Last updated on December 12th, 2025 at 07:25 am
Pacific Fire – Strategy Game Review
Pacific Fire is a Strategy game from Geoffrey Ayre, first launched in 10th December 2019.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 148+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pacific Fire Stand Out
Pacific Fire is a turn-based strategic wargame set in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Take command of US, Japanese, British, Australian, New Zealand, Chinese and Dutch forces in the Pacific and Southeast Asia from 1941-1945.
Experience the entire war in the Pacific through 18 historically accurate campaigns, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Empire of Japan's surrender. Command squadrons of more than 230 types of aircraft, from iconic warbirds like the A6M2 Zero and P-38 Lightning to less well-known types like the CAC Boomerang and Vickers Wellington. Control the seas with more than 280 types of warships including submarines, battleships and aircraft carriers.
Pacific Fire is powered by a detailed and realistic simulation of WW2 air, naval, and ground combat. Fight against an intelligent AI which constantly adapts its strategy to ensure every game is challenging and unique. Challenge a friend in hotseat multiplayer (pass-and-play).
Pacific Fire contains no in-app purchases or ads of any kind, and an internet connection is not required to play. Buy the game once and get access to all current and future content.
The game features 18 campaigns, including:
- Pacific Fire: Fight the whole of WW2 month-by-month on a map spanning from India to the west coast of the US.
- Centrifugal Offensive: Command Imperial Japanese forces invading the Philippines, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies at the beginning of WW2.
- Coral Sea: Fight the first battle between aircraft carriers in history, and experience the battles for Guadalcanal and the Kokoda Track.
- Yamamoto's Gambit: Devise a strategy to lure the US Pacific Fleet into a decisive battle with the Kido Butai, and change history at the Battle of Midway.
- Central Pacific: Lead the US Pacific Fleet and US Marine Corps seize strategic islands and liberate the Philippines in 1943 – 1944.
- Operation Downfall: Command a massive Allied invasion of the Japanese Home Islands in this alternate history campaign.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pacific Fire is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th February 2025
Recent improvements include:
New in 1.700:
- Improved graphics
- Improved realism of naval movement simulation
- 55 new aircraft, 105 new classes of warships, 12 new tanks
- Increased map detail with hundreds of new bases
- Added many new nations, including French and collaborationist Chinese forces
- Added fleet oilers and ship resupply system
- Added sea mines, minelayers, and minesweepers
- Added guerillas and resistance forces
New in 1.800: - Several bug fixes and performance improvements
Download & Availability
Pacific Fire is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We love the game how it is, but it would be kind of cool to add a way to choose which units get sent in as your reinforcements, and possibly make the ships destroyed at pearl harbour get brought back in when they were historically refloated and have them sit for repair, maybe even add messages (like how red fire has) just a couple suggestions from a player.
Really plays well and is very realistic. Have played about of the scenarios and have not really seen anything wrong with the units or overall game play. Still learning the fine points.
We really like the latest update that takes it down to the battalion level for ground forces. The fuel shortage for naval forces is really great as is the revised movement in and around sea areas. Very crunchy! We like it.
Definitely the greatest series of pocket strategy games lately, ive followed thhe series since its release and we have very few complaints. Would love to see a game set in the age of muskets, American revolution, Napoleonic wars, Civil war.
We played this game for a few weeks it has many good qualities but what created great frustration and why we gave up playing it is because it doesnt allow you to save the game mid turn. The game only saves when you finish your turn. Not playable especially if youre playing some of the larger scenarios. Developers get back in there and finish this game.
The reason we think Pacific Fire is the best one at all of the games is because its the only one where youre actually fighting for the base or province and were both enemy forces and your forces could hold And bring in more troops, we also really like how some troops are given a boost to defending, and other are given boost to attack.
Ive been playing this game for a few years now and its been one of our favorite mobile games for quite some time and Ive always found ww2 and especially the pacific theater of that war fascinating so Im glad that this game exists. One thing that Ive wanted to see for some time though is to be able to merge different land units and create armies and corps and the same thing with air units and create air groups and whatnot the same way that you can do that with different naval units. We feel like that would bring a level of playability that this game is missing. Other than that we love this game and we would recommend it to anyone who like turn based strategy games and we give it a 5/5.
