With comments like "Lunacid sure isn't that much like King's Field or Shadow Tower" there was a lot of "Okay so when are you going to play Tears of the Moon?"
Lunacid: Tears of the Moon, is a breezy prequel to Lunacid, notably made with the ancient Sword of Moonlight: King's Field Making Tool. It's janky, it's hard to get to display right, and it was one of the few times I was happy about Steam Input profiles(Though when I turned it on for this game, the universal 'control windows' chords became active and I wish I could tell Valve and Microsoft that no, I NEVER, EVER want to control my actual PC with a controller, please fuck off). Look, it can't be helped, these are primitive tools from a primitive yet beautiful age.
It's certainly more King's Field-y, but with the Lunacid sauce poured over it. It's less difficulty focused than most KF games, but more grindy and combat focused than Lunacid. It's a nice middle ground. Kira is very aware of how many of the fun parts of King's Field is when you find something a little exploitable. A MP refill pool you can grind around, an overpowered sword or spell, whatever. It skips the struggling, down-tempo periods of those games. I enjoy those parts, but I also enjoy this leaner cut. While there is MORE combat, like Lunacid, it feels more like it exists for texture than for its own sake. To slow you down, to let you play with your toys, to make the act of dungeon crawling still feel dangerous, while presenting very little real danger. There is just enough real threat to stop you from blindly blitzing through levels
Some other random notes.
- Captures that weird KF dreaminess, which is... very appropriate for a Lunacid game.
- I love the pre-rendered cutscenes and how era-accurately shitty they look.
- I love the glass keys. Technically finding a bottle of glass should be no different from any other key but the ritual of making the key, even though its only a simple prompt, makes it feel like more than it actually is.
- Yo??? Soul Pods???
- Enough added lore details to be worthwhile, while also adding some new questions and interesting revelations at the periphery of the story.
- ... Worm Goddess.
- I generally don't think Lunacid's exact story is as important as its themes and in a sense, this Tears of the Moon strikes a good balance between both.
- The ending is GREAT. Like absolutely amazing.
I used resources around the end to 'clean up' but honestly playing this 100% blind is TOTALLY reasonable. More so than the actual PSX Kings Field games. Definitely can recommend for KF freaks who don't mind fighting ancient software issues.
Basilisk 2000
I saw this on Itch and had to get it. At only 2 bucks, why not? "Explore an unfinished game through its level editor". How could I not?
It's hard to get the full experienced removed from the context of its release. This was an... ARGy game. Finding all the details and clues yourself is hard, though not IMPOSSIBLE. I got pretty deep before resorting to the wiki. Even when you can't draw all the lines yourself it's such a fun and novel way to tell a story. This game also has one of the more.... upsetting graphical effects I've ever seen. Just perfect unease inducing pixelation. I haven't messed with the fake and equally ""unfinished""" SNES game Basilisk yet, but this is just a mechanical story delivery method I totally love. Mostly a game for freaks, but its 2 dollars so like w/e just do it if it sounds at all interesting.