This review contains spoilers
What I love about Lunacid, like everyone who played this game, is it's atmosphere and the aesthetic of it's environments. I loved discovering new spells, new weapons, and new enemies just because I wanted to see what was in this world, and I rather liked exploring (most) of the environments in which these things were embedded. This game inflamed my curiosity and that compelled me to literally 100% it. And, overdone as they are, I am a huge sucker for meta-textual narratives about the video game format itself. One really get the impression that this guy played Moon Remix RPG.
But the game IS flawed. As everyone has noted, this game is heavily inspired by King's Field, the FromSoftware dungeon crawler franchise which started on the PSX, and which Demon's Souls was a thematic offshoot and spiritual successor. In many ways, this game is an unholy union of King's Field and sleek, smooth, "modern" game design sensibilities. King's Field is extremely slow and plodding, with sluggish combat and languid movement. The whole world feels very hostile to you, and that hostility is instantiated in the very mechanics, with Tomb Raidery controls aggravating anyone who was born after 1998 that deigns to boot a fan-patched english translation on Duckstation. Lunacid, however, makes the player too strong and too fast. The environments achieve their aesthetic goals, but in terms of gameplay, they're rather safe and boring. There is an occasional trap, or some easily-avoided lava, but the environments should be more hazardous in ways outside of just the enemies which litter the screen.
Those same enemies, by the way, become trivially easy to beat, especially if you're a magic user, and regardless of the difficulty slider, by about the 4th area. The game cannot scale its challenge with the capabilities which it gives the player for speed and damage. i loved the spells, I loved the design and the environmental resistances and I could see the possibilities, but I beat about 3/4 of the game with literally the very first fire spell I ever equipped and nothing else. Which is not in itself bad -- I still used the other spells, just because I thought they were fun, whether or not a given combat situation called for them. That is a fine feature, but it cannot be the case that my own exploratory instincts and penchant for fun is the only thing apprehending my available choices -- the game should force me to make more decisions more often than it does.
Overall, I actually kind of love this game for what it is, but it doesn't feel finished. Yeah, there are some traps, and some environmental hazards, and some unique spell-environment interactions, and some interesting combat situations, but there are not enough of any of those categories. This game is the embodiment of an oft-quoted admonition to be careful what one wishes for. Many people clamor for updated and modernized versions of classic games, with better QoL, better controls, more intuitive mechanics and menus, and so on. The barriers to entry for the average game player to actually go back and play those archaic masterpieces seem onerous. Be careful not to lock yourself in the Iron Cage of Weberian rationalization for the games you design, especially if the thematic point of the game is to be unnavigable!
But the game IS flawed. As everyone has noted, this game is heavily inspired by King's Field, the FromSoftware dungeon crawler franchise which started on the PSX, and which Demon's Souls was a thematic offshoot and spiritual successor. In many ways, this game is an unholy union of King's Field and sleek, smooth, "modern" game design sensibilities. King's Field is extremely slow and plodding, with sluggish combat and languid movement. The whole world feels very hostile to you, and that hostility is instantiated in the very mechanics, with Tomb Raidery controls aggravating anyone who was born after 1998 that deigns to boot a fan-patched english translation on Duckstation. Lunacid, however, makes the player too strong and too fast. The environments achieve their aesthetic goals, but in terms of gameplay, they're rather safe and boring. There is an occasional trap, or some easily-avoided lava, but the environments should be more hazardous in ways outside of just the enemies which litter the screen.
Those same enemies, by the way, become trivially easy to beat, especially if you're a magic user, and regardless of the difficulty slider, by about the 4th area. The game cannot scale its challenge with the capabilities which it gives the player for speed and damage. i loved the spells, I loved the design and the environmental resistances and I could see the possibilities, but I beat about 3/4 of the game with literally the very first fire spell I ever equipped and nothing else. Which is not in itself bad -- I still used the other spells, just because I thought they were fun, whether or not a given combat situation called for them. That is a fine feature, but it cannot be the case that my own exploratory instincts and penchant for fun is the only thing apprehending my available choices -- the game should force me to make more decisions more often than it does.
Overall, I actually kind of love this game for what it is, but it doesn't feel finished. Yeah, there are some traps, and some environmental hazards, and some unique spell-environment interactions, and some interesting combat situations, but there are not enough of any of those categories. This game is the embodiment of an oft-quoted admonition to be careful what one wishes for. Many people clamor for updated and modernized versions of classic games, with better QoL, better controls, more intuitive mechanics and menus, and so on. The barriers to entry for the average game player to actually go back and play those archaic masterpieces seem onerous. Be careful not to lock yourself in the Iron Cage of Weberian rationalization for the games you design, especially if the thematic point of the game is to be unnavigable!