Firefly Review

If you’re a fan of Pac-Man, you might be a little disappointed with the utter lack of Pac-Man replicas on the Palm OS and Zodiac. That was, until Extreme AI, the makers of Orbz, released Firefly a while back. It received little attention from the Palm media, and from what I can tell in forum activity, has garnered little fanfare. How does this morphed Pac-Man game fare?

Okay, so replacing Pac-Man is a firefly. Replacing the ghosts are critters, whatever they may be, that kill fireflies. This could be a bee/wasp, a fellow firefly, etc. They’ll roam around the playing area, looking to disrupt your collecting of these yellow circles. You can disable their killing ability by collecting powerups.

From the start menu, you can select two different options. One, you have the option to start from the first maze. You’ll be given an X amount of lives, and will be expected to complete each maze. Two, you have the option to randomly generate a maze. The second option is what adds the replay value, as you won’t want to continuously play the first few levels over again.

The mazes in Firefly are 3D. The character models are 3D, and the surface is all 3D. The paths in the mazes that lead to no where, the dead ends, are troublesome. They leave the game feeling disconnected, having loose ends. It’s very hard to see as it is, since the camera angle refuses to go out far behind the firefly, but adding to the frustration is not knowing if a given passage will only lead to a dead end.

You might say this adds a level of risk or whatnot. In a game like Pac-Man, you risked going after a blinking ghost, not if the next corner you turned would lead to no where. These kind of gameplay faults are unacceptable. Even if the developers didn’t want to move the camera angle out, they could have at least given us a radar tracker on the bottom of the screen.

If you can manage the horrible camera angels, then you’ll need to know the controls. To start, you can use the control stick to move up and down on the options, and press blue to select. Once you’ve selected your mode, the only button you’ll need to use is actually not a button, it’s your control stick. It might feel a little clunky and unresponsive, at times, but it works.

Overall, Firefly had potential. It was built on a sound graphical engine, with a camera angle that needed serious tweaking. For serious fans of the Pac-Man franchise, Firefly might have an ounce of satisfaction for you. If you’re not particularly into these types of games to begin with, Firefly isn’t one to change your mind.