Another old backlog game I tried to get into but just can’t enjoy. It looks beautiful, I like the genre (puzzle platformer) and some of the ideas shown, but it’s executed badly. The controls are the worst aspect of this game. I’ve tried different control methods in the options menu and don’t feel comfortable with any of them. Because of this and due to the way the game is designed, there is a lot of trial and error. Sometimes it’s also not clear what you’re expected to do. I’ve made it up to chapter 3 (out of 4 and there is a 5th secret minor chapter too), I don’t feel like continuing with this.

The gameplay is quite unique. You can't directly move Mion, but instead guide her motions as a firefly. This was clearly designed for the ps vita touch screens but it translates pretty well to mouse controls.

The story is quite touching and the overall presentation is very beautiful. It's best to experience that without giving too much away about it; it's quite impressive how it unfolds without any dialogue. There are some interesting and well thought out puzzles as well. The world feels well realized.

My two complaints are that some puzzles require more precision than could be reasonably expected from the control scheme and that two areas have falling obstacles that are semi-random and will kill you with little warning.

This game makes me sad. It's not because of the cryptic and morbid narrative, nor is it because of the beautifully dour environments. It's because the game isn't fun. I'm not looking to start an argument over the topic of "some games aren't meant to be fun"; I mean that the gameplay isn't enjoyable to me in any capacity.

The gameplay reminds me of two different Nintendo DS games. First is Kirby Mass Attack, because you guide your character via a floating, glowing object. Second is Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, because you freeze time and use normally unseen paths to activate distant objects. These ideas are both squandered by a few major flaws, though. Mion is extremely slow and unresponsive to lead around. She's also constantly in life-or-death situations. Unclear trial-and-error puzzle solutions where one mistake results in what feels like entire minutes of undone progress. I would compare this style of game to something like LIMBO (scary atmosphere, child MC, high risk situations/puzzles), but in that game you have direct control of your character. Any moments of clever design in this game are constantly undercut by being forced to do them over and over until you're sick of it. I'd argue it undercuts the interesting aspects of the narrative too. You spend so much time feeling foul about the gameplay that it overwrites the good stuff.

You may be asking, "Hoob, if you hate this so much, why did you keep playing it?" Well, I was drawn like a moth to a flame after reading that the team at NIS that made "The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince" made this first, and I am here to tell you that they learned from pretty much all of their mistakes in that game. I see bits of that game in The Firefly Diary, like the beautifully dark aesthetic, or Mion's mannerisms. As harsh as it'll sound, that's the most praise I can give this game. I'm glad the team behind this went on to make more enjoyable, memorable experiences afterwards.

(Also what the fuck is up with that English title? After staring at it for a good while, I understand that it's meant to be the Japanese title, "Hotaru no Nikki", but what sane person would realize that without looking it up? I'm glad that subtitle was there, because would you, the average consumer, buy a game called "ntSo@kPy"? I wouldn't think so.)

Hotaru no Nikki (htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary) is that one game that I didn't play simply because I was afraid to play it. I'm sure some of you may have a similar game in posession, likely a horror game, which isn't everyone's cup of coffee. But htoL#NiQ isn't a horror game, it doesn't have jumpscares. Maybe static effects from memories may startle you the first or second time, but there's nothing really "scary" about this game per se. That being said, it's still incredibly dark, and sometimes fucked up kinda dark, and it does have some creep factor in it. My reasoning for not playing it is that it features a little girl protagonist, and I would feel bad for messing up. Of course, the game isn't as gruesome as I made it out in my mind, and in the end I found courage to play and beat this game (especially for upcoming halloween).

