Hot Wax sets fire to the Tetris playbook with slow-burn puzzle mechanics and a dollop of eldritch menace

Wicked

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been conscious of an eerie background humming and hissing. For a while I thought it was just tinnitus, brought on by one too many listens of Control's Ashtray Maze OST, but then I realised that it was actually RPS regular quasiotter whispering in my ear about Hot Wax, which launches on Steam this week after a spell of Itch.io exclusivity.

It's the new arcade puzzler from PUNKCAKE Délicieux, otherwise known for inflicting shotguns on chess and forcing the alphabet to wear trousers in the name of archaeology, somehow. Hot Wax is actually quite straightforward by PUNKCAKE standards. It's Tetris, but all the blocks are candles, and rather than filling a line on the grid to clear blocks, you have to plant unpredictably dropped flames on wicks to slowly sizzle the mass away. Relatively straightforward, yes, but fiddly in practice. Did I mention that you're doing all this in a temple, under the eye of a "not unfriendly" eldritch god?

There's still a demo for Hot Wax on Steam, with the full release due in Valve's cathedral of commerce tomorrow. I've had a go at that demo, and it has tickled my brain. You need to line up candles, wick to wick, rather than just filling gaps, as in Tetris. But you still, ideally, need to avoid gaps to slow down the filling of the screen. Once a wick is lit, it'll gradually melt the candle and leap to any other wicks it touches.

Once a candle is lit, you have to avoid smothering it by unscientifically dunking another candle on top of it, while trying to take advantage of how the melting wax alters the layout. I found this enjoyably challenging. And then there are the power-up items, acquired by sacrificing flames to the aforesaid "not unfriendly" god. These include bombs that light a bunch of wicks at once, and acorns that sprout a column-filling sapling. Not sure what they worship in this temple, exactly, other than Tetris.

There will be a bunch of modes in the full release – from basic score attack and endless play, to a mode where you have to melt several, painstakingly arranged candles with just one flame. They're also planning daily seeded challenge runs. As with PUNKCAKE stuff at large, it's a looker, with some lustrous pixel art and lots of nifty little animations. Thank you, quasiotter – this was fun! You can stop going "EEEEEEEE" in my ear now.