Welcome to the world Clayborne, to a world where the Moon hungers for your suffering, where doppelgangers of you want the right to live, to be their own, and where the line between what is human and once was has been destroyed. To a world, The Sculptor has destroyed.
You awaken as Grey Irma, a Clayborne with no memory of what came before, nor of what is happening now. You’ve been forsaken by your comrades for sins you don’t remember and your Ichor pains. All you know is that you have to find The Sculptor to get your answers. So begins your journey across a desolate, desperate world beyond the brink of ruin. A journey that will test you to your limits.
Developed by Black Mermaid, Moonscars is a 2D Souls-like set in a broken, decrepit and desperate Gothic world with a massive emphasis on fast combat and an unhinged narrative that slowly unravels around you.
When your kingdom falls. . .
Like most Souls-likes, Moonscars presents you with a world already in its death throes and a narrative that is more obscure than most. The game throws dialogue at you that is heavy with vagueness and while there aren’t in-depth lore descriptions on items to pad out the world, Moonscars dialogue is initially vague and somewhat pretentious in its obtuseness. But as you travel deeper into this world, the dots slowly start to connect and present an intriguing tale of madness and despair.
Slathered in a monochromatic colour palette of popping greys and black, spattered with vibrant red as blood splatters, Moonscars is a visual aesthetic masterpiece of a world that, I would say, lay on the brink of insanity if the continental shelf hadn’t already tipped on over. Black Mermaids 2D and pixel art are vibrantly gorgeous even with its muted colour palette. The world disappears into the background, layering different parts of the landscape on top of one another, letting you see the extent of the devastation around you.
Meanwhile, the foreground is host to some of the most gorgeous 2D animations you’re ever going to see while the area around you is awash with debris. The quality of the animations is beyond superb, right down to the smallest detail such as the way Grey Irma’s body moves as she breathes, along with the plumes of breath that flows from between her lips. The particle effects as blood is shed across the landscape are gorgeous.
One truly stunning effect is the use of reflections in the bodies of water that litter the world. Whether it’s the lakes beyond the castle walls or the puddles within, there are some fantastic reflection effects on display. This is also a wonderful juxtaposition to the mirrors in the world that have no reflections at all, acting as they do as portals that suck up everything around them.
Parry your heart out
More traditional though, is Moonscars Souls-like design. Combat follows the tried and tested method of death and repetition for victory. But unlike most Soul games, Moonscars combat is much faster-paced. Encounters usually pit you against three or more enemies at a time with the only thing keeping you from death being your skill. Thankfully the developers have made sure that Irma is more than up to the task with an assortment of offensive capabilities including combos, power attacks, ground and air dashes, an assortment of secondary weapons each with its own perks to choose from and a fantastic parry system that will mean the difference between life and death.
Each enemy, including bosses, has a tell just before they attack and if you can catch them in a parry when that happens you can counter their moves, negate damage, knock them back and deal some critical damage at the same time. However, the timing window is different for each enemy as well, meaning you have to pay attention to their animations to get that window down pat. And you’ll really want to because enemies do an insane amount of damage. You can lose anywhere from half to two-thirds of your health bar in one attack. Death is always close on Irma’s heels.
Added to your physical attacks are Witcheries, essentially spells you can use that consume Ichor. Think of Ichor as Mana that is replenished through combat or when using a mirror. Witcheries are learned at the mirrors and you can only have two equipped at any one time. They range from shooting rocks to creating friendly Doppelgangers of yourself. The cost to use them though is quite excessive and since Ichor is also used to heal you, there’s a bit of strategy required as to whether or not you want to take the chance on throwing out a Doppelganger or keeping your Ichor in reserve for when you need to heal.
One of the game’s thematic ideas is constantly thrown at you whenever you use a mirror. Mirrors act as portals to a safe space where you can buy accessories. Each time you use one to warp to this area though, you shed your old clay, leaving a Doppelganger of you behind who has your abilities and the secondary weapon that you have to reclaim. By, essentially, killing yourself.
Death is only the beginning
When you die, and you will, you will be respawned at the last mirror you used while the bone powder you collected from defeated enemies will remain at your grave. Unlike other Souls games though, the bone powder is used to buy accessories and to learn new Witcheries. The traditional Souls way of levelling is absent here, instead increasing Irma’s health or Ichor levels permanently with item pickups.
Another system that can make a difference in a fight is that with each enemy killed, you fill up a bar at the top of the screen which, lets you choose from a handful of character buffs such as increased critical percentages and healing. The buffs can be stacked as well but each filling of the bar results in lower points from enemies to do so.
Moonscars also takes a world state cue from the Souls series. Death drops you into a crimson Moon state, in which enemies are harder to kill and do more damage but drop more bone powder. You can sacrifice an Ichor gland at a mirror to satiate the Moon’s hunger and drop back to a white Moon state, until the next time that you die.
Where Moonscars does falter for me, isn’t in its enthralling, challenging combat, but rather in its difficulty itself. While I expect a challenge from anything Souls-inspired, Moonscars design and enemy placement felt somewhat on the cheap side. Most encounters lock you in spiked-filled rooms with multiple enemies, expecting you to do a delicate dance of death while leaving you little room for movement or even time to parry. Most of the time, you’re usually dropped in the middle of a group of enemies. Perseverance will see you through, but it’s a design template that is more the norm rather than the exception. And with, usually, only two hits before you peg, it feels more like punishment than challenging design and was responsible for more than a couple of rage quits on my part.
Right now Moonscars, on console at least, also has some bug and performance issues. I’ve had multiple crashes to the Switch’s desktop, especially during fights that seemed to throw about multiple enemies and alpha effects. As well there were moments when Irma would get stuck in an animation frame for a couple of seconds and some hitching and lag in fights.
Even with these issues, Moonscars still has that “one more time” feeling going for it. And when you do make it through a section or defeat a troublesome boss, it feels like a sense of accomplishment rather than exhaustively praising the sun that you don’t have to do that again. Couple that feeling of accomplishment with its interesting narrative and the gorgeously animated world and Moonscars is a 2D Souls-like you really need in your life.
Developer: Black Mermaid
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, MORE
Publishers: Humble Bundle, Humble Bundle Inc.
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