Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

In Lunacid, you come across a devilish looking being early in the game. That character is called Demi, she has glowing pink-red eyes, horns, a pointed tails and she is wielding a large and threatening scythe. Demi may look like a devil but you’ll soon find out that she is probably the kindest and most wholesome inhabitant of the world of Lunacid. Because this world is a dark, hazardous and not so gentle place.

In the very first scene of the game, you get a pretty good idea of what kind of world this is. A shady looking man that looks half-dead himself carries a cart across a barren land that once resembled something like a town. On that cart is a corpse, about to be dumped into an oversized well in the center of that town. But this corpse refuses to be pushed down into the darkness. They cling onto the cart and try to pull themselves up again. But alas, this attempt to “steal their life back” is in vain as they “belong to the depths now”. The character’s hand is chopped off and all efforts to resist are now fruitless as they fall into the below. And so, the journey ends. But a new one is about to begin and let me tell you, it’s a good one.

The first surprise, and one of many the game has to offer, follows immediately as you realize that in this game, you do not take control over the body that was dumped in the well, but the hand that was chopped off. This came as a shock to me since the game actually offers character creation where you choose a starting class, a name, and a portrait representing your character. In the end though, you are just a hand making its way through the darkness. In all honesty, I found that quite funny. I felt like the game was in on the joke as early on, you find a wooden shield which is practically useless. You see, you only have one hand or rather you are just one hand and so, wielding sword and shield is quite impossible. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Bloodborne in this moment – remember the plank shield? Yeah, it was kind of like that. Whether this reference was intended or not, it wasn’t the only one. From the very first steps you take in Lunacid, the game quite obviously wears its inspiration on its sleeves. This is a dungeon crawler game, heavily inspired by the works of FromSoftware such as King’s Field and Shadow Tower. Now, I haven’t played these games yet but I have watched a fair share of video essays and talked to some people who know and love these games. Lately, these older FromSoft titles have received more attention with well-written and well-produced YouTube reviews popping up left and right. If you wish to learn more about these games, I can definitely recommend Majuular’s coverage of the series which really goes into detail and made me want to pick these games up eventually myself. Much of what I’ve seen here reminded me strongly of Lunacid. You control a character in first-person through a dark, decrepit, and mostly uninhabited world. While exploring this eerie place, you fight off monsters with weapons and magic, gain EXP and slowly build up your character. It just feels nostalgic to me despite the fact I never played King’s Field or Shadow Tower. I did however play the Souls series and Bloodborne and Lunacid is filled with references and nods to these games. I’m not going to spoil anything in regards to the narrative but oh boy, there’s a lot, including the numerous allusions to Berserk (yeah, Lunacid’s lore actually contains a character called “King Griffith” and his favorite knight is said to have wielded a huge sword made of “Wolfram”, not gonna lie – this made me chuckle).

But Lunacid is far from being a purely referential work. It has its own ideas and charm which sets it apart from the games its heavily inspired by. An example of this is the characters that inhabit this land. I already wrote about Demi, the demon girl that greets you at the beginning and sends you to “Wing’s Rest”, the hub area of the game and a place of peace and respite. Here, you meet a handful of NPCs, each with their own personality and quirks. I found them all so endearing and fun even though there are only a few characters and the dialogue is quite limited to only a few lines. Still, it’s just charming to talk to the crow, which complains that she is the only sleepy character since all the other are already dead and don’t need to sleep or the skeleton at the bar which tells stories of old while teaching you about the lore of the world. You can also find characters out in the world and I grew fond of all of them. I feel like Kira, the game’s creator, understood that it doesn’t need much to make characters feel relatable and charming. There’s elegance in brevity and I appreciate that a lot.

Speaking of charm, let me say that Lunacid has it in spades. From the PSX-graphics to the strange chillwave LoFi-soundtrack to the weirdly stylistic fonts and menu design – Lunacid is a unique audiovisual experience. It mixes medieval and modern elements and creates something truly novel. It’s hard to put into words but the vibes man, the vibes of this game are unreal. Listening to these awesome tracks while striding through caverns, catacombs and castles is just a marvelous experience. What I loved was that for each music track you hear, the title and composer are displayed in the lower left corner when it starts playing. This way, I found out that, among others, ThorHighHeels worked on this game’s music, which warmed my heart. This is another content creator I can wholeheartedly recommend. The music and looks really made me get immersed in this world, I could truly get lost.

