Lunacid

I usually don’t have much respect for projects that try to coast almost purely on nostalgia. It was charming back in 2012~2013, when the indie scene was exploding, reviving and refreshing genres that had been dormant for generations with modern and innovative takes, essentially redefining what those genres even meant. Nowadays, not so much. Especially with the irritating amount of studios that have zero creative ambition, simply copy-pasting old franchises and selling them under different names, capitalizing on the original studios’ lack of interest in making their titles easily accessible and on consumers desperate to relive their childhood darlings. So, with Lunacid, which at first glance looked like nothing more than an off-brand Kingsfield, I had absolutely zero interest in it. But, against all common sense, after finding a very cheap key, giving in to countless recommendations and the game’s overwhelmingly positive reception, I decided to check it out. The moment I launched the game, I was greeted with having to remap the controls through a text file… Because apparently they went through the trouble of adding all [i]those[/i] retro filters and even making a PS2-style manual and including it digitally in the game, but couldn’t be bothered to create an interface to view and adjust the controls. Priorities, I guess. <Rolling eyes> Turns out Lunacid has some genuinely cool vibes. It’s a solid slow-burn dungeon crawler full of secret passages and mysterious places to uncover. Dark, claustrophobic, and disorienting environments inhabited by creatures with fun designs, paired with primitive — yet functional — combat, supplemented by a crude progression system and a very limited set of moves. The whole package. Add to that an excellent soundtrack (sometimes reaching dreamlike tones similar to what you’d find in Silent Hill), and the game ends up with a very captivating atmosphere. By keeping unnecessary hand-holding to a minimum, leaving the player relatively free, and trusting them to put two and two together, the game genuinely manages to create a real sense of discovery without becoming unnecessarily obtuse (despite the overuse of secret passages). The game’s structure is organized enough, and its subtle approach to player guidance tends to create situations where your intelligence, patience, and curiosity are properly rewarded, which in turn — combined with the competent presentation and minimally intrusive narrative — generates enough immersion to carry the experience. Exploration is the game's main appeal. But it comes with several caveats. Its environments present interesting and visually distinct concepts, but they’re supported by level design that is generally very tame and uninspired. You can jump and use magic with navigation-related effects, but you’ll barely see any creative use of that, let alone any meaningful use of verticality. Given such a surreal premise, one would expect them to be more inventive. One would expect them to hide their secrets elegantly and not simply encourage unhealthy doses of intimacy with the walls. And then there's the "disorienting" part. Salt and Sanctuary proved many years ago that if your level design is good enough, not even a metroidvania needs a map. Lunacid isn’t exactly very strong in that department. It’s not bad enough for the issue to become severe, but intentionally or not, nearly every area in the game is too labyrinthine and homogeneous to allow for smooth navigation without an unnecessary amount of backtracking, given how easy it is to lose your train of thought while traversing the levels. You end up orienting yourself more through the directions you take than through what you actually see. You get used to using any tiny fragment of more distinct environmental detail as a landmark, as well as things like enemy remains, lamps, and other breakable objects or manual markers. A map would be a convenient crutch, but intuitive layouts would’ve been better. Combat, on the other hand, is definitely not one of the game’s selling points. It’s also not bad enough to become detrimental, but very little about it creates any real sense of friction. It’s not mechanically demanding, so most encounters revolve around extremely repetitive hit-and-retreat loops against damage sponges, heavily limited by the available weapon movesets and by the enemies’ primitive, janky behavior. Most enemies can barely do anything against you, and avoiding damage consistently — when it doesn’t simply boil down to walking backwards — is so unreliable that you’re often better off just face-tanking everything or picking them off from a distance. And of course, with these limitations, the bosses couldn’t help but be complete garbage. Pure lazy DPS checks with no balancing whatsoever. You might be breezing through regular enemies, only to suddenly reach a boss and discover that if you don’t have the appropriate level or a massive stockpile of healing items, good luck beating it — because no amount of skill is going to help you chew through that mountain of HP any faster. There’s a myriad of spells and items with fun effects, but in practice, due to the limited shortcut slots and how situational most of them are, they rarely feel like meaningful additions. That’s when using them doesn’t simply break the game altogether... They also tried to give some weapons elemental properties so you could optimize the damage dealt to enemies, but outside of a few very specific cases, you’ll barely notice any difference. Bigger number usually wins. The inventory is organized through lists. Items are sorted alphabetically, but they don’t have icons to help you identify them more easily. Combined with the shortcut limitations and the inability to simply discard or sell items, what ends up happening is that as you progress, you accumulate an ever-growing inconvenient list of useless junk. And the longer you play, the worse it gets. Progression, in turn, consists of finding new things, which is fun. And leveling up, which isn’t. Leveling up means allocating points into categories that alter the properties of your basic abilities, such as guard effectiveness, movement speed, spell usage, and jump height. In practice, that means you need to dump several points into stats just to reach what would be considered a basic character in any game that isn’t Kingsfield. That didn’t work for me. Put 40~50 points into agility if you want an even remotely enjoyable experience. And that’s about it. There’s more, of course. It’s a functional game with a satisfying sense of adventure, a drop of humor, and “cool vibes,” but it never truly surprises in any meaningful sense of the word. Aside from smoothing out a few rough edges, the game doesn't bring anything new. It doesn't redefine ou refine the genre; instead, it relies purely on nostalgia. It would’ve been an excellent game… 30 years ago. Simple and intuitive, it has multiple endings. Several mysteries. It never overstays its welcome. Was it better than I expected? Yes. Was it worth my time? Not really. Will I ever play it again? No chance. This is one of those “one and done” games. Recommended only with a heavy discount.

