Steven Hansen at Destructoid welcomed the choice-based dialog tree gameplay, going on to praise the dialog itself, as well as the voice performances. The game's most impressive achievement, as stated by Hansen, was the "thematic cohesion", which was said to revolve around self-imposed isolation. The sound design was lauded to have evoked a Hitchcockian sense of fear.[39] Reviewing Firewatch, Game Informer's Jeff Cork wrote, "I was immediately drawn into the game's world, partly because of the power of its simple text intro, and also because of the novelty of taking part in something so mundane".