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Short but sweet cyberpunkish mystery adventure!

Lunacity is a little game. It may be' imperfect, but pretty! Very pretty, and also rather fun to play!

But first, what is Lunacity? It's a detective story that fuses sci-fi and a sort of cyberpunk setting with mistery and supernatural added to it! But I won't spoil you the fun to play this game, let's just say that the adventure involves a murder, and our protagonist, Jia, is an agent that will investigate this crime.

Anyway this is just the main quest. there are some extra (partially optional) side quest that consist in finding and collecting some items (scattered around the scenarios) or hunting criminals quest (that is a particular reapetable quest): the collecting quest will provide some money and a couple of special items that are necessary to finish the main quest (but if my calculations are correct you just need to complete one of the two), while until criminals will get you money.


Jia is our special agent and protagonist! See this nice portrait and charset!

Yes, money... we need money because we need upgrades! There are two kind of items: the equippable instruments that give a temporary bonus (that means as long as they are equipped), and consumables. Unlike most other games, consumables aren't just healing items but also pills that give permanent bonus to various skills possesed by Jia. These skills go from mechanics to persuasion and lockpicking, and are used to unlock some routes. Sometimes you have more than one choice, for example you can unlock the door or persuade someone to give you the key.

So the main game consists in exploration, finding items and talking to people. It's a short game but with nice locations and sprites and an unusual side view perspective that makes this game apparently similar to Alter Àila Genesis (side view + cyberpunk aestetic).
Anyway this is a different kind of game, but despite the exploration and investigation parts, Lunacity includes combat and not the usual Atb combst already seen in many other games.

Jia will fight on her hoverbike, and since she's an agent she is armed with her service pistol, while the opponents (thieves, for the most time) will just attempt to escape hoping to see her crashing against one of the many obstacles scattered on the road. But Jia has some special abilities like healing and shield. But things are not easy for our agent because she cannot let the opponent escape AND she must capture and arrest them, avoiding killings! This makes the real time combat both unusual, frenetic and interesting, and even if there is almost no variation (only two enemy types, and really similar background) the game is short enough that combat never feels too repetitive or boring.


This is combat. You have to pursue enemies on the hoverbike and arrest (not kill!) them. Except for the final boss, but... play and see!


Verdict
There isn't much else I could day without spoiling the game. The adventure of our detective is short amd simple but well written (I also found no typos or bugs). Real time combat is an unusual but welcomed addition to this little investigative adventure and fits well. The second feature I liked very much was the skill system, and the final result is a sort of retro adventure game that would only benefit by one thing: adding more. I mean more enemies, dialogues, characters and quests.
Still, this is a pleasant experience and an original mini-destctive-game.

So good! 4/5 for the original ideas, pretty nice graphics and easy but still enjoyable gameplay.

Posts

Pages: 1
Ocean
Resident foodmonster
11991
Woo, glad you enjoyed! Yeah I want to someday extend this and flesh it out and work on the ideas that worked, so I'm glad it is still enjoyed for what it is! Thanks for playing it!
Oh yeah, it may be a prototype, still I liked a lot the graphics. Setting is interesting, original...and it is complete too.
Pages: 1