Success requires integration of air, land, and naval resources, against a challenging AI opponent.
Why dont yall add to do doolittle raid.
Look, this is a must-buy game if you have an interest in war gaming or World War 2 history. Easy to understand gameplay, a great user experience compared to a lot of other wargames, and a wide variety of campaigns to choose from. Lots of attention is paid to details and theaters that are overlooked in other games. Going to get the other games put out by this developer as well. Ill take these over any of the carbon copy cell phone games where you have to shove real money over and over at them to enjoy the game at all. Keep up the great work.
What we would love to see is the frontline map style just like Blitzkrieg Fire and this is a great strategy game we love it a lot so if u could add the frontline map style that would make it feel more better.
Why dont they add kamikaze units.
We hit a save slot at the outset but games arent there when we come back to the app. Def a problem for longer campaigns like the whole war.
This game combines strategy with excellent individual unit detail and map clarity. Very well thought out with very easy game play. Very fun to play through the variations of Sandbox mode to increase the AI resistance. Its been a while since an update has been available. The game doesnt need many updates. Would be neat for ships to receive retrofits much like air units do. Also, the AI is predictable in that it will rush all of its capitol ships to the front line making them very vulnerable and easy to destroy. Gameplay is easy in that taking an extremely defensive posture early on and destroying the enemys capitol ships in the first few turns dooms the AI. Not sure there is a mechanic to fix this aggressive AI gameplay.
Fantastic game! History enthusiasts will enjoy the complex task of managing the entire Pacific Fleet through WW2.
We got this game in June and we love it and we got blitzkreig fire earlier in September. We love both but we have a recommendation for a game. Maybe like some sort of Napoleonic wars game with instead of the air it would be artillery or cavalry. Or maybe a American civil war or world war 1. We love this game though so maybe try these games out. Thanks.
One of the best war game Ive ever found on AppStore. The level of detail is outstanding. Truly a gem.
Good game. One issue that needs fixing: HMS Hermes appears as a reinforcement, but disappears forever once selected. The aircraft aboard the Hermes get transferred to a Destroyer. The first time Fulmar fighters were transferred to USS Rodman. The 2nd time, Swordfish were placed aboard IJN Destroyer Nagatsuki. Please fix.
First off the game is wonderful completely worth 6 usd there is only one thing we would like to see added the capture of enemy equipment for example say you over run an enemy base that has fighters and bombers we think it would be neat if you could take those and put them to use just as a unique idea Casue image American zeros duking it out with Japanese zeros that would be neat.
So the only issue we have found is that the game likes to freeze in sandbox mode usually around 1945(unless you start at that year) and it will say resolving combat but it never does. Please fix it. Also It does it if we try to use the nuke. Other times it will freeze when there are too many units(such as 10k to 100k aircraft, 1k ships in total, or a few million infantry spawned in at the same time).
There are various quibbles we can make about the game, but ultimately there are so few quality strategy games that arent freemium money spam pits that this is a breath of fresh air. We would love to see a sequel maybe on the European theater with some updated graphics and more options. But please keep it historically focused, no weird or inappropriate cartoon characters, there are too many of those games these days and it is refreshing to have one that is accurate like this rather than corny or gross. Compliments to the developer.
This is a game that we always come back to and have never considered deleting. We love playing, even when we are defeated. We hope the developer makes a European-based version of this game soon.
This is the kind of strategy game that you just cant seem to find these days. If you have any interest in strategy or history this game will keep you interested for a very long time, and its something youll come back to again and again. No two scenarios ever pan out the same, and you can experiment with different approaches with each scenario you play. The one thing Ill say negative is that the difficulty description on the scenarios is way off. The shorter scenarios are SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult than the longer and more drawn out scenarios such as Pacific Fire (the scenario within the game of the same name).
Its an awesome game and we would recommend it but please fix the balancing issues regarding certain Japanese units. We are currently playing the China theater in sandbox mode and 1 squadron of zeros wipes out entire stacks (200-300) fighters without any losses on their side. We understand this happening with the outdated Chinese fighters to a degree but it also happens with the American f4f and p40s present which is really frustrating as the stats for the zero in comparison to the American fighters are rather similar in most regards.
