PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GARBAGE. ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTIONS BELOW.


I've found a number of functionality issues with Campfire Pro (as of April 17th 2019), which make this product look more like a grade school comp-sci midterm than a professional tool; chief among these concerns: No hyper-linking.

A lack of hyperlinks may at first seem like a minor nit-pick, but this is the *primary* reason to use a program like this. Without hyperlinking, the program runs like a bunch of individual text and image files in a folder. If had so few characters, events, and just general notes to keep track of that I didn't mind scrolling through lists to find them, why would I even bother using an organizational tool like campfire when windows file explorer does the same thing?

Let me elaborate on this. There is a "basic information" panel used to create a new character profile. That panel utilizes pull-down tabs to fill in some categories, and text-boxes for others. Once populated, NONE of the information added to the character profile is hyperlinked to related articles. I think this bears repeating: Pull-down tabs are used in some places, which means the program is calling up a list of articles from within the program, then printing the information into a little panel on the character profile, WITHOUT linking to the article accessed. I could have simply typed out all the information in plain text much faster than filling in little individual boxes and using pull-tabs, and the result would be exactly the same.

There are very few situations where any form of linking occurs. You can add a character to an event, but you can't add an event to a character. If you click on the link to the event from the character, it opens up the event in an edit window, where the information is displayed in a DMV-style form with small input boxes instead of something easy on the eyes, WHICH IS THE ONLY WAY TO VIEW THE EVENT'S INFORMATION.

The customization is abysmal. Some text boxes support extremely basic text-formatting (italics, bold, etc.,) others don't. There are no options for adding things like headers, or charts and tables, only additional text boxes. The timeline and relationship tools are movable panels that you can connect with lines and change a few colors on. Exporting to PDF is a neat feature, but it includes hidden/intentionally removed information, and has no formatting options. There's a basic filter function in the timeline (singular, one timeline per project) to highlight panels containing specific information, which is more than nothing, but there's no organizational tools or sorting, and you can't even filter by date/timeframe, because the program doesn't take TIME into account at all, in a TIMELINE.


Consider this short, goofy character bio:

Whether this is a non-fiction biography, historical fiction, sci-fi, or high fantasy, each of these things could play a significant role in the story. Imagine there are a dozen characters in the story who all share the same [[Occupation]]. Imagine being able to simply click on [[Occupation]], or any of the other bracketed items, and then being taken to a related article, which could include a list of employees, and each employee listed can be a link to the employee's page. Imagine that go to an employee page, and all you have to type is "[[Occupation]]" to create a link back to the occupation page, just by adding the double brackets.

That's how simple and effective Wikipedia is. You can download mediawiki (the software that runs Wikipedia) for FREE and run it on your own server, where literally everything is customizable, and there are hundreds of ready-to-use extensions and plugins available for FREE. Or, if you don't have a server and you're not tech-savvy enough to feel comfortable with whatever is involved in setting up and maintaining one (like myself), then you can download one of a dozen FREE personal wiki programs, all of which have better basic/core functionality than campfire.

I got campfire for the timeline functionality, but while the timeline exists (kind of), everything else about it is horrendous. I'm now using Tiddlywiki desktop, which is completely FREE and open source, with a FREE timeline plugin. This low quality gif is me creating and editing pages in real time: https://i.imgur.com/wlrXGuY.gif

There is a learning curve for the markup text (formatting, like the double brackets), but that learning curve is probably less demanding than campfire's, because at least in Tiddlywiki the formatting and functionality are consistent (even consistent across other platforms, like mediawiki).

TL;DR: Holy crap, Campfire Pro is a slapped-together abomination, and is not nearly worth $50, and I have absolutely no faith in their ability to make whatever their espoused next big thing is supposed to be.

I bought this for NaNoWriMo. This is the worst ever. Don't buy this. It kept crashing on me and Steam tried to say I played it for over 17 hours when I asked for a refund. It crashed a few times and wouldn't close. I am sorry I bought this for $40, it wasn't worth it. When you buy it the thing is bare bones. It wants to suck you in with extra little purchases. Don't fall for it.

Edit: I'm back to tell you to not get this product at all. I had a technical problem, and this time they outwardly refused to help me. Directly telling me they no longer do an appropriate amount of maintenance. They ONLY do what is necessary to keep it's very basic functions. That is not a app you want to buy. They don't care about this app. That means that we all should question it's future quality. This is not a good investment for you because it's not an investment for them.