As I mentioned, you control a little girl named Mion in a seemingly post-apocaliptic desolated ruins. You don't have a direct control, instead using a light firefly called Lumen to guide her. There's also firefly Umbra that resides in the girl's shadow. You can control Umbra by switching to shadow mode, where time freezes and you guide it in the shadows, and can activate certain things like levers that way. The game is on a slower pace side, require you to think rather than act more. Mion doesn't move fast, or run fast. That being said, there are sections where quick action is required. You'll face a variety of challenges, like shadow creatures that can't be killed direclty, mostly avoided. There are other hazards, such as sawblades that need to be avoided. There's a good variety of obstacles that you'll face, usually presenting the player with something fresh to keep adventure somewhat engaging. Unfortunatly, while there is some good level design, there's also frustrating parts, which sour the adventure quite a bit. A few particular standouts are boss of chapter 2, which felt a little random on when it wanted to spread fire or eat dynamite, and it took me a while to finally down it, chapter 3's vertical shaft where you contract a fungus. The fungus takes away some control and reverses them, but even without these handicaps I'm sure it would've been a frustrating experience due to tight corridors with spikes, and that one lever you had to notice while going up. The boss of chapter 4 absolutely blows, you have to have god-like reaction to notice things. I kinda cheated by using video recording and checking footage to see where the shadow figures are, also the music choice is absurd, kinda fitting but its a weird ending to the game. Let's get this thing out of the way, there's a bit of trial and error in this game. You will keep dying until you notice something to progress. There are a couple of Lumen mazes where you have to carefully navigate Lumen without touching shadows, which doesn't make sense to me, becaues it was fine phasing through objects and stuff before, why is this a thing now? The second time it occurs in chapter 4, there's one section where you have to notice a panel at the very bottom which is actually offscreen after you get out of the maze, and there's a plant at the very top that can shoot a projectile that can activate that panel, and you have to aim that plant with Lumen while the panel is offscreen, one of those quick action sections that I didn't really like. There are some clever moments, such as in chapter 3, where you're first introduced to the umbrella which can be used with big fans to float in the air, and is expanded upon further with the fungus form.

One thing this game absolutely excells at is it's visuals and atmosphere. The graphics have a hand-drawn appearance, like children's illustrations, but with a much darker color palette, and little lighting, giving isolated feel, and the ambiance contributes to the darkness of this game. The memories from memory sprouts are done in a pixel artstyle, giving them a more cutecy appearance, even if the imagery is decidedly not. The story telling is purely visual or sound, there's minimal text only used at the beginning of the game to introduce Lumen and Mion, and that's pretty much it. In those memory fragments, it's not always clear what's happening, giving the story a bit of mystery and potential for speculation and just theories. GAME THEORIES. Although I admit I didn't collect all of the sprouts, some of them are in pretty tough to reach spots, adding more challenge, so maybe I'm talking shit without getting the full picture. But overall, I think the setting, story telling and atmosphere are absolutely incredible.

Overall, I don't regret playing this game. I do like the setting and dark themes presented in this game, and it does have some good parts. It took me just under 6 hours to complete, and this playtime can be extended if you're looking for those Steam achivement challenges. But you have to be wary of various frustrating and trial and error parts, which do undermine the good parts. In the end, I don't think this is a bad game, just not as great as it could've been.

What does make a good platform and puzzle videogame? Is it the unresponsive controls? Or maybe the luck-based stages with instant deaths? Probably it’s how abilities’ lag may cause losing time and many more deaths. Some may argue it is the long backtracking from checkpoints to the actual puzzles, with slow sections in between where control is taken from the players, thus making the videogame a glorified slide show. Others will say “No, it’s how control inputs overlap with each other, so every move is always a shot in the dark”. But then again, can we forget the huge importance of having slow characters during segments that require perfect, immediate reflex to achieve success? As well as how important is to have precise movements nullified because the characters’ idle animations, like breathing and floating, still lead to death as they are out of the players control? My favourite though has to be having controls mirrored for an entire chapter but the camera still functioning as normal, so that the players cannot see where they are going and move in that direction at the same time. Priceless.

