Lunacity

Lunacity is a futuristic side-scrolling bike racing game with exploration mechanics and a vengeance. It has spunk - it has attitude - it feels a little undercooked. Let me explain. The All Hallows 2013 entry from prolific visual auteurs Ocean and Hirei exclaims, "I am here! I have eye candy!", and a very great amount of interesting envelope-pushers. The side scrolling exploration portion channels Alter AILA, with gorgeous immersive aplomb. However, like many recent side-scrolling RPG Maker games (see Dreaming Mary, Painted Heart), the medium lends itself to a strange yet boring linearity. I am not criticising the side-scrolling RPG genre as a whole (Iji did this fantastically and remains to this day one of the pinnacles of indie gaming), but the uninspired idea that making things side-scrolling automagically makes it cooler or more hip. Possibly due to time constraints, Lunacity leaves a somewhat bad taste in the mouth for having quite limited functionality and much fewer branching paths than its framework seems to suggest.



A game like Lunacity deserves to be fleshed out, to have its horizons expanded largely. What it is now, is brimming with promise. The developers have stated that they intend (and it seems a 50/50) to extend the game to include more quests and a more involved storyline. A game like Lunacity would vastly benefit from such a touch-up. As it is now, it is an interesting foray into a cyberpunk reality mish-mashed with Road Rash and Mass Effect. But I believe this cocktail of systems would go down better if it was served with a side of something simple - more content.

It seems a shallow complaint for a contest game, but if anything one can interpret this as a plea to modify this game into a more pleasing product than it currently is, which is pleasing but ultimately unfulfilling.

I give this high-potential mid-octane futuristic Road Rash mish-mash a 3.5/5.