Moonscars
Push the limits of your combat skills, and master new abilities to progress through an unforgiving nonlinear 2D world. Face off against the relentless darkness that seeks to destroy you. In Moonscars, every death is a lesson learnt—and as you overcome each challenge, new truths will be revealed.
Moonscars is a action, metroidvania and souls-like game
developed by Black Mermaid
and published by Humble Games.
Released on September 27th 2022 is available only on Windows
in 9 languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, Portuguese - Brazil, Turkish and Ukrainian.
It has received 1,095 reviews of which 911 were positive and 184 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.9 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 9.99€ on Steam and has a 50% discount.
The Steam community has classified Moonscars into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
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Windows
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 270 (2 * 3400) or equivalent Intel, Core i3-530 (2 * 2930) or equivalent
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: GeForce GT 530 (2048 VRAM) or equivalent, Radeon HD 6570 (1024 VRAM) or equivalent
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Moonscars is a deeply flawed game and one that I absolutely adore and celebrate. The art style is a painterly impressionism but with the dark foreboding tones of romanticism. It's breathtaking. It's probably one of the best written MVs I've played, if not outright the best. Very strong LoK and BR2049 vibes. The themes of meaning, being, existence, creation, and freewill are explored. It doesn't always stick the landing but it never falters too hard either. It keeps you very much engaged narratively. The gameplay is a mishmash of genres like some Darksiders game. The basic nature of it is very much like a very tiny SOTN - fairly linear yet sprawling environments to explore with lots of secret upgrades for those that seek them. Nothing in the game is Metroidesque, there is no non-lineary, sequence breaking, etc. The game wants to tell a specific story and it wants you to experience it in that specific way. There are soulslike elements here like corpse running, xp as currency, difficulty fetish, dodge/parry heavy gameplay. I would specifically compare the difficulty to CV3 USA or CV68k - it's fucking tough. However, you can craft builds quite easily that let you manhandle the game, so to speak. Beyond the soulslike, there's also the roguelike elements - lots of significant bonuses divided up between gameplay elements. Special weapons upgrades offer rotating bonuses on weapon swap. Killstreaks allow you to stack additional bonuses. I think I had up to five at a time and it makes you strong; however, you lose these on death. You can even choose what enemies drop. Lastly, there's also a CV2esque mechanic: dying with stacked bonuses triggers a world state where enemies are tankier, deadlier, and way more lucrative to kill. This can easily be alleviated with an item. Yes, this is a Soulslike Roguelike Metroidvania from 2022 that is only 10h long. Of course it pushes zero gameplay boundaries but the writing, art, and vibe alone are where the game is at. It does those best and if you wish to play this game then do it for the writing and the art, nothing else. The gameplay isn't bad by any means but it definitely isn't the game's selling point. To help players turned off by the difficulty, the game comes with a built in "story mode". It consists of equipping three items that make you do more damage, tanky, invincible as you channel heals, and then some. If you find yourself put off by the notion of sludging through this, then please see through the end using this. Like I said, the story, art, and vibes are where it's at.
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I enjoyed my time with Moonscars , although the game does suffer for some pretty baffling design choices. +The overall atmosphere and music are pretty good +The combat is serviceable, the rapidly changing special weapons manage to keep things fresh +The roguelike stat boosts you get if you survive long enough and that reset on death were a pretty unique addition +The pixel art is nice as always +Doesn't overstay it's welcome +/-The overall colour tone might be off-putting to some players +/-You can pretty much choose do you want to spend the whole game dodging or parrying. You can clear every encounter in the game using either one. -The game is way, way too easy. The only difficulty in the game comes from learning TWO WHOLE parry windows of TWO TRASH MOBS in the entire frigging game (just to make the encounters more fluid), (The shielded chargers and the multistrike assasins). -The bosses, even the final ones, are somehow easier than some trash packs? that's really baffling to me lol. Even if you're not good at action games, you will clear 99% of the encounters here first try. If you're a veteran, you'll just basically sleep through the game. -A few of the amulets here (your itemization) are strictly OP af compared to other amulets and the funny thing is that you unlock them pretty much straight off the bat, which makes amulet hunting pretty much redundant. The "Ichor while damaged" and "Healing inv." Are especially busted, mainly the Ichor one since it doesn't break. You basically get infinite heals from getting damaged. Even if you didn't use them, you whack majority of your Ichor back in 3 auto-attacks. -The majority of collectibles except for the perma stat boosts are bordering on useless.
