If you took Uber and fused it with firefighting, you’d get EMBR. That’s basically the premise of the game here, with random schmucks taking up the mantle of firefighting but on call in a world completely overrun with phone-obsessed un-phased people. Your job is to rescue people from the fires that will try and take down different places, and along with spraying water on the fires, you’ll often need to carry or throw your clients to safety.
You also get to do things like try and find piles of money or valuables and take those as a tip, because you work hard and you deserve it. As you run through the levels, you unlock new tools and abilities, and the obstacles you’ll be facing get more complicated too. EMBR does a great job of balancing the innate absurdity of the premise with a scathing look at capitalism and a very fun gameplay loop to make for a really entertaining game.
Fighting fires should be a terrifying affair, but you’ll end up worrying more about whether or not you can line up the people you’re trying to rescue with the crash mat below, or whether or not you’ve found all of the valuables you deserve. Plus, and this is a big thing, EMBR also has co-op.
If you’re the kind of person who enjoys the general chaos of games like Overcooked, then EMBR is a nice iteration on that style of chaotic cooperation. You need to work together more than anything else, but you’ll also find yourselves getting in each other’s ways a lot. It’s just a very silly game and one that hasn’t had the attention it probably deserves. There’s also a free DLC that adds in a new mode, and we love free things almost as much as we love indie games.
