Problematic Puzzler | htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary Review

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, which is also known as the much less confusing Hotaru no Nikki, is a gorgeous puzzle game from Japanese developer Nippon Ichi Software who is famous for the Disgaea series. The game centres on a young girl who is desperately trying to escape the living hell she finds herself in. The player can control two different fireflies, one within the ‘World of Light’ and one within the ‘World of Shadow’. As you attempt to guide the young girl to the outside world you will swap between the two worlds in order to battle various enemies and overcome the obstacles in your way. The beautiful picture book style design and great light and dark concept make the game stand out amongst the crowd. The frustrating controls and some monotonous puzzle are a let down however, and they restrict the game from being the standout puzzle game that we were hoping for.

The story begins as a young amnesiac girl named Mion wakes at the bottom of a dark and desolate chasm. She struggles to come to terms with where she is and how she is going to get out of this mess. Suddenly a bright little firefly named Lumen begins to light her way. As she follows the path that the firefly takes her on, she stumbles across memory fragments that begin to piece together her mysterious backstory. Along the journey ahead, Mion and Lumen make their way through dilapidated broken down factories and beautiful vegetation. The artwork in Firefly Diary is reminiscent of a child’s picture book. The beautiful hand drawn design is easily one of the best aspects of the short campaign.

As the player, you are in control of two different fireflies. Within the World of Light the player controls Lumen, a firefly that is desperately trying to help Mion make her way to the outside world. Wherever the firefly goes is what direction Mion will move in, for example when staying on the right of her, Mion will start to move to the right of screen, or staying above her will make her climb ladders and boxes. Adding to this is the ability to traverse into the World of Shadow. When inside the shadow world, time will freeze and you will control a dark firefly, this firefly can only travel through shadows and therefore has a harder time getting to different areas. This forces you to line shadows up when in the world of light and manipulate them with Lumen’s luminescence. Each firefly can interact with different objects throughout the environment making for some interesting and unique puzzle design.

The Firefly Diary makes use of the PlayStation Vita’s touch controls. Controlling Lumen with the front touchscreen, and shifting into the shadow world and controlling the dark firefly with the rear touchpad. This control scheme makes the game entirely playable by only using touch controls. I liked having this as an option although it was often that I would accidentally tap the back touchpad and change into the shadow world or sometimes I would need very precise movements when making my way through some puzzles and I simply couldn’t pull them off with these controls. Thankfully there is are multiple control schemes and I found myself using the analog stick friendly controls more often than the touch controls.

The puzzles throughout the 4 chapters of htoL#NiQ use the concept of light and dark really well. As there is a boss battle at the end of each chapter you will have to be smart and quick in order to get Mion through alive. I did have issues with a small handful of puzzles throughout the game however. The game just doesn’t explain itself very well. There were significant amount of times where I was left not knowing what I was supposed to do when tackling the next puzzle. Many puzzles resulted in an inevitable death for Mion and forced me to repeat the same section over and over again. The ‘aha!’ moment at the end of these puzzles was replaced with a ‘thank god that is over’ moment instead. I would never want them to make the game too easy by always pointing you in the right direction although a little push would have been nice, especially after failing the same section over and over so many times. These monotonous and frustrating puzzles sadly left a sour taste in my mouth and over shadowed the healthy amount of good sections throughout the game. Mion is also very slow, and I mean incredibly slow. The way she walks, climbs, turns and falls takes up crucial seconds especially during some of the puzzles where dodging falling objects or an enemy is paramount. This was annoying because even if my reactions were quick enough and I had made the right decision, there were countless times where Mion still met her demise.

The concept of Hotaru no Nikki was one that I was very excited to experience. Exploring the beautiful world and changing between the worlds of shadow and light as I guided Mion to safety and discovered her cryptic past was something that I was really looking forward to. Unfortunately some finicky controls and frustrating and tedious puzzles made it fall short of truly memorable puzzle game.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation Vita version of htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary developed by Nippon Ichi Software