Shiny The Firefly has a lot of charm going for it with both beautiful backgrounds and a cute main character, Shiny. It’s the player’s job to find lost baby fireflies and return them to a safe place away from mosquitoes, wasps, toads, and additional enemy characters across the 33 levels. There are coins for players to collect, too, but they just provide an extra challenge within each level and for unlocking an achievement.

The gameplay is easygoing as players only need to tap the position on the screen of where they would like to go. There’s also a double tap feature to quickly dash across the screen, allowing for a quick escape from wasps or spiders, and to avoid falling water. To completely avoid taking damage from an enemy, Shiny is also able to hide in flowers or behind rocks. There are hearts scattered on each level that players can collect to revive their health status. If a baby firefly gets hit by water, a jumping fish, or one of the other many challenging opponents out there, it kills them. If a player loses too many baby fireflies, it’s game over.

Shiny The Firefly isn’t too difficult at first, though it certainly has its moments. As players navigate around each level, they’ll come across boulders that they’ll need to hit and place over rushing water to avoid taking damage. There are objects for players to collect that Shiny can launch at specific plants to causes them to grow and stop falling water. Those same objects can be flung at enemies to help get past certain areas. While most of the movement is fairly easy going, it isn’t possible to precisely move Shiny to a very specific location. This became noticeable during the first boss fight where I had to move Shiny in between two objects that the enemy launched at me. While I avoided it a few times, I still took damage too often because I couldn’t easily position Shiny correctly.

Shiny The Firefly isn’t a game that will overly excite anyone. I appreciate the theme and some of the level design, though I couldn’t fully get into the slow going nature of the game. The levels, at times, feel more like tasks that I need to complete rather than something I want to complete. Even so, it still has enough charm to warrant a look.