Until Demon’s Souls came out, I haven’t even heard of King’s Field or Shadow Tower games. And in almost 14 years since I have not found time or desire to finally play them. But, I suppose, now I kinda have played them, as Lunacid seems to be a love letter to the titles, draped in the lo-fi aesthetics and cosmic horror references. And I have quite enjoyed it.
KIRA, the developer of the game, have already established themselves as someone who understands how to build horror atmosphere. Lost in Vivo, despite me not loving it a lot, had plenty of imaginative ideas and moments to get inspired by. But what I also came to expect from their projects is the lack of focus. Even Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion, a game they helped develop, eventually becomes a collection of different games, rather than a cohesive experience.
For the most part, Lunacid is a focused dungeon crawl action RPG with heavy focus on exploration. It follows a lot of the conventions of the genre to be a gameplay focused experience, rather than just a mood piece. The combat system is simple, but good enough with a mix of melee, ranged and magic attacks and a huge number of weapons and magic rings (that perform the spells) you can find. There are skills you get to upgrade with level ups. Some weapons have their own experience bar and after it’s full you can use a specific part of the “home base” map to enhance it, usually turning it into a new weapon. There are shops and alchemy and a bunch of status effects…
Also, this game has so many things you could find in older RPGs that were mostly removed for the sake of realism or in an attempt to not let players “break the game”. Spells that have no practical use but are weird and build atmosphere. Weapons that are utterly bizarre in their look and function. Attributes that let you run faster and jump higher. Joke items. The game has it all and it reminded me of just how fun it used to be to have that. Finding laser guns, learning levitation, increasing acrobatics, casting end of the world spells in old Might and Magic, The Elder Scrolls, Ultima and other games…
Granted, another part of the reason those fun elements disappeared were due to how story focused RPGs became. They switched from just having some big story to telling a very good story. One that may not be always serious, but can be taken seriously. And Lunacid is getting away with the creativity mostly due to not having a very deep story and also due to the setting itself being quite surreal. You don’t want to play this game for the story – it’s more about the mood than modern quality storytelling. And it’s absolutely fine.
Especially since most of the presentation is genuinely wonderful. The lo-fi aesthetic of the game is often used to create strange shifting imagery or limit your vision in an unnatural but very effective way. The soundtrack is stunningly good and I recommend listening to it even if you’re unsure about the game. There’s a lot of creativity in monster and location designs so it’s really fun to just explore.
Well, most of the time. There are gigantic locations with barely anything in them, which do look impressive for a couple of minutes before you get bored as exploration starts feeling slow, not grand. There are incredibly confusing level layouts in other dungeons. All of which isn’t helped by the complete lack of a map screen.
Quality of life in general here is seemingly intentionally very limited. Some repetitive tasks are slow to do. Some settings, including button rebinding, are not available as part of the UI (rebinding is done as a text file edit). There’s no way to pause the game when inside the game. And there are even several situations that can softlock you. Other small but noticeable bugs pop up from time to time. Based on previous projects from KIRA, the title will probably be updated for a while and will become a far better experience. But I feel like some of its rough elements will remain unchanged as part of the creative vision.
Despite some of the frustrating choices and elements, though, Lunacid is a really fun experience. Just like Lost in Vivo it’s full of really cool inspiring moments for other game designers to take note of. But this time, it’s also a really fun game to play. If you’re not fully sure about the game, or just wish to give it more time to cook and get more updates – that’s fair. Do give it a chance, though, once you have time and are in the mood.