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One of the best games I have ever played. Really challenging but so fun, Excellent graphics and soundtrack. Really recommend
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This game is great despite some of the negative reviews I've seen complaining about certain things that are skill based (aka a skill issue), though there are some things i can agree with but most of it is because i can tell half these people don't play as many Metroidvania games as i do. So i will go over both the positives and negatives by an experienced Metroidvania player. A Warning to New Players as this Review will have SPOILERS for the Later Game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Positives: The main focus of this game is the Combat that is very apparent when moving through the Outskirts to the main Castle, the combat feels nice to play and isn't too punishing (at the first half). The Animations are great and the Special Weapon Previews heavily remind me of the Skill/Attack Previews in Castlevania Lords of Shadow. The Artstyle of this game is Very reminiscent of a Classic Castlevania game. The Parry System is one i see many complaints about but the thing people never realize is yes the Red Blink is an Indicator as to an attack you can parry but it ISN'T one you parry as the blink happens for a Successful Parry you need to block Last Second as most games have as a parry it's Not GRIME where you instant kill enemies by blocking with your head and having an easier window of performing said parry, personally i find the Parry system in this game to be completely fair except for it sometimes not registering attacks from rapid strikes (like the weird tentacle enemies in the lower castle). The music is very Atmospheric and fits each area very well. A complaint i often see is the use of Witchery's being mandatory to kill most enemies that's not the case as i use the main sword the most the only time i ever needed to use a witchery was during a boss fight (usually the doppleganger witchery) to give myself a larger window to heal and the first one (one that's mandatory) to break barriers. I see a mix bag on Etelag's (the cat) quest as it's one you can apparently fail? i never failed it as i go out of my way to explore to find mirrors and collectibles that i'll never use so i'm more bias on this one as i didn't see much of an issue with it besides locking you out of a mirror temporarily. The bosses are a fun fight though some seemed a little easier than others for the phases (my only issue with the final boss) Negatives: As i mentioned just above with the bosses there's no reason for the Final Boss (Second Phase) to be easier than all the bosses and tougher enemies prior as his attacks did less damage, easier to parry and dodge and easier to get hits on. The part that irks me the most was the Earths Bowels area (East) as it has the Flying enemies with Shields now i understand that by this point you would have other Witchery's to deal with them easier but i always decided to run with Scimitars and slowly bleed them to death since the standard bolt was practically useless on them since they were always a 45% angle above you so you couldn't hit the with that witchery unless you get on an elevated platform then cast (something that isn't present in the later portion of the bowels). Another issue i had was the lack of Enemy Variety as the late game you would expect new enemies per area but the Castle Apex has all the enemies from the Outskirts with shields and higher Damage what happened to the bomb enemy in Depths why is that enemy only there and nowhere else in the entire game? each area needs more enemies for variety as once you know how an enemy works you kind of know how to deal with them for the rest of the game defeating the existing challenge with learning new attacks and patterns. One of the other things that annoyed me a bit on the later portion was the way the Apex and Bowels were handled with enemy damage and health, what annoys me is when you fail to make something harder naturally so decide to use the same enemy and just increase the damage and health 5x and give it armor while being the same enemy like i mentioned above. And don't remove Vendor NPC's without giving a second means of getting their pre-existing Stock as i had my inventory filled with memories that i couldn't use for 500 powder each because the NPC for it dissapears. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now one of the things you'll probably see on this review is my hours i'll tell you readers now i have 10-11 hours in this game the reason it says 5-6 is because i lost connection to steam a couple times so it just stopped tracking hours i have 100% the achievements in this game i'm working on grinding all the bone dust to unlock every witchery.
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Overall I enjoyed this game but it has some flaws. Let's start with the positives: The visuals. You can see the screenshots. Enough said. Music's alright, similar to Blasphemous. Story is interesting and you get to piece together things when you progress through the game. Exploration is pretty typical metroidvania stuff. The game has a mechanic where you get bonuses for your character if you kill enough enemies without dying. If/when you die, you will lose these bonuses. This rewards good play and is a pretty cool idea. If you die with enough of these bonuses the game buffs the enemies - you can get rid of this by beating a boss or using up 'Gland' currency which makes it a non-issue, and I didn't find the buff to be that noticeable. Ichor/mana mechanic allows you to cast spells and heal yourself, which is implemented in a way where you can have 'spoiled' Ichor after using it, which can't be used for spells, only for healing. This encourages aggressive play and was something new I haven't seen from these types of games yet. You also have a special attack weapon that you get to choose multiple times throughout the game. It encourages experimenting with all the weapons but I felt most of them were quite slow to be viable in combat. You can use these combined with a dash to have a nice gap-closer. You can again use the 'Gland' currency to roll new special weapons if you really don't like your current one but it changed often enough where I didn't see the need for it. Then the negatives: Basically all the bosses are really easy. Even the combat in general is easy, except when the game throws multiple enemies at you, which is not a great way to put difficulty in your game. It does make for some fast-paced moments but I'm not a huge fan. Most enemies only have one attack combo they do over and over again, sometimes they have a ranged attack too. There are not that many new enemies to be seen after the first 2-3 hours of gameplay which was a bit disappointing. Some questionable design choices of which I want to highlight a couple (these are quite nitpicky but someone's gotta point these out): The map doesn't allow you to zoom out for some reason - annoying in a metroidvania game, the markers on the map are huge too. It's genuinely hard to tell which amulets you have equipped once you have many of them. You have to select an amulet to check the names of the items you have equipped. Also why do multiple tiers of an amulet stay in your inventory if you can't even sell the inferior versions at shops. It's just needless clutter, maybe make the better versions replace the worse ones. With spells it's implemented that way and it's fine. If you select an amulet to equip and then try to cancel the selection, it throws you out of the pause menu. Why? This can be viewed as a negative or a positive but the game allows for a ton of cheese strats. Hitting enemies through the ceiling, spikes on the walls or ground can be used to kill tougher enemies instantly, even the first doppelganger can be dealt with spikes lol . In summary, I'd recommend it if you're really into the visual style and wanna experience the story. The combat is easy, especially the bosses, so if you're looking for something difficult, this might not be it.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 16 November 2024 23:04 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 22 December 2024 12:33 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:37 |
| Steam reviews | 22 December 2024 09:45 |
Online players
11
Developer
Black Mermaid
Publisher
Humble Games
Release
27 Sep 2022
Platforms
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