Moonscars Preview

Moonscars is a Metroidvania title coming soon to all platforms and even coming to Gamepass on day one. The developer of this game is not famous, but the publisher is Humble Games, which always surprises us with great independent games once in a while. They just recently released the game Midnight Express. Moonscars also seem to be special creation for us, indie lovers.

At first glance, this game shows off its dark and sad artistic graphics. The setting is similar to the Castlevania series, but it is much darker than that. The game is full of cold colors, scary shadows, and silhouette images. Even the hero of the game has a dark appearance. There is a lot of blood and gore in the game. In general, it seems that we will experience an extremely dark fantasy.

The game is a 2D action game at its core, which is naturally not linear due to being Metroidvania. Exploration and fighting with enemies are the main gameplay here. In combat, you have the usual basic moves of a hack and slash title in your arsenal. Such as basic attack, charge attack, dash, parry, and other things like that. Moonscars is supposed to have a flavor similar to Souls-like games. So numerous deaths and learning from your mistakes is essential. You also gain more skills over time to face tougher enemies.

So far, no lengthy trailer has been released to explain the features of the game. But for a limited time, a demo version of it was available. You could finish it in less than half an hour. From this demo, we found out that the game’s motion graphics cut scenes are not voiced, at least for now. Of course, during the gameplay, they also see human and animal characters who have silent dialogues too. But unlike the lack of voice acting, the music tracks will be rich. In trailers and the demo, we have heard atmospheric music that perfectly matches the environment.

Gameplay-wise, the main character gains energy by killing enemies, and there are places called dark mirrors that save your progress and restore your life bar. Also, you can learn new spells. You require magic not only to fight but also to solve puzzles.

As in Souls-like games, you get points by killing enemies, which is called Bone Powder instead of Soul. If you get killed, the powder you collected remains at the site of your death until you return to the place from the location of the last dark mirror and pick it up. Other than this powder, you get Spite points for killing each enemy. If you die, you lose part of it forever. When this score reaches a certain level, you can choose an upgrade for the hero from among three options. Another way to become powerful is to buy different items from vendors.

We are eagerly looking forward to this game. But more than its gameplay mechanisms, its terrifying atmosphere has captivated us. Moonscars will release on Sep 27, 2022.