The Playstation Vita has a rear touchpad. Maybe I’d forgotten about it in my roughly 8 billion hours of playing Persona 4 Golden, but it’s there. Sure, it may not be the most used feature on the handheld, but it’s there for developers to (hopefully) use, otherwise Sony spent a lot of money integrating that extra bit of kit.
Enter htol#NiQ: The Firefly Diary from NIS America, a game that completely ignores the analog sticks and clicky buttons of the Vita and instead goes two-fisted on the touchpads. While an admirable attempt to explore the more interesting technical aspects of the handheld, it does so at the expense of playability.
htoL#NiQ (actually pronounced “hotaru no nikki”) starts with Mion, an antlered girl who awakens on a slab in the middle of a ruin. Strangely enough, you don’t play as Mion. Instead, you guide a green firefly around the rubble with the Vita’s touchscreen, and Mion follows the incandescent insect wherever they go. This doesn’t allow for the deepest of puzzles (look at most iPhone games), so the game shortly thereafter introduces a pink firefly that only lurks in a shadowy otherworld, who is controlled by the rear touchpad. Double-tapping the rear pad freezes the “real world” and allows players to guide the fuchsia firefly through the darkness to activate interactive hotspots and reveal hidden secrets. Tapping a weak beam can bring the roof down on a pursuing beast, or build a makeshift bridge for Mion to clamber across.
The gameplay itself is reminiscent of Capcom’s underrated Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, with timing and proximity dictating a lot of the puzzles’ structure. The pink fly can only traverse shadow, so perspective and environment need to be manipulated in order to provide a bridge of darkness for the fly to move across. The front screen is a little less restrictive, but the firefly’s true freedom isn’t reflected in the doddering Mion. Therein lies the rub: in spite of the best intentions of the game, this method of indirect control starts to unravel in more time-sensitive moments. Oftentimes the game relies on trial-and-error, forcing you to randomly bring up the “shadow world” to sweep the screen for hotspots, bringing some of the more harrowing events (the Chapter One boss is a glaring example) to a screeching halt as you look for a glowing pink mote that will help you advance. It’s not a completely broken system, but it’s clunky enough that it partially invalidates the goodwill it earned for creativity.
It’s a damn shame, because the game itself is intriguing. Visually, the game is stunning, with graphics that evoke a children’s storybook viewed through a grimy lens, making the resultant deaths that Mion experiences a slightly more disturbing affair. There are also unlockable flashbacks that bring back memories for Mion, and their candy colored pixel-art style stands in stark contrast to the hints of nuclear devastation on the fringe of their scenes. Unfortunately, these top-notch elements are still hamstrung by a game that, mechanically, just isn’t very fun to play.
