Moonscars on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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 pixel graphics 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 1,178 reviews of which 982 were positive and 196 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.9 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 8.88€ on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Moonscars into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
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
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This project was created out of love for the soulslike genre. Short 2D game immediately captivated me with its dark and atmospheric style. Moonscars utilizes a minimal color palette. A muted range of dark grays accented by red, creating a unique charm. The game's artist drew inspiration from the oil paintings of Old Dutch Masters like Rembrandt. Each frame of animation was hand-drawn, resulting in highly detailed pixel art. The protagonist, whom we play as, is Grey Irma. She is a knight of a special order. The game has good combat with an emphasis on parrying. There is standard attack, strong attack, special attack, skill, a dodge roll (dash), amulets, and various buffs. The healing system is quite unique: dealing damage to enemies fills a mana bar, which can then be used for spells or healing. This makes the gameplay dynamic and encourages an aggressive playstyle. Instead of bonfires, there are mirrors; instead of souls, there's bone dust. There are not many bosses, but each one is unique and interesting. Almost everyone has a second phase. Frequent deaths will trigger a Blood Moon, increasing enemy damage – a hardcore modifier of sorts. But it can be dispelled using hearts scattered throughout the levels. Moonscars is about a Lost Soul searching for its creator and the meaning of its own existence in this world. Each death serves as a lesson. We break and rise again, putting ourselves back together piece by piece. It's a story of betrayal, suffering, and revenge; a journey of trials and tribulations to become a great warrior. As Osho said, "To rise, you must fall; to gain, you must lose." I had fun fighting under the moonlight accompanied by atmospheric music. It's a shame the project lacked a bit of time and funding. I'd give it an 8/10.
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A decent souls-like metroidvania, this game’s greatest strength lies in its unique art style, which includes some neat player and enemy animations. There are a some places where the art really shines, but many of the game’s areas look quite bland. The controls feel good, which could have led to satisfying combat if the enemies were a bit more interesting. Aside from bosses, most enemies literally have a single move or combo, so once you learn the parry timing, it’s basically over for them. For the most part, the gameplay is what you’d expect from a souls-like metroidvania with good responsive controls. But it also introduces a few unique mechanics. I’m not the biggest fan of these, though. The way healing works makes the game fairly trivial, yet the occasional death can still be punishing since you can lose buffs gained by leveling up. But even losing part of your strength isnt enough to make this game seriously challenging. However, one neat feature is the option to have a “bloodmoon” mode(Moonhunger), which makes enemies stronger but also offers greater rewards. Compared to metroidvania titles like Hollow Knight, Grime or even Blasphemous, this game’s scope is quite small. There are only a handful of areas, a few bosses, and limited ways to build your character. A first playthrough might only take 5-10 hours, even if you explore every corner. While the game doesn’t do anything terribly wrong and provides a decently fun experience, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it when there are many better alternatives available.
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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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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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Last Updates| Steam data | 06 April 2025 02:04 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 07 April 2025 01:16 |
| Steam price | 14 April 2025 04:36 |
| Steam reviews | 13 April 2025 12:04 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Moonscars, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Moonscars
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Moonscars concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Moonscars compatibility
Online players
5
Developer
Black Mermaid
Publisher
Humble Games
Release
27 Sep 2022
Platforms
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