어린 시절의 좋았던 기억들을 되살려 준 좋은 게임 제작자가 얼마나 킹스필드를 사랑하는지 알겠더라 플레이 하면서 아무것도 안 알려주는 게임 싫어하시면 절대 사지 마세요

a veritable snoozefest and aimless adventure. the combat is meh and spells are not worth using as there is no passive mana regen, potions are 1 time use and you have a small pool of mana. gameplay wise, nothing is explained, which is not good if you want to get new players, I was able to figure out some of the controls, but they do feel very esoteric. the lack of a run button in the massive map the game has is a big oversight. i dont understand how people praise this game so much, as it's really missing a lot of QoL that modern games have.

Ближе к концу я задумался, что эта кампания на 12-15 часов ощущается какой-то долгой. А потом увидел счётчик наигранного времени, где высвечивался 41 час. Вот настолько затягивает геймплей Lunacid — время вокруг тебя ускоряется в три раза.

get lost constantly: the game

Un Dungeon crawler que puede verse como una aproximación moderna a Kings Field. También en su particular ambientación y estética que aúna la música lo-fi, referencias pop o el creepypasta. Su diseño de niveles brilla por momentos y toma decisiones jugables muy interesantes ,como el poder usar solo una mano, el progreso y mejora de armas a medida que las y hechizos con usos muy imaginativos, aunque creo que se habría beneficiado de una duración más contenida para que sus virtudes no se vean tan diluidas según se alarga la partida.

The story is non-existent and the game has quite annoying and questionable ways get things (especially the Blessed Wind sword). The final boss is needlessly hard. People often compare this with Dread Delusion. But the latter is a much superior and a complete product. This feels like a fan project worked on halfway and then forgotten.

Es un juego extraño. Pero no extraño como la nocilla con chorizo, extraño como la transición del xokas bueno al xokas malo: no sabes de dónde cojones ha salido ni por qué es así. Por suerte, y a diferencia de xokas, este juego sí que merece la pena. Vale, quizá no haya sido la mejor comparación de la historia: simplemente juégalo, es un juego único y (creo que) no te vas a arrepentir.

На жаль придбав не знаючи про зв'язок з москалями. Мабуть зміню оцінку після зупинкі війни, бо гра цікава, але зараз неможливо допускати щоб заробкі шлі на геноцід.