So hotL#NiQ is a 2D platformer with an emphasis on puzzles and precision. You also have three main characters; Mion is the young girl that is the focal point of the story. Something happened to her in the real world, and at the outset of the game, she awakens on a table in a bizarre universe rife with deadly traps and a variety of mechanical nightmares. Two fireflies are with her to help guide her out of this treacherous labyrinth — the bright green one that controls her movements and literally lights the way, and the shadow firefly, that can manipulate certain objects, like switches, to make the path accessible. Switching to the “shadow view” to control that firefly essentially pauses the game and shows you the silhouette of all applicable on screen objects. The shadow firefly can only move within these shadows, so to get from one spot to another, their has to be a connected ‘shadow path,’ which as you might surmise means that when you switch to the shadow firefly is very dependant on the exact position of objects on screen, Mion or a moving buzzsaw, for instance. In brief, I found the light/shadow design to be pretty cool, and makes for some nice puzzles.
Anyway, Mion, after waking from this deep sleep, is in a slumber for the duration of the game — as such, her movements are laborious and intentionally slow. It takes a little while to get used to, and, I was never completely satisfied with some of the control decisions, but it’s a concept I can get behind.
The controls are a major point of discussion. By default, touch controls are used — the front screen for the light firefly, and the rear touchscreen for the shadow firefly. I spent about fifteen minutes using the touch controls before the novelty wore off, and moreover, I realized that hotL#NiQ (very) often requires what I refer to as “pixel precision” in terms of both character or object placement, and timing, or both simultaneously. In either case, the touch controls weren’t doing it for me, so thankfully there is a third control scheme that gets you left analog stick control for movement of either firefly, as well as the use of two face buttons — Triangle to switch to the shadow “view”, and a X to exit the shadow view and also interact with an item. This control scheme worked far better for me, but the game remained a stout challenge throughout (much more on that soon). I would have liked a dedicated button for climbing/dismounting objects and a button for turning around would have been helpful, too. The way for Mion to be instructed to climb objects requires you to move the light firefly up when close to an object, and then down to climb back down. Sounds fine on paper, but in practice there were a lot of times in which she unintentional climbed (up or down), and of course like everything else she does, it’s very slow. This clashes at times with the tight timing often needed to complete areas, or rooms, you encounter.
That precision I mentioned earlier is a double-edged sword. Sometimes it’s the source of excitement, and you manage to figure things out and otherwise survive the sequence on your first try or ten. Other times — and in my playthrough there sure were a lot of these — the precision required felt contrived and asinine. I got the Trophy for dying 100 times like, two or maybe three hours in. And I probably died 400-500 times more after that, and I’m not even kidding. Part of that is my skill level, I understand that, but the game design is such that you’re meant to struggle through certain areas time and time…and time..again. Hell, on the final boss, I ultimately won out fo sheer luck after a couple of hours of constant play. Many times you know exactly what it is you need to do — navigate a maze, aim a spitting plant at the right spot at the right time, etc — but you’re fighting a little with the controls, and a lot with the rest of design, be it Mion moving slow or having to be uber-precise or deal with the one touch kill system. I couldn’t help but wonder how much more enjoyable hotL#NiQ would be if they tweaked the difficulty — yeah, it would have made the game much shorter — but I would have had way more fun and better memories than the bitterness I felt throughout nearly all of the second half of the game. hotL#NiQ became the definition of a grind after a while; it was a chore, almost on a screen or room-by-room basis. The one hit kill system is punishing; especially when you have things like falling objects that you often cannot move away from. Why not give me two hits? Maybe a five second rewind function that I can use once or twice a stage? One or both of these would have been a big plus and made a significant positive impact.
Now I will say that checkpoints are mostly well placed, and load times are always instant. Were both of these things not true, I doubt I would have stuck with the game. Sometimes checkpoints are positioned such that you have to spend anywhere from say five to thirty seconds doing the same bland thing just to get another crack at the real challenge that killed you last time (which might only take you two seconds to die again). But this is at least better than having to restart the stage or something insane like that.
This is a good a time as any to give some thanks to Japanese Youtuber sena7329 — without his Let’s Play I doubt I would have been able to claw my way through, but ultimately, I’m glad I did. While I didn’t get invested in the characters much, the story was pretty cool, although the unfortunate thing with that is that my game ending was really short and very unsatisfying because I didn’t collect enough of the memory fragments or trace memory things along the way. Most of these I didn’t even see, which is surprising given how linear the level design is. You can however replay stages within the four chapters and an icon shows if you have collected the fragment already or not. This is the only way to get the full story as far as I know, but sadly, hotL#NiQ is too much of a grind to consider playing through again.
To the summary…