Hello i got this a few years ago. Back then it was a aspiration of mine to actually start writing. So I was biting at the opportunity to get software to help me. So as soon as I saw campfire pro I bought it. But I am here to tell you that if you don't know exactly what you want to write then this won't help you. There are several FREE things on the normal app store that are much better for not only writing, but focusing on writing. Literally any free software could be used for this point. But the two I remember is WriterP, and story planner. Story Planner gives you detailed templates for all the things in world building and story planning you need. And Writer is just a place where you write, which campfire pro somehow doesn't have? (There literally hundreds of apps that fill these two categories). My point is that this price is completely unnecessary. You don't need bad icons, confusing software, easily corrupted files, and especially hyper complex planners in order to write well. All you need is a place to write, and the knowledge\will to actually start. Though a calm and focusing space never hurts (and I would even recommend it). It's just that you do not need to spend fifty dollars to get that.But lets talk about what I do like. Every single panel is super customizable. So it doesn't matter what type of story you are writing, you will be able to fit your own needs when it comes to informational organization. There is also language building software that I don't use. I don't know if i'll ever need it. But it's the only writing software that I've seen help with that. Even though you could probably make a language just as easily by watching YouTube videos and writing on a google doc (but that might just mean I'm an idiot.) OH and this language software is part of the DLC. So if you want this you'll need to spend seventy dollars in total :/Campfire Pro has the ability to suit the needs of somebody like J.R.R. Tolkein. Just because of the HIGH level of specificity you can accomplish. But I can accomplish that in a book just as easily, And I bet Tolkein can to. You do not need a seventy dollar item in order to fulfill your writing dreams. You just don't. (But if Campfire Pro is your saving grace I am happy for you.)Edit: I bet I should also mention that I have lost ALL of my most complex story TWICE. Which is really weird for software like this to have! I have contacted support any time this has happened. My information was actually deleted more like four times. But I was able to retrieve it twice. I know that it is just because of how I use it. This software doesn't help me focus so I leave it open waiting for inspiration to hit. And sometimes I fall asleep with it still open. Even though I don't actually know if leaving it open is the thing that corrupts the files? I have no idea actually. But if that is the issue, it shouldn't be. We are writers, we stare at the screen for hours at night trying to remember the word throw pillow. Like come on Campfire Pro. You expect me to work diligently for two hours then nicely close everything up? That's....

Authentication process is just bad. I would not buy it on Steam. Or better yet, just buy Scrivener which doesn't micro transact like this does.

It does not work on Steam.

It starts up, you have to put in your Steam details, then it shows four buttons. Two of them is for "Starting a new story" via file or cloud and are required for you to obviously start working.

These buttons do not work.

Maybe they used to work before, but not now and discussions about it is dead. This wasted my time and I requested a refund.

deleted all my works! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GARBAGE PIECE OF ♥♥♥♥

It might just be that I'm an edge case and was trying to do isn't what most people do, but I found this product very clunky to try and use. I can't really explain how it was clunky without going into excessive detail, but here is the excessive detail if you want it:
If you have an event you want in multiple timelines (for example, a world changing one) you need to make copies of that event for each timeline or just not have it in some of the timelines.
I clicked on the main window just as a confirmation window came up (hiding the confirmation window behind the main one) and I spent around 20 seconds wondering why the program was frozen before alt tabbing out and seeing that the confirmation window was hidden.
There are hardly any customisation options for what you add, and when there are, you have to make a template starting from the default and when you're done, you need to navigate a dropdown menu to select that template every time you want to add it. (I admit I might have missed a shortcut for this one)

Nothing said so on the store product description but this app required me to type my steam password in a third party app, and does not work without doing so. I think this is a major security risk and a red flag/deal breaker. The login page indicates I need to login to verify my purchase, which no other steam product required ever. The app needs access my personal information, which no I see no reason to share: none of the features it provides need personal information to work. It also gives me a bogus family share error message, which does not make sense since I have family share disabled. I requested a refund because I refuse to share my password and do not trust this, and you probably shouldn't either. Too bad, it seemed like a good and useful product.

As it is Campfire has too few features for its price. And since devs moved onto an "upgraded" Campfire Blaze which should have just been a free update for the basic program, there is literally no reason to buy Campfire or to ever support these developers and their product.

Campfire started out as a great idea; a great idea that needed a lot of touching up before it would realize it's full potential... And it's received that touch up

Previously my review was focused on the expectations vs reward people got when they paid for this program upon release, and now that things have progressed this far: I'm re-writing it to focus on price vs reward; since expectations are now irrelevant as the program probably won't be seeing any more major changes outside of add-on packs and "Campfire Blaze" (a name I still dread uttering, but this review isn't about that; not anymore at least).

As the developer reached out to inform me things have been improved: I must admit, they have.

However, this also means that the program is now finalized, (or at least as close to it as they'll likely get), and I can make a solid judgement on it as a whole.

Overall: It still isn't worth the $50 benchmark. I would clock it at $30 at best. The software doesn't do anything spectacular, and is essentially a very complex notepad for your world building needs. So yes; the program in its current state serves the functions it set out to do; even the parts that were ♥♥♥♥ before are severely improved now. But I would always suggest you get it on sale, and not at full price. Use the extra cash to buy whatever other programs you might need for your fantasy world-building needs; because as good as it now is: Campfire still doesn't cover everything; hence they have a DLC pack out, and Campfire Blaze will also be a thing. They're aware they aren't putting all of their eggs in one basket, and the sad part is: if they did do that; it might be worth $50.