Luncaid is a clear as day passion project, a game that wears its heart on it's sleeve; a game full of great ideas that means well, but ultimately isn't the strongest in it's execution of them. While the game excels in the presentation department, captivating you with its rich atmosphere, immersing you with the fantastic sound design and soundtrack, nailing the aesthetic and vibes of older games like King's Field/Shadow Tower; everything else was kinda mixed.

While the environments are beautiful and exploration is wonderful, the nature of finding secrets stopped me from fully appreciating the level design or the locales. With a lot of obtuse secrets hidden behind secret walls, which are very inconsistent in how they look with some normal looking walls being secret walls while ones with misaligned textures are normal walls, I was just going from room to room hugging walls and mashing 'E' as my first thought, rinse and repeat. Getting 100% without a guide is really tedious too, if you want all weapons/spells you'll spend an awful lot of time going back and forth between user made maps.

The game's balance just completely shits the bed as early as 2-3 hours in depending on your class and what you allocate your points into. Starting as Shinobi, I was already faster than everything in the first two areas and there were generally no threats. Put some points into speed, and in no time you're comfortably faster than the majority of the mobs in the game and combat poses no threat to you anymore. Likewise, I put some points into dex to increase my jump height for exploration, and decided to try ranged weapons since they also scale with dex; only to find out they're absolutely broken alongside magic, making you an untouchable killing machine and giving you no reason to even bother with melee weapons unless you really want to. The tension and horror elements that had me spooked out in the first 2 hours vanished with the realization I could zoom past anything and use my magic and ranged weapons to nuke them with ease. The gameplay just became really dull with the broken balance and stat allocation, realizing enemies were stuck in KF with their movement speed and animations while I was running laps around them enacting knockoff Skyrim dungeon gameplay.

It's still a fantastic homage and love letter to the genre of older dungeon crawlers and worth trying out definitely; just personally, I wish it wasn't so easy to break which resulted in a dull gameplay experience and that the secret hunting wasn't so tedious towards the end.

This is one of the practical proofs of how amazing indie games are!

To me, indie games still hold that wonder, that sense of adventure, and the lack of self-entitlement that most bigger games have nowadays. I get it, it is a race to gain as much money as possible and move on, however, I would not say that I like that approach.

Lunacid is a King's Field-inspired Dungeon Crawler, and excels at that, bringing such distinctive proto-souls vibe. We had SO MANY souls-like games recently, I guess it is time for DEVs to delve deeper into the proto-souls, which are gems in their right as well.

If you like obscure, quirky, and obtuse dungeon crawlers or are a From Software fan, play this game.

It is awesome.

was thinking about dropping or putting this on hold while fighting snails in first ten minutes but a little while after exploration and gameplay pace clicked with me and went from I sleep to fuck it we ball. upgrading the speed stat early might be the trick (because youre very slow at first), or pick a high speed stat class in start, I wanted to decide how I want to go after leveling up so I picked thief (thiefs every stat is 5 and its level is also 5, other clasess differ and there are lot of class options).

two bad things I can say about lunacid is 1- it gets quickly easy because how fast you can level up and enemies dont scale with your level while at the same time you getting new gear (some are op plus not that hard to get). there is difficulty meter in settings if you want to meddle with that but still needing to do it manually didnt interest me, probably wouldnt for you too. 2- other endings are behind collectionist playstyles, with one exception which is just looking at a water puddle for 10 seconds, I got true end and saw others from youtube, theres also the choice of just going back which in turn makes you get future dlc item and best one because you get to be with the gang, demi my beloved. one other thing I want to mention is it broke my expectations even more in the middle-last hours of the game with banger area musics and the last boss (boss is actually not that special in terms of moveset etc. but what happens before and after was very good, you'll have to play and see)

Never played a dungeon crawler like this before but I had my fun; it's more of an experience than an actually well-designed game, but this isn't to say that it's not well-made, rather that it feels much more than the sum of its parts to the extent that trying to single out aspects is somewhat disingenuous. Like I enjoyed the combat but it's pretty simple, and the exploration isn't too extensive, but it's still pretty fun to go through. It's more in conjunction where this shines and makes the game addicting to explore and play through with some great aesthetics and decent level of difficulty.

A collection of sprawling, labyrinthine areas that managed to burn their way into my brain despite every hallway, tunnel and room looking seemingly identical at first glance. Despite their simplicity I couldn't stop playing this game once I started; wanting to see what the next location had in store for me, what kind of enemies I would have to face.
And a lot of that likely comes down to how little words the game actually wastes on explaining itself to me: how it simply leaves me in the middle of a cave, allowing me to explore it of my own volition; to a point where it often felt much more open than it really is. That combined with being able to put skill-points into speed and jump-height; or spells that could form bridges and platforms, really made me feel like I should constantly attempt to reach places that feel inaccessible at first glance - because they very likely aren't, or at least won't stay that way.