Unfortunately, I also got lost quite literally from time to time. In general, I would say that Lunacid’s level design is pretty solid. There are some areas in the game that reminded me of FromSoft’s work in the best way possible with multiple paths leading forward and back again, making the player unlock shortcuts and allowing them to gradually explore each area of the game. Since the game is quite open and non-linear in structure, I discovered some places earlier in the game that I am pretty sure I was supposed to find way later. This was really cool. However, there are also more than a few maze-like areas that made me pull my hair out from frustration. More than once did I end up in the middle of a dungeon with no direction of where I was or where I was supposed to go. To top things off, there are illusory walls all over the place. This in itself is not a problem but what I really didn’t like was the fact that illusory walls, once found and opened, close again after some time. It’s just a small detail but it would feel so much better and more impactful if these paths would remain open for good. This way, they just contributed to me being lost quite a few times. Still, I have to emphasize that Lunacid offers some amazing level design in certain areas and also a large variety of settings and moods. Being a dungeon crawler, you will mostly walk through caves, tombs and - of course - sewers. But the game does eventually get more creative with its visual themes. Again, no spoilers from me, but there was definitely a “Valley of Defilement” moment if you know what I mean, which left me in awe. There are a couple of such moments. Furthermore, even though some levels may feel like confusing mazes, exploration is pretty much always rewarded. There are so. many. secrets. At the end of the game, I had a bazillion weapons in my inventory and just as many spells that I found scattered throughout the lands below. To be fair, you don’t need all of these but there are situations that do require you to experiment a little with your arsenal. Some weapons have special affinities attached to them, for example light, dark, or fire which is helpful when dealing with certain enemies. The cool thing is that using some weapons grants “weapon XP” which allows you to upgrade them after filling the XP bar. This made me switch weapons regularly as even a useless club could become a powerful steel mace after leveling up. I love systems like these. Spells offer a large variety of effects as well. Of course, there are typical offensive spells like a fireball or a lightning bolt but there’s also a spell simply called “Coffin” and yes, it creates a coffin, nothing more. You can imagine the amount of fun I had trying to sequence-break the game by creating coffins everywhere and jumping on top of them. And for the most part, the game just lets you do that and even encourages you to use this spell. At one point, it’s even mandatory to solve a puzzle.

Speaking of jumping everywhere, Lunacid made the absolute insane design decision to bind jumping distance to a stat that you can level up like any other. If you dump all your skill points into dexterity, you’ll basically fly across the map like an icarian mad man. It’s so unhinged I can’t help but loving the game’s creator Kira for that. Kira seems to be a pretty awesome person in general. This is not their first game. Before Lunacid, Kira developed the horror game “Lost in Vivo” which offers a similar PSX look and some truly disturbing monster designs and moments. You can definitely see the influences that game had on Lunacid. There are some genuine horror moments here which greatly emphasize the dark atmosphere of the game. Sound and music play a huge role here as do enemy placements and movement. Not spoiling anything but man, some of the more horrific well-dwellers of this game had me running away like a scared little kitten. Kira definitely knows what their doing here. I read a tweet in which Kira explained that they added pronouns to the character creation just to piss people off as NPCs in the game address you by your name and don’t use any pronouns. I mean, that is just so based, I can’t even :D

Alright, enough praise, let’s talk about the bad stuff. Frankly, there ain’t that much. One thing that comes to mind is the game’s alchemy system which I barely used. You can find and mix ingredients of various plants and monsters drops to create health vials, mana potions, throwing knives and to on. At the beginning of the game, you have a handful of formulas to create basic stuff. More recipes are unlocked through experimentation with other ingredients. I never really used any of this. There are enough usable items to find in the game world and I never felt like I had to restock on health potions or something. But I guess it’s nice to have this option if you’re running low on items and don’t have the money (silver) to buy them from the vendor.
Another point of criticism which was pointed out by many reviewers already is the boss battles. There are very few and they are kind of mid to be honest. I don’t think they were outright terrible but they could definitely use some revision. In terms of presentation, I have little to complain. Bosses are introduced via well-written and well-voiced pieces of dialogue and they offer a variety of neat little visual effects. The battles were definitely a spectacle. Gameplay-wise though, they were quite the slog. Even though I dealt a pretty good amount of damage, they would just go on forever. On top of that, some boss attacks were basically undodgeable which made the whole thing feel like a battle of attrition. If you have enough health potions and deal enough damage, you win; otherwise, you’re dead. Still, I wished the game had some more bosses with more intricate combat design but who knows, maybe we’ll see that in a DLC or future game, there is always hope.
Lastly, I need to address the issue of glitches and bugs. I played on the SteamDeck so maybe, some of these are hardware-specific. Some minor glitches were annoying but not outright game-breaking. For instance, sometimes I would press RT to attack but the game would register this as holding the button down which charges the attack. By pressing RT again, the attack would be unleashed but in a weird, glitched-out way. It’s hard to describe but it didn’t feel right. Then there are some minor issues like flickering lights, pop-ins, messy hit-boxes for some enemies where attacks just go right through them, and the mouse cursor icon being displayed from time to time even though I solely played with the built-in controller of the Deck. That stuff isn’t so bad. However, a rather important side quest that you need to complete to unlock one of the endings bugged out and couldn’t be finished. I’m just gonna say that a certain librarian asked me again and again if he could read one of my books even though I had given him that book already. That was a shame because I really wanted to unlock all of the game’s endings.

Even though I have my gripes with the game, I can wholeheartedly recommend Lunacid to fans of old-school dungeon crawlers and anyone who always wanted to give this genre a try. I’ll admit that I haven’t played too many games of this genre myself but I still enjoyed my time in this eerie and strange world all the way until the end. The atmosphere and overall vibes of this title are unmatched. It’s an audiovisual experience unlike any other. If you like FromSoftware’s library of games, even just the more modern stuff like Souls and Bloodborne, you will feel right at home with this one. There is so much to explore, so much to uncover and learn and I had a blast figuring out how to solve certain quests and how to unlock the endings. It’s a fun but sometimes frustrating ride but believe me, it’s absolutely worth it. So, take up arms and venture into the dark below dear traveler, may the moonlight guide thee.