. You are Mr. Rescue, a firefighter with a water gun, a heat-proof suit and no time to waste. Each level is a tall building made of randomly arranged floors, and your job is to get as many people as you can out of it: you run to them, pick them up, carry them to a window and throw them out into the street, where they land safely.

The fire does not make it easy. Flames spread across floors and walls, little fire creatures run, jump and spit fireballs at you, and the heat slowly cooks your suit. At the top of each building waits a boss, who has to be put out for good before the building is saved. There are three buildings: a small business, an apartment complex and a big corporation, from easy to hard, and you can pick any of them from the level screen.

It is a quick, cheerful and very arcade-like game, with large pixel art, a catchy soundtrack and a score table that makes you want one more run.

Playing it here

Click Play, press Enter on the title screen and pick START GAME, then a level. There is a short how-to in the menu that is worth a look the first time. The settings, the best scores and the statistics are saved in this browser, so they are still there when you come back; they are not shared between browsers or devices, and clearing the site's data erases them.

The game runs in the LÖVE game framework, compiled to WebAssembly. Because the original game ran its own never-ending loop, which a browser cannot do, we changed how that loop is started; the game itself is the same. The EXIT entry of the title menu ends the game and freezes the screen: reload the page to play again.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

You are here to rescue, not to put fires out. Score comes mostly from the people you throw out of the windows. Fire only matters because it hurts you and blocks your way, and the game reminds you of it if you finish a level with nobody saved.

Watch your two meters. The water tank empties as you fire, and if you empty it your gun overheats and needs a moment to recover. Your suit heats up when you are near flames; coolants lying around the building bring the temperature back down, so grab them.

Throw people at doors. A closed door can be opened with the water gun, but that uses water. A person you throw at it opens it for free.

Look for power-ups. Items on the floors give you a bigger tank, a better suit, a water reserve or faster recovery, and they matter more and more as the buildings get taller.

Rescue several in a row. Saving three or more people within a short time earns a bonus.

Frequently asked questions

Is my progress saved? The options, best scores and statistics are, in this browser. A level in the middle of a run is not.

Does it work with a gamepad? The original does, but we have only tested it with a keyboard.

Does it work on a phone? It needs a keyboard.

Is it free? Yes. The code is under the zlib licence and the graphics, music and text are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, so they can be shared. Both allow redistribution, and the source of this build is on this page.

Credits and licence

Mr. Rescue was made by Tangram Games (the graphics, music, text and code are theirs). The code is under the zlib licence; all graphics, music and text are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). It also uses two small MIT libraries, slam (Matthias Richter) and AnAL (Bart Bes). Changes in this build: the game loop is started in the form the browser needs, and the file that saves the settings (the original had no licence text) was replaced by a new one written for this site; everything else, including the assets, is as the authors made it. The licence texts and the source of this build are linked from this page.