The Call of the Fireflies is a puzzle-based singleplayer mod for Crysis. There's no guns, explosions or nanosuits involved. Just an old man who follows mysterious fireflies through mountains and dark caves, sleeping villages and frozen woods, and has to use all kinds of mechanisms to open his path, while battling to stay alive in the winter cold.
Cryengine 2 is woefully neglected when it comes to the modding realm, often attributed instead as a building block for thousands and thousands of mods and levels completely identical to the base game. The expanse of the SDK and level designer go often ignored, users instead wishing to create the same old action game against north koreans over and over again.
Despite this gigantic stereotype Call of the Fireflies stands out as a mournful memento of a time almost past, and that time is what could have been if modders had truly cared about this engine. Crysis 2 is around the corner, and I fear that Call of the Fireflies will be it's swan song, a testament to the beauty, imaginative and scale that the engine can provide to those who just dig a little deeper.
Fireflies takes the players across a little journey of dream like atmosphere, spelling out an aura of mystery and sadness with playful hints at redemption, past life, the warmth and joy of revelation and the solitude in a conclusionary world. While the world is oddly devoid of life or color, it's saturation is in a poe like beauty that is often bitter sweet, acting on basic emotions or story telling elements rather than grandoise narratives.
In that sense Fireflies is a success, it is a brief, concise look at key emotions and boils down gameplay and control schemes and visuals to the most primal of basics for gaming, acting as an interactive story. While the story in and of itself is told very briefly, the visuals do the talking, telling the tale of an old man at the end of his days, or perhaps already dead, following the fireflies to where he really belongs after spending so long living in the cold.
And it is ironic, too, that Cryengine 2 has lived in the cold for so long. As it was guided by this mod to the warmths of what it could have accomplished, Crysis 2 will snuff the flame, and most likely completley stamp out this organic level designer into the past, with a niche community. But that niche community.
In English :
Call Of The Fireflies is a UFO as we unfortunately see little!
Far shootings and laugh at all genres, this little mod adds a new image to the video game. An interesting concept and not without interest, despite some repetition that could block certain players. Despite this, it is clear that all is under control.
The level design is very neat and the atmosphere is original, although a bit empty at times. A little background music would not have been too much for me. But the sounds effects are perfect and well integrated.
Finally we note the attention to the simple fact that this mod is unusual and it gives a boost to an engine often badly exploited.
Great job!
Lenox
In French :
Call Of The Fireflies est un ovni comme on en voit malheureusement peu!
Loin des fusillades et des ris en tout genres, ce petit mod apporte une nouvelle image au jeu vidéo. Un concept intéressant et pas dénué d'intérêt, malgré une certaines répétitive qui pourrait bloquer certains joueurs. Malgré cela, il est clair que l'ensemble est maitrisé.
Le level design est très soigné et l'ambiance est originale, bien qu'un peu vide par moment. Une petite musique en fond n'aurait pas été de trop selon moi. Cependant les sons et bruitages sont parfaits et bien intégrés.
Au final on retiendra l'attention sur le simple fait que ce mod sort de l'ordinaire et qu'il apporte un second souffle à un moteur souvent mal exploité.
Du très bon travail!
Lenox
The atmosphere is very nice!
I don´t know where to begin, the level design, the atmosphere, the gameplay. It´s all so well done, you can´t help wondering how much effort mustn´t have been put in to this. Refreshing and never really frustrating. Well done! :)
Thanks, it's great.
Cold, Atmospheric, beautiful. Not difficult, yet angaging. Definately worth a try!
Fairy mod!
It is always an interesting idea to take a game and completely pick it apart in order to create a new game. Such ideas are refreshing to any kind of game and in this case it turns out to be a completely different game than the shooter elements that the original Crisis is very fond of. Call of Fireflies could easily be described as a piece of art. It takes the crisis graphical engine, removes anything that has to do with shooting and creates a mysterious yet very beautiful puzzle-game. However, as much as the atmosphere and conceptual idea wants to show the Crysis-game from a completely different angle it doesn’t utilize the full potential that the engine has. Instead we are limited to a few areas that essentially aren’t that big enough to really give you the feeling of a different world. The amazing music from the trailer is neither being used which is really a shame since it would certainly have given the game a unique atmosphere. In the end you feel that you just jumped into a little puzzle-box that can provide you with entertainment and some brain breaking for an hour; nothing more and nothing less. Even so, one must also realize that the purpose of “Call of Fireflies” may not be to create a total overhaul of Crisis like the Nehrim-project did to Oblivion but rather to provide the building blocks for future mod-creators of Crysis. It simply states the magnificent beauty of turning a game into something else entirely. Call of Fireflies is essentially just a “short story” made as a game. It is far too short to be an alternate universe that can be explored and the puzzles are basically far too easy to solve to provide you with more than a short second of pleasure. Call of Fireflies is more like a little painting. You look at it and find it nice but it fit more as an addition to your wall than as an intellectual piece of art on a museum. You will enjoy it the first time but you won’t come back for it again. Instead enjoy the mod for what it is; a simply brilliant str
I used to regard Crysis as being quite a disappointing platform for mods. It's incredibly powerful, and the skies are the limit, but so much winds up just being pseudo-tactical FPS action in expansive tropical environments. You know, basically what vanilla Crysis is. And so I'd give Call of the Fireflies points right off the bat for not resembling Crysis in a single way.
The mod calls back to point and click adventure games, as a lot of the gameplay consists of manipulating the world in little ways to make a way forwards. Operating mechanical devices to extend a bridge and the like. It's all quite clever, and doesn't resort to any bizarre adventure game logic either. It all makes sense.
It sets a fantastic atmosphere aswell, as you spend a long time feeling lost and alone in a world where you really don't belong. There's a great sense of loneliness all the way through, really bringing home the message that you're on your own to deal with the hazards you're faced with.
It's a fantastic mod, and despite being quite mellow, does pull all the right strings in my heart. This is easily one of my all time favorite mods for Crysis. Despite a few bugs, I loved every second. Bravo!
Nice mod.