So, really, what does make a good platform and puzzle videogame? Because I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is that blind trial and error does not equate to a balanced learning curve, just as banging the head against a door does not equate to finding the key to open it. Putting aside how highly impractical that is, most importantly it can’t be described, by no means, as a fun experience.

So, I did an Exhuminator the other week and bought some random Vita game because it looked cool and I'd never seen it before. Though I did look up some reviews online in the store before I checked out, I was fairly interested with a weird-ass title like that, although healthily skeptical given that this is a game published by NIS. I heard of several comparisons to LIMBO, and was warned to change the controls ASAP to version C as to turn off all touch controls and switch them to joy-stick ones. Both of these turned out to be very true.

The comparisons to LIMBO were very apt. It's a very beautifully drawn puzzle platformer that has virtually no text in its story-telling elements. However, the story telling is a good bit more in depth and complicated than LIMBO's, as well as the gameplay. There are cutscenes between each chapter, as well as one memory fragment in each stage which reveals the backstory to what you're going through (you need them all to get the true ending and final boss, but that's not too hard a task with the stage select feature). The story does get fairly dark, and really had me switching on who I was actually rooting for, which I commend, given that its told completely without words of any kind. The simple interactive cutscenes portray their story well, and I was satisfied with the true ending (the regular one is like "wut").

You have a fairy you control with the left stick, and the player character follows it. Follows it down passages, up ladders, can tell her to sit still, interact with objects, the works. You also can toggle the world into shadow with triangle, and move with the darkness fairy through the shadows of the world to activate far-away items or switches. They're fairly neat mechanics and are explored in quite fun ways. There was never a time when I was just completely, unfathomably stuck. There was always some way to progress. The only puzzles I straight up didn't like were the "don't touch the walls" mazes, which could be very annoying because of how somewhat inaccurate the sensitivity with both the touch controls and analog controls can be though. Far from a game breaker though. Just a bit annoying.

Verdict: Recommended. If you enjoyed LIMBO, this is a good one to pick up to scratch a very similar itch. It's not too long a game, and the art and music are great, so that someone could very easily enjoy watching you play a fair bit if you were to slap it onto your PSTV.

SteamDeck then PC with mouse
6 hours (bad ending)

I want to tell everyone to play this game, but you are probably better off watching a video of someone else playing it.

Great setting, it's an atmospheric puzzle horror game with terrible controls. I started the game out on the SteamDeck and finished the first 2 chapters with it. On the 3rd chapter I had to switch to PC. I read other views that mouse is the best way to play this game. Mouse made it much easier to control but it still was frustrating at times.

For a game with bad controls, you need to have very good timing for certain puzzles. You'll die a lot in those parts. Some of the puzzles felt luck based, especially chapter 4's boss fight. Good thing for video recording and .25 playback speed. Even at .25 speed, it was hard.

Even with all those complaints the setting makes up for so much of it, which is why I said you're probably better off watching someone else play it. It's a great looking storybook game. I played The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince last year which I enjoyed a lot. I plan on checking out other games by Masayuki Furuya. I like his art style for games.

I'll declare right here and now that I'm an absolute sucker for these small games NIS gives us. And even if the story is not the best or not the most captivating out there, the visuals are worth it a hundred times over.

So this time we got ourselves a little girl with horns traversing dangerous post-apocalyptic factory following the green firefly. That's the only motivation she got and that's absolutely fine by me. Yeah, the story later unravels and brings to light its collection of closet skeletons but you just want your girl to survive. I mean, look at her go with that umbrella!

Unfortunately, the controls suck a major ass. Even more so when game throws you a labyrinth for you mouse and starts violently moving camera right at the moments you don't want it to. Also I cant believe how fucked up the boss in fourth chapter is. I mean, you have to perfectly go through twenty-four (24!) rounds guessing right in a shell game with each round going faster. There is no way I could've completed it without my dude OBS and its recording superpower.

So yeah, rough around the edges, borderline unplayable sometimes but still charming and making me smile. And I think that's totally worth it and want to thank our NIS overlords.