The actual combat and RPG-mechanics quickly move into the background by comparison: while it felt greatly rewarding to fight my way through the first couple of zones and experimenting with different weapons, I quickly started to feel completely overpowered, to the point where regular enemies didn't pose much of a challenge or even danger anymore. That feeling only got amplified once I got my hands on some proper ranged weapons, which completely obliterated everything in my sight, without me even having to get up-close with them. I don't understand why those didn't get some kind of limited ammo, or were at least tied to the mana-system in the case of wands. This way, I rarely ever felt any need to change my tactics in the second half of the game.

But honestly, I can somewhat ignore that, because really: I mostly enjoyed the exploration anyway, and that remained really solid up until the end. While I hated the two boss-battles the game threw at me, I'm glad I stuck around for the rest.

This game is incredible. If you are:
-a fan of fromsoftware
-a fan of king's field
-a fan of dark souls
-a fan of finding weird little areas and creatures in remote places in the game with no purpose
-ps1/2 nostalgia

Then please play this game. It's better than any king's field game, full of wonder and mystery. The music makes so much of the experience. I haven't sat and played a game for 7 hours straight in years-until I played this.

Please go buy this and play it. In my top 5 games of all time

This game is so cool. A passion project developed by one man (who also made the fantastic Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion), this game is a brilliant throwback to old school pre dark souls From Software games. The first person perspective is such a fun contrast to the dodge heavy and more action based thirs person perspective of the souls games. There's two absolute standout features that absolutely elevate this game above the pack. The brilliant soundtrack features several tracks by lead designer Akuma Kira as well as Indie Game composer Jarren Crist and youtuber ThorHighHeels (who, on a superstar note, makes some of the best YouTube gaming content out there) and every track pulls you deeper into this world. Alternatingly haunting, epic, silly and beautiful, every track is a banger and I actually instantly bought th OST on steam. Secondly, this game atmosphere is off the chain. That's something that's much harder to quantify, but as you walk through abandoned catacombs, barely lit oceans of blood, Gothic castles and libraries of forbidden knowledge the game slowly immerses you and pulls you in until you feel like a true denizen of this world. Very much looking forward to whatever the creator decides to do next and very much hope it's the DLC that is subtly teased within the game.

Lunacid starts at its strongest, its honestly a fascinating game. The first few areas are frenetic, you're weak, even fighting a snail is a brawl. But, once you level up a few times and find a ranged weapon the game falls off in that sort of tension. Enemy design is archaic in this game, a good 90% of enemies are exclusively melee so you can just kite them out with ranged weapons trivially(which if like me you started as a Royal, you can buy immediately upon spawning in).

By the end of the game, Lunacid has ceased even a modicum of that thoughtfulness early on and instead turns into a shockingly-accurate reproduction of Half-Life 1, I even used my old counter-strike surf map skills to cheese many areas up to and including the final boss by gliding up and down wonky geometry. I personally find half the fun of these sorts of games being in breaking them, so I loved it, but I'm sure someone who was more enthralled by the methodical play of the early parts would disagree. This is combined with the fact the game rarely throws actually interesting combat encounters at you--very rarely are there more than two enemies in a room at a time, and I can count the number of actual bosses on one hand, so you're not really challenged at all once you get a build going.

The exploration is the other half, and it excels there with so many little secrets, hidden areas, routes through the game, and whatnot that it genuinely feels rewarding to meticulously go through the dim winding dungeons, but the relative dearth of interesting experiences in those place is whats stopping it from greatness.

This is the kind of game that makes me interested in seeing what the dev does next. This did a good job creating atmosphere, the game made really good use of lighting and sound. The game play isn't bad, but I think the curve isn't great. I think ranged may be too op, the difficulty drops off pretty quick when you start getting good ranged weapons and a majority of enemies don't have much that can counter a ranged build. Final boss was pretty spongy. The atmosphere is there, if their next project has stronger game play I could see it being something great.

- sooo unbalanced. after three or hour fours i became a nearly untouchable god on accident and unless you purposefully go for a challenge run to limit yourself it seems inevitable with the stat scaling and power of weapons/magic you can find

- the aesthetic of the game is really great and makes exploration fun and a lot of the spells give unique utility perks that are fun to mess around with in the game world. even if it's entirely useless/for flavor it's still fun to find it, see what it does, and smile a bit

- by the time the cracks start to show in the game design and by the point the combat is becoming too tedious the game is over because it's a relatively short experience, even without a guide, at least for the normal ending

- lunacid is almost nothing like the old fromsoft games beyond the superficial, and it's very very very very referential (at times eye-rollingly so) but as long as you enjoy the game on its own merits it's fun and enjoyable. at the very least i had fun with it

I really like Lunacid, but it's a game that's strangely difficult to try to hype up.

