FireFly Hero: The Night Sky Is In Your Hands
Firefly Hero ($0.99) by Alex Blaj is a clever new puzzle game with striking similarities to Cut the Rope and all the qualities of an AppStore hit.
One starry night a beautiful shooting star flew across the sky. All the stars were so impressed with the shooting star’s beauty that they followed it into the hills, and the moon was left alone. A hero was needed to return the stars to the night sky, and thus Firefly Hero was born…
The object is to navigate the firefly around the screen to collect the stars, so he can return them to the sky. The firefly is controlled by light bulbs on the screen, and will fly in the direction of the lit bulb until another one is lit. Only one bulb can be lit at a time. The first few levels are easy, but they get progressively harder. As you progress through the levels, obstacles are introduced like spike strips and broken bulbs.
Aside from simply collecting the stars, a golden leaf can be achieved on each level. To get the golden leaf you must collect all the stars with as few moves as possible. Each level has a different number of moves allowed for the golden leaf. You can check your progress through the completion bar at the top of the screen; the leaf is shown on the bar so you know if you’re on track or not.
There are 75 different levels in the game. The first 60 are open and there are no requirements to play them (i.e. you can skip levels one at a time). The last 15 however require players to achieve the golden leaf on the first 60. This twist makes turns an easy game into a challenging one, depending on your level of competitiveness. This feature also reminds me a lot of the Cut the Rope system where each new box is unlocked with a certain number of stars.
Firefly Hero is an attractive game, with simple controls and a clear objective. The graphics are superb and the ease of use makes the game fun for all ages. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t support GameCenter or OpenFeint. Nonetheless, I think Firefly Hero is a great game and I highly recommend it to everyone.
