I don't understand how this game got so many positive reviews. Sure, the idea is nice and looking at a small indie game you give it more leeway regarding bugs, graphics etc.
But this has been in Early Access for three years and still the most basic actions are bugged beyond usability. For example, trying to pull a car over as the police fails two out of three times, because the AI bugs out trying to park a car. And as long the AI doesn't recognize the car as properly parked, you can't interact with it at all - even when they are no longer moving, because they just rammed into part of the scenery or another car.
If a driver tries to run, you have to ram him with your car until the game says it's enough - if you manage to bring the car to a stop otherwise, like just blocking it with your own car, you have no way to interact with the driver.
Oh, and people in cars and cars in general are impervious to gun fire.

That combined with the maybe 5-10 NPC models (there's the black guy with dreadlocks, the black guy with the red shirt, a white guy with a white tank top, an older woman with grey hair and a brunette woman - I think that's it) without any variation whatsoever just makes Flashing Lights ridiculous to even call a game.
It's a tech demo, a proof of concept. Charging 16,99€ for this is just rude.
If it released in Early Access today for max 9,99€ I'd say "Let's look where this is going, at least you can spend 2-3 hours with some buddies and laugh", but being in this state after three years of Early Access and charging that much... it's just sad and I'm pretty sure this "game" is going nowhere.

Hey Fellow Steam Users,

I would firstly like to inform you that I RECOMMEND YOU NOT TO PURCHASE this game.

As I have 216 hours on this game, the developers are not worried about fixing the known issues with the game. The game developers are worried about pushing out new and broken items, when there are game breaking bugs, that are not being fixed.

Currently, the game has Police, Fire, EMS and Civilian, however, there is no proximity voice chat or text chat. The voice chat is global therefor causing issues regarding differentiating who you are talking to. The game only has 3 male and 3 female ped options, with very limited options when customizing. There is no options to customize Civilian Vehicles (as a civilian_ or Player Ped, you are stuck with a white car or truck and you cannot change your character or vehicle through-out the time as a civilian, you must request a new civilian invite from the server owner, each time.

There is a maximum of 20 vehicles on the online servers, and if the server is open for more than 1 hour, the vehicles stop spawning. The vehicles are very buggy and glitchy when driving or when they are running from you, causing you to hit the vehicle, and fly into the air. When you call for AI tow the tow driver, exits the tow truck, comes up and despawns the vehicle.

There is currently a maximum of 12 pedestrians that can walk around, and you wont see them at all! You may see 1-2 peds walking around, but nothing more than that, after 1-2 hours, there are no peds.

We need new uniforms, more lighting options, fixes to the buggy custom light patterns, fixes to AI Vehicles, Peds, more vehicle options for CIVs and Clothing Options. General fixes to AI Vehicle handling.

The game has potential to be something good, but as it stands, the Developers arent interested in fixing the known issues, or adding essential features to the game, they are just adding random things.

Edit 01 NOV 24: You guessed it, it's that time again - another edit, another ♥♥♥♥♥♥ DLC. Now they're charging you real-life money for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ LIGHTBAR. This game isn't good enough to justify cranking out predatory DLC after predatory DLC. Instead of focusing on making the game better and fixing bugs that have been a problem for years, they just keep trying to shove basic content that should have been part of the base game down our throats in the form of paid DLC. ♥♥♥♥ this game, and ♥♥♥♥ the dev. Anti-consumer behavior at its finest. It's like they're trying to emulate Paradox or EA at this point.

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Edit 10 JUL 24: They just released YET ANOTHER poorly-made half-assed paid DLC. For yet another one of the most common emergency vehicles in existence, the Ford Explorer. Meanwhile, the netcode is still made of spaghetti, game-breaking bugs still have not been fixed, and the map is still an empty, lifeless wasteland that looks like something I threw together in Blender in 45 minutes. More than half the traffic signals don't even work, and tons of streets that should have them don't.

Do not buy this game. Do not buy the DLCs. For that matter, do not buy anything from this developer or their publisher. The amount of disrespect they've shown to their PAYING CUSTOMERS is mind-boggling. Let them go out of business.

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Edit 17 JUN 23: They just announced a pickup truck DLC. You know, those pickup trucks we were promised forever ago that they never told us were going to be paid content, but now all of a sudden are? Those pickup trucks? Yeah. You can pay real money for them now.

What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ publisher. I wouldn't be surprised if they rushed this unfinished, unoptimized, bug-ridden trainwreck of a game into 1.0 solely so that they could start milking the community with ripoff DLCs.

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-Original review-
The game can be a lot of fun if you get into the right server, but there is no way in hell this is a 1.0 release. Make no mistake, this is still an Early Access game no matter what they say otherwise. Multiplayer servers still can't handle more than about 8 people at any given time before performance drops through the floor and missions start breaking, the AI is still braindead (and on foot clip right through solid objects while in vehicle they just drive into/over things or pretend you're not even there), promised features still aren't in, bugs that have been in the game for months still aren't fixed, the list goes on.