You rotate it in your head, dissect it in the manner of a typical review, and analyze the components, and you can't really point to any individual aspect of it that's much better than Decent. The combat and RPG mechanics work well enough, but they're pretty basic and not exactly finely balanced. The level design is maze-y in a way that I'd usually hate, but I don't here. The characters are immediately endearing, but dialogue and interactions with them are very sparse. The story is a cliffnotes version of an actual Fromsoft game, and yes, I know that's saying a lot. The atmosphere is probably the most consistently on point thing, but even then, there's a lot of competition on that front in the Spooky Indie Game space.

None of these aspects are bad, either, mind, especially for a game made by a team of one. It's objectively very impressive on that merit, but I didn't really have that in the forefront of my mind while playing. It's not why I like it. So why do I like it?

I don't know if I've ever played a game that (successfully) coasted more on Vibes. I'm not the first person to say it, but Lunacid really does evoke a sense of nostalgia, and not because it's a tribute to an older series. I've never played King's Field (though considering other holes I've fallen into recently it's probably only a matter of time).

The game is tapping into something more primal and less specific than that. It makes you feel the way it felt, as a child, to play a weird exploration-heavy game you didn't really understand. Occasionally I've seen people attribute this quality to Souls games, but as much as I love them, I don't really get this feeling from them, or certainly not this extent.

There's a cryptic but more importantly inviting surrealism to Lunacid. The world is dark and desolate, but the core NPCs are upbeat and adorable. The music is spooky, but often oddly soothing. Several minor mechanics are tied to the real-world phase of the moon. The story gives you enough information to understand it pretty easily on reflection, but withholds just enough to create some delightfully baffling sequences in the moment.

The game is also shockingly reactive to experimentation--not in the Baldur's Gate way, but specifically to the type of strange, kind-of-logical-kind-of-not shit you might throw at a wall to unlock secrets in a retro game. You find spells with strange effects but no clear practical application, consumables that exist just to trick you, tiny interactions unique to specific starting classes. Considering the game's humble scope, there's an impressively strong sense that anything can happen.

It must be said that surprisingly, given its cited inspirations, Lunacid is not a hard game. I suppose it depends on your build, but the combat mechanics are simple enough that it doesn't take a genius to see what works. I'm not complaining, as a lifelong fan of being overpowered in games, but there's a reason most action RPGs don't tie your actual movement speed to a stat you can increase as much as you want. Level up Speed and get a decent way of dealing ranged damage, and there are very few enemies in the game that can do basically anything to you unless they catch you by surprise.

But to be fair, the game is pretty good at surprises; some enemies have massive resistance or even immunity to certain damage types, status effects can be brutal, and if you took my advice and specced into magic or ranged weapons you might be pretty fragile when you do take a hit. Add to that the game sometimes being very stingy with save points, and exploring a new area can still be decently tense.

Lunacid is a game that's more than the sum of its parts, and, I think, a game that really needs to be met on its own terms. Approached skeptically, it'd be very easy to write the whole thing off very quickly. If you're like me and you're charmed right from the character creation screen, it's just as easy to ride that feeling all the way to the end.

Very solid gameplay, level design and art direction, overall a really enjoyable experience for me. I think i came at this game at a different angle from most so this may be a me issue but i cant say the ending battle was that thrilling to me, the tedious struggle only to be interrupted by a bunch of NPCs with hardly any development to be the ones to save you felt undeserved!
The bosses in general felt subpar from the rest of the experience. However the rewards for exploration and devotion to cultivating the aesthetic of outlandish playground myths given form hit my sweet spots and I came out feeling very positive regardless of the mediocre final boss. It is imperfect but still worth your time if you enjoy the look or feel of early fromsoft stuff and dont mind a bit of a lack of challenge.

Very sprawling levels that are very barren, it is as if you are trapped in an endless empty liminal space. Fighting and casting magic and navigating the world just doesn't have much to it.

Worst of all for me, there's no real sense of progression in a narrative, mechanical, or exploratory sense. Leveling up hardly changes the way you play, not much happens plot-wise, the areas feel lacking in things to actually do besides wander corridors and left click stuff to death. The aesthetics and feel weren't enough to carry me through to the end. Eventually I just sorta realized "I am getting absolutely nothing out of this"