htoL#NiQ —Hotaru no Nikki—

htoL#NiQ is a story told with visuals and sound. It is an artistic horror game, which leaves the interpretation of all that transpires to the audience. No words are ever spoken, except a few tutorial lines of text, which introduce characters and give them names.

Fortunately, some bits of the story has been explained by three promotional video released on YouTube before the launch of the game. They give the time of the events (31 December, 9999) as well as explicitly say that the world is apocaliptic.

A small girl with branches grown from her head wakes up in a ruined building inside a ‘hole.’ She looks around the eerie surroundings. Not remembering who or where she is, a green firefly appears before her. She feels attached to the unknown firefly, which makes her follow it wherever it flies.

The player controls this firefly, named Lumen, and is tasked with leading Mion upwards, out of the ‘hole.’ Another firefly, named Umbra, living inside Mion’s shadow, joins the girl and Lumen in their journey.

On their way, Mion is assaulted by lurking creatures that lives inside shadows, which kills her just by touching hers. Or are the creatures really there but invisible to the naked eye? Mion also encounters sprouts glowing faint purple light. They are her Memory Fragments, through which the player is given hints as to what has happened in this devastated place.

The game uses the front touch screen for controlling Lumen and the rear touch pad for controlling Umbra by default. The second control scheme uses the touch screen for both Lumen and Umbra with an on-screen button for switching. The third one, my preferred method of control, uses the left analog stick and two buttons: one for interaction and the second one for switching to Umbra.

Lumen leads Mion around, poining the location where she should go, as well as can instruct her to interact with an object or sit down and wait. When the player takes over Umbra, time is stopped and all environment disappear, leaving only shadows Umbra can move around in and purple points that the Shadow Firefly can interact with.

The game has a slow pace is about finding a way forward, so the gist of it is looking at the surroundings, finding interactive objects and constructing the path for Mion to go along.

Most of the time it is easy to find what you have to do. Only a few sections have made myself and other players looking for help. While I wanted to finish the game as fast as possible, and looked online whenever I got stuck, I recommend sending some time thinking about what could be done. The answers maybe were not obvious to me at first glance, but they also were not so hard to figure out by myself.

There is not much else to say in terms of gameplay. The only thing that comes to mind is one section in which Lumen needs to fly through a maze. Whenever it hits a wall, it is shortcut and dies. What is bad about these sections is the chosen control scheme.

If you control Lumen using the touch screen, your finger either obstructs the view and it is hard to see where are both Lumen and the walls, or it is hard to tell the direction it will fly in. Furthermore, the camera is constantly moving, so the point you press moves along with it. With the analog stick, on the other hand, the problem is the moment in which Lumen reacts to the controls. It moves only when the stick is moved a certain treshold and the speed Lumen starts moving with is way too high. It screams for the use of the digital pad, but, sadly, no; it does not work. It is even more sad when you realize the movement is eight-directional. Actually, there are sections in which D-pad can be used, but here? no; forget it – you must use the analog stick. Fortunately, the game frequently autosaves in the right places.

This and few other sections are ridiculously hard compared to the rest of the game, which leads me to conclude that the game has not been balanced well or someone in the developement team likes to make players angry for no reason. It could use some more play testing. One boss is particularly insane. You need more luck than skill to beat it.

The painted visuals do a good job at giving off a feeling of being lost in an unkown world all alone with no one around to help you, which gets scarier and scarier the more you progress. The music does its job well, although I cannot recall a single piece.

Mion’s memories are shown using an isometric view, graphics done with pixel art and chiptune music with glitch sound effects and signal noises. It is executed really well. The choice of pixel art for showing the memories appeal the most especially to older players, which played 8- and 16-bit games as children. Memories of these players are also filled with such images. The contrast between the colourful pixel art memory and the dark and eerie present is great.

The Firefly’s Diary is not a long game. It can be finished within few hours, although obtaining all achievements will certainly take longer. The story did not echo with me, but it was a pleasant experience trying to understand it. I recommend playing htoL#NiQ mainly for its artistic value, because as a game it is short (12 stages) and average. It is not bad, but it is not excellent either.