LUNACID

Lunacid is a real gem of a game that feels so comfortable for me, despite the depressing atmosphere. It's a classic style dungeon crawler, albiet a little easier than its inspirations. KIRA is one of the only devs who can make genuinely pleasing low-poly works. I just love the dark gritty fantasy clunky polygons; Very Shadow Tower. In fact, you can tell a lot of this game is inspired by Shadow Tower (probably why it says that in its description). The atmosphere is very moody, very melancholic; A real dark fantasy with some humor about. I was mostly absorbed in the gameplay, and didn't get much story from it.



Exploration, like any dungeon crawler, is what Lunacid does best. The environments are fun and weapon hunting is a blast. Finding little lore bits is always a great way to tell a story; I love when games do that. You will get lost in this game, but it's not as frustrating as you might think. I couldn't even tell I was grinding at most of the time because I had fun swamping enemies. The weapon finding brings a real sense of progression in this rather nonlinear game. You go from blindly fumbling around and running from enemies to full doom after you find a real good weapon. It's incredibly simple but smart design.



The mechanics are simple, neat, and to the point. You swing a sword, use items, and use spells. That's like, 4 buttons max. There isn't much spell variety, which is a bummer, but the melee variety is rather diverse. Only some of the melee weapons become genuinely unusable after their peak. I used mostly heavy weapons, which felt rather good. Most enemy encounters are like a puzzle; using dismemberment mechanics to minimize damage. VERY Shadow Tower. The bosses can be a bit underwhelming with their predictable moves, but i'd say thats a FROMSOFT thing.



overall, Lunacid distills everything good about a kingslike into an easily understood and enjoyed package. It's cheap, it's easy, it's good. Go play it.