Apparently nobody told Nils that 1.0 means the game is finished. This is not finished. This is nowhere near finished. And if it's anything like Excalibur's last police game, it never will be finished. The fact that this just randomly jumped to 1.0 out of nowhere when there's still so much broken or missing is a huge red flag for things to come. I would not be surprised if this game got abandoned before the year is out, and I suspect their "1.0" release getting paired with a 60% discount is just a last-ditch attempt to get as much money out of the project as they can before they run off with their money and dump this in the pile of Early Access games that never get finished.

On release, Flashing Lights was a very promising and very good game for it's development stage. But as time has passed, my faith in this project has gotten lower and lower to the point that I can no longer recommend this game.

When this game is at it's best, it is a very fun and exciting experience, but the problem is that this game is rarely at it's best. There's nothing more fun then scanning the car in front of you, seeing it's stolen, flipping on your lights to pull them over and then going on a high speed chase throughout the map before finally barrel rolling their car off the road into a ditch, then running down to catch them. This makes it much more frustrating when you try to pull a car over, and they get stuck in a permanent "pulling over" loop causing them to forever drive in a straight line without stopping, leaving you unable to interact with them in any way. The bug I just described happens extremely often, like 60-70% of all stops, and it's a bug that's been there since release and it still hasn't been fixed.

This game has been out since 2018 but it still feels like a brand new early access release. There's only like 4 pedestrian models which get repetitive very quickly, and there are still options you can see but can't pick because they haven't been added (like asking someone if they're on drugs or have illegal things in the car, etc.) I remember seeing those and being especially excited for when I could do that, but it's been almost 3 years now and you still can't do it.

I've been waiting for a good police/first responder game since forever, but every game in the genre seems to be made by devs who have no idea what they're doing.

I really want to like this game. I have followed development since it has first came out and played after every update, but where this game misses the mark is that the development team are focusing way too heavily on just the cars and light customizations, adding whole new cars and even a whole new map when the core mechanics of the game are what really need attention. BADLY. The callouts are uninteresting and have no variety or different outcomes. There's no voice acting, radio traffic, nothing that makes a game focused on interacting with and helping people fun or interesting. I get it, there's only a small team working on the game if not just one person, but there has to be some better prioritization here, as many of us bought this game on the promise it would be greatly refined and developed and that just hasn't happened in any meaningful way yet. The character design and weapon mechanics are still poor, and there is little to no interaction with the environment or random events to keep the player interested. Only the bare minimum of police, fire and ems functions are represented in the gameplay as of right now and frankly it's not near enough to be called an emergency services simulator. Basically, the entire plot of this game is driving a decently realistic police or fire vehicle around an unfinished world of 2000's-era graphics and buggy AI and really nothing else. On top of that there is not even any lore or story for players to get into, the game's primary setting is still "Unnamed Island". For a game that has been in development for some time now I would expect a lot more advancement in the way of gameplay, mechanics, graphics and missions. Without seeing promising results in those areas, I just simply cannot recommend this game to new players at the current price point. If this sounds harsh it is because the "Very Positive" reviews aren't helping this game get better. I am hoping this helps the developers prioritize a little better and make this game worth its price tag before it goes the way of previous "simulators" like Enforcer or Patrol Duty. It can't stay in early access forever.

I would love to like this game but it's come to the point where I cannot stand it anymore. The dev team is too focused on adding new things that they completely ignore the game breaking bugs the game already has. Before writing this review I have reached out on the community discord showcasing the bugs but ALL my posts just got deleted. I will proceed to list the bugs below so they can hopefully get attention.

All in multiplayer:
- Active calls are bugged when a host change occurs
- The M-Cancel command DOES NOT WORK
- Calls will randomly stop working
- Calls will sometimes not register that you completed the action.

Again, I would love to like this this game, but I cannot with these GAME BREAKING BUGS!

At one point in time, this game had incredible promise. Many people hoped it would become the standalone GTA LSPDFR game that they wished for. But still, after all these years, this game is buggy, the traffic AI is as garbage as it was since the beginning, the animations are still awful, the character models are horrendous, etc etc. But the vehicle models that they keep selling as DLC are super detailed and perfected. Instead of fixing the game and improving the base mechanics, they add unnecessary DLC. I can't recommend this game as it can't hold my attention for much time at all. The horrendously unpolished feel of the game makes it extremely unappealing. If the devs get their act together, this game could be amazing, but until then, you shouldn't buy it.

Buys in 2018 thinking this game has promise, hate the bugs get off. 6 Years later and only a couple hotfixes and some DLC to buy.... OK.

I've had this game since early access, i just found out today that it is no longer early access, which is really surprising since it plays like an early access game. I honestly thought the Developer had intentions of making a much more dynamic and lively game. My thoughts on the release of a clearly unfinished product was so that they can sell any future additions they add to it. I am not judging them for that though or the politics that led them to the state it has reached. It can be fun, but really the level of content is still far below what you would expect from a simulation game. The game world does not feel alive, NPC's are bland and boring. Like I said its fun for a bit, but for me anyway it really does not stand out or check many boxes as a game that I want to continue playing. Sorry Dev. This game is heavily reliant on theatre of mind, basically you have to convince yourself that you are enjoying it. The game is tagged as being Massively Multiplayer however 10 person coop, I feel, doesn't really qualify as MM.

This game looks and runs awful. Fun with a friend maybe, but this game is extremely bland. Wild to be asking us to buy DLC before they've polished out the bugs and finished up the visuals.