Great game overall but we wish it got more detailed with the battles. Instead of just showing the results we wish it allowed you to micromanage the battles.
This game is the most accurate, fun, game, THAT HAS 0, ZILCH, NO IN APP PURCHASES . We've seen people say that its too hard or that its too boring BUT IDK WHAT THEIR TALKIN ABOUT. If you have patience, and good strategy, this game is the BEST… THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT PUT INTO THIS GAME IS UNREAL. So if your new and thinking about gettin this game, and if your like us with enough patience to get you through being a kindergarten teacher, then definitely, DEFINITELY GET THIS GAME From the one the only (you most likely havent heard of us) The OG FN21877.
Our only suggestion to push it over the edge would be to add a civilian faction to each base that ticks casualties after each air or sea bombing. Not controlled by ai or player or anything just a static number of civilians at each base that each attack does some flat plus percentage amount of casualties that the player can see so there is a gameplay incentive against just total war bombing. Nothing that would actually punish the player, just a counter for ethics sake. Either way great game. Love how much depth youve put in such a small package.
Its a pretty good game for mobile. Something we whould like to see is pilot experience for airplanes similar to how ground unit experience works.
This is so much better than dealing with all the bookkeeping and setup of a tabletop game. We can quickly go through scenarios with many different plans to see what works. Lots of scenarios ranging in difficulty. We still cant save Burma or prevent the fall of Singapore and Borneo, but we are able to island hop to retake the Phillipines and Coral Sea. We are still perfecting our tactics based on the order of operations in the movement rules. The rule book is very concise and well written…the developer should win an award for that achievement alone. This is a perfect implementation of a board game to mobile app taking full advantage of technology to maximize the fun (experimenting with different tactics) while minimizing the not fun (fiddly setup of lots of small pieces, bookkeeping, trying to remember all the rules, greatly reduced down time. We would purchase any other hex style war game this developer creates, no questions asked. Really well done mate.
Like a light version of War In The Pacific Admirals Edition! Challenging scenarios. Enjoying the long campaign, and look forward to more levels of detail to be added to the game. Update 10/30/20 : LOVING THIS! Keep the updates coming! Just keeps getting better! Thank you! Six stars! Possibly a sandbox scenario that begins after a historic December.
These guys are great we sent in a request and they pulled thru. Absolutely great game and great developers.
We cant even attack, every time we click on it to move nothing happens.
Very good game and even better community on the discord; dev is very open to responses criticisms and suggestions unlike other devs. Game is always expanding and is one of the best strategy games on mobile.
We cant put it down, such a joy to play, hope you do the European theater and other conflicts too! Keep up the good work and thank you.
Great mobile war game, that condenses some of the classic PC war game concepts into a more straight forward experience. The newest update is great and adds a ton of extra depth to the ground combat as well, we love to see that this game is still being worked on. If you ever go all out on a Steam game Id be the first to buy it.
It would be awesome if you could make the arrows showing troop movements a little thinner. Also, can you make the same type of game but for the European theater? Thanks.
Things get cut off around the notch at the top of phones the the iPhone 11. Please fix this devs.
We had a great amount of fun with this game we wish it would add more depth and pass play ability but its fun and worth the price at what you get it for.
Love this app. Simple yet complete without being cumbersome. Keep up the good work.
The point-to-point system works well for the Pacific War. The UI is utilitarian but effective, and no bugs so far. Wish we didnt have a day job.
Played two campaigns as the allies. Essentially the Japanese roll in and take over everything and you dont have anything to defend them with. The Japanese industry score is three or four times the allies so they keep getting reinforcements while you sit and watch them take one island after another. Dont know what to do. A way to balance the difficulty would. Be nice but otherwise its just a game for people that like to watch themselves lose.
Great concept but places no logistical restrictions on either side. An example of the ridiculous extremes: as Japan, invaded and captured Hawaii on first turn then proceeded to the West Coast. Could send overwhelming numbers of ground forces due to unlimited lift and fuel.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.800
- Size: 163.67 MB
- iOS: 15.6 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence
- Developer: Geoffrey Ayre
Last updated: 5th February 2025 | Genre: Strategy | Developer: Geoffrey Ayre