htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary Critic Reviews

A game that offers a brutally dark theme and sheer precision with its atmospherics, combined with incredibly difficult, but incredibly well designed puzzles to overcome. The result is a visionary project that might not resonate with every player, but everyone should try it because if it does resonate, then it's going to be an unforgettable experience.

htoL#NiQ is a decent game for the Vita that pushes no boundaries but does little wrong either.

This is the kind of game you’ll enjoy while playing it, but will almost immediately forget about once you move on to something else. htoL#NiQ is good, which is a shame because it could’ve been much more than that.

Although htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary is cursed with a flawed control scheme, the total package did enough to keep me intrigued throughout.

htoL#NiQ's flaws are significant, and I experienced a lot of frustration in the process of grinding through it. It's hard to recommend to a general audience, but if you're into 2D platformers, especially ones with puzzles and unforgiving difficulty, htoL#NiQ is one to consider.

In all, htoL#NiQ is a decent platformer that is wrapped in a truly beautiful and terrifying experience.

I won't lie: htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary feels like an ordeal to play, but it is worth noting that historically, surviving an ordeal was often taken as a sign of being blessed by a higher power. That notion may appeal to some types of players, and it's they who'll find the fun in this gorgeous, cruel game. Everyone else should just hang back and ask how it went.

The Firefly Diary is a title that showed potential but was ultimately done in by its philosophy on implementing a needless level of difficulty to the experience.

In the end, htoL#NiQ is a beautiful and encouraged experiment marred by a frustrating difficulty and clunky controls (even if intentionally clunky). It will require a bit of patience and several hundred deaths, but those willing to commit themselves will appreciate the game’s haunting beauty the most.

The visuals by themselves are enough to make htoL#NiQ seem like a game worth investigating, but in the end, that's really all the game has to offer.

The core experience of this game is beautiful, but it becomes frustrating because of the control system. If you can get over these issues, you might find a surprising adventure.

For as great as The Firefly Diary looks it’s really unfortunate that the gameplay can be so frustrating. Cheap deaths, unresponsive touch controls, and a number of other smaller annoyances really hurt my experience with the game by the time it was all said and done.

A rather short game that relies much more on difficulty to make it seem longer. Full of unrealized potential, the somewhat stiff controls do not help while trying to solve genuinely creative puzzles at times.

I genuinely applaud Nippon Icchi for trying something new and doing up a fresh IP. However, the design of the game is currently flawed. Give users a bit more speed and proper implementation of analogue controls, and this currently boring and frustrating affair might be a whole lot more fun.

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary has an interesting story and some decent art, but the touch controls and trial and error puzzles make it a hateful affair.

Its charm fades away the moment you look past cute graphics and notice terribly imprecise and unnecessarily complicated controls.