Moonscars is a fun and challenging Metroidvania with some soulslike influences as well. With unique boss fights, good level design, and fantastic sprite animations, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. But several minor shortfalls like a lack of score, bland monochromatic environments, subpar voice acting, a weird wall jumping glitch, and very occasionally lost inputs make it feel like the devs just got bored of working on it and keep it from being a genuinely great game. In short, Moonscars really wants to be a soulslike Hollow Knight and comes close, but just barely misses the mark.
Gameplay ★★★★
Moonscars features a protagonist with a sword. Tried and true and always a good choice. Your core abilities include your regular attack, power attack, special attack, two spell slots to equip multiple "witcheries" to choose from, jumping, dodging, countering, and healing.
Healing and spells both use "ichor" similar to Hollow Knight's soul with one key difference that I really liked. Your ichor bar is basically double-layered. Using spells "corrupts" your ichor, turning part of your ichor bar a darker color. Corrupted ichor cannot be used to cast spells but can still be used to heal. Healing uses whatever ichor is there, corrupted or not. This really allows you to use the spells as much as you like. In HK I was always very conservative with the spells because I knew I would need the soul for healing. This caused me to exclusively use the nail for 90% of encounters even though the spells are way stronger, and having varied gameplay is more fun. Believe me, I never would have thought that a fairly unknown, low-budget game would have anything on HK, but here we are. This one slight change in mechanics was great for me.
The only problem here is that I didn't find most of the spells to be terribly useful. I think I cycled between 4-5 spells out of around 10 or so. But the ones that I did use were cool. Additionally, pretty much all the spells lock you in place longer than I feel you should be so I got hit a lot when trying to use spells, especially during boss fights.
Besides the regular attack you also have a power attack that you occasionally can switch out after beating tougher enemies and bosses. The power attack takes a long time to pull off but does a lot of damage and applies some sort of status effect, depending on the attack you have equipped. These range from a ranged disc attack, a hammer, pinwheel, or an even bigger sword than your regular one. These power attacks are very useful and give you super armor, but they are so slow that it's very difficult to pull them off without getting hurt in the process.
Defensively, you have the dodge and the counterattack. Not much to say about the dodge but I did really enjoy the inclusion of the counter. It was not terribly difficult to pull off but also not trivially easy. Especially since a lot of enemies telegraph their attacks but delay the actually damaging swing, or begin to move toward you before actually attacking. These tricky movements keep you focused and on your toes.
Early on there was a moment that really sold me on the combat system where I was surrounded by two enemies on either side, plus two in the air. The encounter went as such (roughly): dodge, attack, counter, jump-attack, counter, jump-dodge, counter, spell, special attack. Those types of moments make you feel like a badass action hero and Moonscars has them.
Lastly, the game also features spikes littered all over the place. Sticking out of walls, on the floor just sitting there or triggered by movement, or a switch. You can use the power attack to push enemies into spikes, or lure them on top of triggered spikes to do your work for you. This was not only a very satisfying way to dispatch enemies but also a great way to balance the scales when you're in over your head, which happens frequently even against regular enemies.
Story ★★★
The story is very soulslike in that it is about a corrupted and dying world and there is not very much that is told to you outright. Everything that is told to you outright just kinda says "here are all these lore-related words, you'll figure it out".
That being said, what I did understand of it was interesting.
This is just my understanding of the background, I could be totally wrong about some of it
A guy called the Sculptor created Clayborn which are living beings crafted from clay and brought to life by an ichor gland. They seem to have been serving humanity until they started to go mad at which point a war broke out and basically all the humans were killed. There are a lot of cool story concepts tied to gameplay mechanics that utilize this background, including the explanation as to why your character comes back to life (you are controlling a shell of yourself) as well as a key part of the penultimate boss.
Characters ★★★★
Moonscars has a very small cast of characters but I liked them all. They have unique personalities and quirks that make them interesting. Not much to say about this. It's best to just experience them as you play the game.
Art ★★★★★
The art design is both Moonscars' biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The character and enemies models all look great and are animated beautifully. There is an amazing sense of motion and power behind attacks and even something as simple as healing is animated with lots of frames of movement. Though there aren't a large number of different enemy types, they all have really good designs and are also animated in a fantastic way.
The weakness here comes from the environments. While the level design is great and there are a lot of cool concepts behind the setpieces that you encounter, they are all just so bland. Everything is white, grey, red, brown, or black. With such a limited pallet you just aren't drawn into things as much as you could be and the areas don't differentiate themselves in any way except in basic color hues. Kind of like how when you played a Gameboy game on the Gameboy Color and it just gave a bluish hue to all the ground tiles in one area and a greenish one to another area. If you look up a full gameplay video on Youtube and scrub through the progress bar looking at the thumbnail I bet you will hardly be able to tell that the game ever goes anywhere new.
Music ★
Lastly, the most disappointing part of the game. 90% of it features no music at all, just maybe a pedal tone with some ambiance on top of it. This is really sad for two reasons. First, music is often one of the best parts of a game. Games like Hollow Knight, Death's Door, and basically anything by Supergiant use music to fully immerse you in the game and help you to feel the tone of the area your in.
The second reason that it is sad is because the boss fights do feature music and what is there is quite good! They aren't Christopher Larkin for sure but they are very good! I would have liked to see what could have been done if just a bit more time had been spent to improve the score they have and add more to other areas.
