Rescue Ops: Wildfire is a cooperative firefighting simulator from French studio Exkee. Its new demo trailer, which premiered during The MIX Fall Online Showcase on October 16th, spends 90 seconds on the parts of wildland firefighting most games skip: laying hose, plumbing water into a truck, and calling in aircraft when the ground crew can’t keep up. It ends with a simple message on screen. The demo is out now.
Quick answer: The Rescue Ops: Wildfire demo is playable now on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store. The full game is slated for Q1 2027.
What Rescue Ops: Wildfire is
You play as a wildland firefighter responding to large, fast-moving fires in different parts of the world. You can play solo or in co-op. The jobs include rescuing civilians, driving and running specialized vehicles, and working out how to get ahead of fires that spread and change as you fight them. Exkee built the game with input from real firefighting experts. The trailer’s opening card frames the premise as joining “the first international firefighting force.”
The international pitch sits on top of a very specific starting point. The crews in the trailer wear French Sapeurs-Pompiers turnout gear with yellow reflective striping and red and yellow helmets, and the trucks carry “Sapeurs-Pompiers des Bouches-du-Rhône” markings. Bouches-du-Rhône is the département in southern France around Marseille. Some interface prompts in the footage also appear in French, such as “QUITTEZ,” “ACTIVER,” and “LAMPE TORCHE,” alongside their English versions.
Exkee CEO Toni Doublet described the goal of the project this way:
“Wildfires present an ever-growing real-world threat, and with Rescue Ops: Wildfire, we wanted to deliver a simulation that captures both the raw danger and the team-driven strategy required to fight them.”
What the Rescue Ops: Wildfire demo trailer shows
The trailer opens on an air tanker and a helicopter dropping water ahead of an advancing forest fire. It then cuts to a fire station, where firefighters move from a planning room to the garage and head out. Most of the footage after that is gameplay, captured both in third person and from mounted cameras.
Driving the fire engine
Driving is something you do yourself, not a cutscene between missions. The fire engine heads down rural dirt roads toward smoke, with a HUD that includes a speedometer and compass bar. The keybind prompts in the footage show what the truck can do: siren, horn, flashing lights, headlights, area lights, and a “SELF-PROTECTION” toggle. That last one controls the truck’s built-in sprinklers, which shield the vehicle when it drives through fire.
Hose lines, pumps, and water supply
Water logistics take up the biggest share of the trailer. Firefighters run through gates with rolled hoses and lay lines across the terrain by hand. One player carries and unrolls hose along a trail, and others connect lines to the valves on the truck’s rear pump. Blue interaction rings mark the connectors and suction points. Prompts like “UNFOLD,” “PLACE,” “RELEASE,” “DISCONNECT,” and “CONTINUOUS CONNECTOR” suggest each coupling is a separate action you perform, rather than something that snaps into place on its own.
The trailer also shows the crew building a large portable water basin, an open reservoir set up on site. A suction line runs from the basin to the truck. In practice, that means the crew can refill the engine in the field instead of driving back for water. It ties into the game’s emphasis on managing a limited water supply.
Putting water on the fire
The trailer shows three ways to fight the fire directly:
- Handheld nozzles, with a “NEXT STREAM MODE” prompt for switching spray patterns
- Backpack water sprayers for crew members away from the hose lines
- A roof-mounted water cannon on the engine, aimed from first person while the truck drives through active fire
Several trucks and ground crews hose down a burning tree line together in one sequence. A later night scene has squad members attacking flare-ups using hose streams, with the vehicles’ spotlights as the main light source. A flashlight prompt also appears on the HUD.
Helicopters and air tankers
The final section of gameplay sits under the card “COORDINATE GROUND AND AIR SUPPORT.” A helicopter flies over a coastal bay. A fixed-wing air tanker then makes a low pass and drops red fire retardant near homes. Water drops appear earlier in the trailer too, including one over a ridge behind a threatened countryside villa. Aircraft are something your ground team calls in and directs. The trailer does not show players flying them.
What’s in the Rescue Ops: Wildfire demo
The demo includes a tutorial and four missions. Together they cover hose deployment, firefighting, driving, and aerial support, which are the same systems the trailer focuses on. A sandbox mission is also part of the build.
The same demo is also on the Epic Games Store. Exkee has patched it several times since release:
| Patch | Date | Notable changes |
|---|---|---|
| 0.8.4 | Oct 12, 2026 | No exiting the vehicle in tutorial; quieter pump audio; random wind up to 35 km/h in sandbox |
| 0.8.5 | Oct 15, 2026 | Option to disable bug-report video recording; music priority in cinematics; water sync crash fix |
| 0.8.6 | Oct 16, 2026 | HUD loads before markers appear; multiple crash fixes |
Wind is the change most likely to affect how the sandbox plays. Random gusts of up to 35 km/h make fire spread harder to predict. That fits Doublet’s description of the demo as a hands-on test of the studio’s dynamic fire simulation.
Rescue Ops: Wildfire release window and October events
The trailer’s end card says “LAUNCHING EARLY 2027,” and the Steam page lists Q1 2027. No specific release day has been announced. The game is currently confirmed only for PC. Exkee has also referred to the launch in terms of preparing for Early Access.
The showcase premiere was the first of three appearances this month:
| Event | Dates | Where |
|---|---|---|
| The MIX Fall Online Showcase | Oct 16 (aired) | Twitch and YouTube |
| Steam Next Fest | Oct 19–26 | Steam |
| Paris Games Week | Oct 22–25 | Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, Hall 1, Stand C60 |
At Paris Games Week, the game’s director and community manager will be at the stand with playable builds. For Steam Next Fest, the team says it has extra activities planned but hasn’t yet said what they are. Until those details arrive, the demo on Steam and Epic is the simplest way to see whether the trailer’s attention to hose lines and pump valves holds up when you’re the one making the connections.
