Goodness, what an absolute treat this game is! Played through the entirety of just Hana's story, took about 4 hours, includiong all collectibles (but not all S ranks). Will definitely be going back to play as the other two characters in full to round off the game in the future.
It's rare to play a game that just feels so complete, so absolutely tight and focused, like a person wrote out their specification, picked up their tools and set to work, and not only crafted exactly what they had outlined, but that what they ended up with translated so unbelievably well from paper to product. There's not a foot out of step, every aspect of the game feeling so carefully considered and constructed, a really impressive passion project! The core of the experience truly has to be the incredibly tight control system, Hana feeling like an absolute dream to control from the moment you start playing, and only feeling better and better as you master the tiny intricacies of the system; I find myself not playing a lot of 3D platformers, and I've no idea why that is, but Lunistice instantly hooked me with its great movement and sensible controls (if putting Jump on one of your shoulder buttons becomes an industry norm, I will be immensely pleased).
Each world beyond the first one introduces some new mechanic which changes the way you interact with the levels, but crucially, your core set of skills remains the same throughout, which results in a really nice organic increase in challenge as you go through - a particular favourite of mine is the dessert-themed world which uses music and rhythm for environmental challenge - it might lack the sort of replayability that comes with taking new skills back to old stages like an ULTRAKILL or OlliOlli World but it makes for a compelling first-time run (and, additionally, there are other characters who bring that sort of challenge if you like, which I think is a nice way to diversify the game!) With each new world comes a new theme, both visual and musical, and I'd like to highlight the soundtrack in this regard; nicely crafted tunes for each world and, really, just a wonderful soundtrack all over! I love the different visual styles of all the worlds and, in general, the game, too - it's clearly meant to be played on a CRT, but there's a filter for that if you need it - an appropriately dream-like landscape with random elements jutting out of the clouds, it's really beautiful, and really capitalises on both the limitations of a small development team and captures the spirit of the era of games it tries to evoke.
There's a nice little bit of narrative going on, which is dished out to you as a reward for exploring the levels fully and finding all the collectibles; its a nice incentive to dig through the game proper if the intrinsic satisfaction of fully exploring the levels didn't work for you, and I have to say, there's some really interesting ludonarrative stuff going on that I don't want to spoil. I'd say run through without worrying about collectibles, then go back through and go for 100% for maximum satisfaction.
Honestly, this might be a boring review, I just can barely think of any criticisms of this game - Hana's footstep sounds get a bit annoying, there you go - it's just been an absolute delight to play through. This is a proper little bitesize treat of a game and I can't wait to see more from this developer.
It's rare to play a game that just feels so complete, so absolutely tight and focused, like a person wrote out their specification, picked up their tools and set to work, and not only crafted exactly what they had outlined, but that what they ended up with translated so unbelievably well from paper to product. There's not a foot out of step, every aspect of the game feeling so carefully considered and constructed, a really impressive passion project! The core of the experience truly has to be the incredibly tight control system, Hana feeling like an absolute dream to control from the moment you start playing, and only feeling better and better as you master the tiny intricacies of the system; I find myself not playing a lot of 3D platformers, and I've no idea why that is, but Lunistice instantly hooked me with its great movement and sensible controls (if putting Jump on one of your shoulder buttons becomes an industry norm, I will be immensely pleased).
Each world beyond the first one introduces some new mechanic which changes the way you interact with the levels, but crucially, your core set of skills remains the same throughout, which results in a really nice organic increase in challenge as you go through - a particular favourite of mine is the dessert-themed world which uses music and rhythm for environmental challenge - it might lack the sort of replayability that comes with taking new skills back to old stages like an ULTRAKILL or OlliOlli World but it makes for a compelling first-time run (and, additionally, there are other characters who bring that sort of challenge if you like, which I think is a nice way to diversify the game!) With each new world comes a new theme, both visual and musical, and I'd like to highlight the soundtrack in this regard; nicely crafted tunes for each world and, really, just a wonderful soundtrack all over! I love the different visual styles of all the worlds and, in general, the game, too - it's clearly meant to be played on a CRT, but there's a filter for that if you need it - an appropriately dream-like landscape with random elements jutting out of the clouds, it's really beautiful, and really capitalises on both the limitations of a small development team and captures the spirit of the era of games it tries to evoke.
There's a nice little bit of narrative going on, which is dished out to you as a reward for exploring the levels fully and finding all the collectibles; its a nice incentive to dig through the game proper if the intrinsic satisfaction of fully exploring the levels didn't work for you, and I have to say, there's some really interesting ludonarrative stuff going on that I don't want to spoil. I'd say run through without worrying about collectibles, then go back through and go for 100% for maximum satisfaction.
Honestly, this might be a boring review, I just can barely think of any criticisms of this game - Hana's footstep sounds get a bit annoying, there you go - it's just been an absolute delight to play through. This is a proper little bitesize treat of a game and I can't wait to see more from this developer.