In closing, Moonscars was very enjoyable and I would absolutely recommend it to you if you're a fan of metroidvanias. I'm settling on 3.5 stars, but it's really really close to being 4. If the devs had waited just a bit longer and polished up some of the aforementioned complaints we would have had a truly amazing experience with this one.
Played on Gamepass
Gameplay ★★★★
Moonscars features a protagonist with a sword. Tried and true and always a good choice. Your core abilities include your regular attack, power attack, special attack, two spell slots to equip multiple "witcheries" to choose from, jumping, dodging, countering, and healing.
Healing and spells both use "ichor" similar to Hollow Knight's soul with one key difference that I really liked. Your ichor bar is basically double-layered. Using spells "corrupts" your ichor, turning part of your ichor bar a darker color. Corrupted ichor cannot be used to cast spells but can still be used to heal. Healing uses whatever ichor is there, corrupted or not. This really allows you to use the spells as much as you like. In HK I was always very conservative with the spells because I knew I would need the soul for healing. This caused me to exclusively use the nail for 90% of encounters even though the spells are way stronger, and having varied gameplay is more fun. Believe me, I never would have thought that a fairly unknown, low-budget game would have anything on HK, but here we are. This one slight change in mechanics was great for me.
The only problem here is that I didn't find most of the spells to be terribly useful. I think I cycled between 4-5 spells out of around 10 or so. But the ones that I did use were cool. Additionally, pretty much all the spells lock you in place longer than I feel you should be so I got hit a lot when trying to use spells, especially during boss fights.
Besides the regular attack you also have a power attack that you occasionally can switch out after beating tougher enemies and bosses. The power attack takes a long time to pull off but does a lot of damage and applies some sort of status effect, depending on the attack you have equipped. These range from a ranged disc attack, a hammer, pinwheel, or an even bigger sword than your regular one. These power attacks are very useful and give you super armor, but they are so slow that it's very difficult to pull them off without getting hurt in the process.
Defensively, you have the dodge and the counterattack. Not much to say about the dodge but I did really enjoy the inclusion of the counter. It was not terribly difficult to pull off but also not trivially easy. Especially since a lot of enemies telegraph their attacks but delay the actually damaging swing, or begin to move toward you before actually attacking. These tricky movements keep you focused and on your toes.
Early on there was a moment that really sold me on the combat system where I was surrounded by two enemies on either side, plus two in the air. The encounter went as such (roughly): dodge, attack, counter, jump-attack, counter, jump-dodge, counter, spell, special attack. Those types of moments make you feel like a badass action hero and Moonscars has them.
Lastly, the game also features spikes littered all over the place. Sticking out of walls, on the floor just sitting there or triggered by movement, or a switch. You can use the power attack to push enemies into spikes, or lure them on top of triggered spikes to do your work for you. This was not only a very satisfying way to dispatch enemies but also a great way to balance the scales when you're in over your head, which happens frequently even against regular enemies.
Story ★★★
The story is very soulslike in that it is about a corrupted and dying world and there is not very much that is told to you outright. Everything that is told to you outright just kinda says "here are all these lore-related words, you'll figure it out".
That being said, what I did understand of it was interesting.
This is just my understanding of the background, I could be totally wrong about some of it
A guy called the Sculptor created Clayborn which are living beings crafted from clay and brought to life by an ichor gland. They seem to have been serving humanity until they started to go mad at which point a war broke out and basically all the humans were killed. There are a lot of cool story concepts tied to gameplay mechanics that utilize this background, including the explanation as to why your character comes back to life (you are controlling a shell of yourself) as well as a key part of the penultimate boss.
Characters ★★★★
Moonscars has a very small cast of characters but I liked them all. They have unique personalities and quirks that make them interesting. Not much to say about this. It's best to just experience them as you play the game.
Art ★★★★★
The art design is both Moonscars' biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The character and enemies models all look great and are animated beautifully. There is an amazing sense of motion and power behind attacks and even something as simple as healing is animated with lots of frames of movement. Though there aren't a large number of different enemy types, they all have really good designs and are also animated in a fantastic way.
The weakness here comes from the environments. While the level design is great and there are a lot of cool concepts behind the setpieces that you encounter, they are all just so bland. Everything is white, grey, red, brown, or black. With such a limited pallet you just aren't drawn into things as much as you could be and the areas don't differentiate themselves in any way except in basic color hues. Kind of like how when you played a Gameboy game on the Gameboy Color and it just gave a bluish hue to all the ground tiles in one area and a greenish one to another area. If you look up a full gameplay video on Youtube and scrub through the progress bar looking at the thumbnail I bet you will hardly be able to tell that the game ever goes anywhere new.
Music ★
Lastly, the most disappointing part of the game. 90% of it features no music at all, just maybe a pedal tone with some ambiance on top of it. This is really sad for two reasons. First, music is often one of the best parts of a game. Games like Hollow Knight, Death's Door, and basically anything by Supergiant use music to fully immerse you in the game and help you to feel the tone of the area your in.
The second reason that it is sad is because the boss fights do feature music and what is there is quite good! They aren't Christopher Larkin for sure but they are very good! I would have liked to see what could have been done if just a bit more time had been spent to improve the score they have and add more to other areas.
In closing, Moonscars was very enjoyable and I would absolutely recommend it to you if you're a fan of metroidvanias. I'm settling on 3.5 stars, but it's really really close to being 4. If the devs had waited just a bit longer and polished up some of the aforementioned complaints we would have had a truly amazing experience with this one.
Played on Gamepass