Lunarium Review Summary

Praised for its art style, satisfying combat, and excellent exploration, but hampered by sluggish movement, stiff combat, and bugs.

Art style praised consistently: Across multiple clusters, players consistently praise the game's art style as exquisite, beautiful, and a strong selling point. The hand-painted, ethereal atmosphere and visual consistency are frequently highlighted as the game's biggest strength.

Combat systems highly satisfying: The combat is repeatedly described as great, satisfying, fluid, and impactful, with particular praise for parry and precision dodge mechanics. Players enjoy the tight feedback, sound effects, and the challenge it provides.

Map design and exploration excellent: The map design is praised for being well-connected, layered, and encouraging exploration. Players find navigating the map comfortable and the verticality adds depth, making exploration an interesting and fun part of the game.

Music and soundtrack beautiful: The music and soundtrack receive strong praise across clusters, described as beautiful, pleasant, and well done, with some highlighting excellence in later areas. The audio contributes significantly to the overall atmosphere.

Boss fights diverse and memorable: Boss fights are consistently praised for their diversity, engaging mechanics, and memorable encounters. Each boss has unique movesets and phase mechanics, providing a satisfying challenge that showcases the game's features.

Combat feels sluggish and stiff: Players consistently report that combat and movement lack fluidity, feeling clunky and stiff. This issue affects the overall game feel, making actions like attacking and moving seem dragging and slow.

Multiple bugs present in game: A significant number of bugs are reported, ranging from minor issues to more serious ones, including at launch and post-release. Some bugs are game-blocking, while others are just numerous small glitches that reduce the overall polish.

Movement is slow and clunky: Movement speed is slow and running controls are not well designed, making movement feel clunky and unpleasant. This affects navigation and combat, leading to frustration.

Parry timing is unreliable: The parry mechanic is frequently criticized for its strict timing, delayed response, and poor feedback, making it hard to execute successfully. Players find the timing windows too short and often inconsistent with enemy animations.

Controls feel sticky and stiff: Controls are described as sticky, clunky, and lacking freedom, which affects both movement and actions. This issue is present even in story mode, indicating a fundamental control problem.

Parry and dodge combat: The core combat heavily emphasizes parry and dodge mechanics, with a focus on precise timing and counter-attacks. Players are encouraged to adopt a parry-based playstyle.

Souls-like genre blend: The game is frequently described as a 2.5D or top-down souls-like, combining the challenging combat and progression of the genre with a distinct perspective. This genre fusion is a defining characteristic.

Top-down action RPG: The game is primarily an isometric or top-down action RPG, which shapes the gameplay and exploration. The perspective is consistently highlighted in reviews.

Exploration and progression: The game is a story-driven adventure that prioritizes map exploration as a core activity. This is supported by chapter-based progression and a day/night cycle that alters the game world.

Story mode difficulty: A dedicated story mode or easy difficulty option is included to make the game more accessible to a wider audience. This allows players to experience the narrative without the high challenge.

Frame drops and stuttering: Several clusters mention severe frame drops and stuttering in specific maps, during late game, and in certain areas like forests, mountains, and large scenes with multiple enemies. This indicates performance issues are content-dependent.

Various bugs reported: The game has numerous small bugs, visual glitches, and some major ones like unresponsive enemies, black screens, and UI freezing. Many are not game-breaking but add frustration, while some require reloading or restarting the game.

Steam Deck performance issues: Multiple clusters report significant frame rate drops on Steam Deck, especially in areas with water effects, debuffs, and many enemies, with FPS dropping to around 20-30. The game also suffers from stuttering and high fan speed on this device.

General optimization lacking: Several clusters state that the game needs better optimization, with performance being worse than expected for a 2D-style isometric game. These issues are reported across different hardware, indicating a broader optimization problem.

Game freezes and crashes: There are reports of the game freezing, becoming unresponsive, and crashing, forcing players to reload or restart. This indicates stability issues that interrupt gameplay experience.

Highly recommended by players: The game receives broad positive recommendations, with reviewers urging friends and others to play it. The sentiment is consistently favorable across multiple clusters.

Genre fans will enjoy: Fans of souls-like, metroidvania, and action RPG genres find the game appealing. The combat mechanics and customization options resonate well with genre enthusiasts.

Worth its price: Reviewers consider the game worth its price, with some recommending it even at full price. The cost-to-content ratio is frequently highlighted as a strong point.

Art and story appeal: Many reviewers highlight the game's unique art style and emotional narrative as major draws, recommending it to players who appreciate these aspects. The hand-drawn visuals and story-driven gameplay are consistently praised.

Bugs hinder recommendation: Several reviewers recommend waiting until bugs are fixed before purchasing, citing persistent technical issues. They believe the game could be better with improvements to quality of life.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $20.00.

Game completion: 17.0h.

Story completion: 10.0h.

The game starts slowly with simple mechanics and boring early encounters, but becomes highly engaging after progressing past the first area or unlocking the Rutila Blade, with combat opening up and power spikes making it more fun.

Reported time to anchor: 3h.

Friction: Boring early bosses and mobs; Slow start with simple mechanics; Trash pacing due to small damage windows and ranged attack focus; Confusing keybindings (heal and return on same key); Backtracking and difficulty finding loot; Unclear tutorial leading to getting lost.

Unlock drivers: Unlocking the Rutila Blade; Progressing past the first area; Unlocking skill tree and personalization options; Combat becomes more detailed with more options; Build variety and character progression.

Soulslike Combat Enthusiast: Focuses on parrying, blocking, and learning enemy attack patterns; enjoys the satisfying feel of precise execution. Motivation: Mastering parry timing and overcoming challenging combat encounters. Stance: buy.

Atmosphere Appreciator: Explores at a leisurely pace, enjoys scenery and ambient storytelling, uses the game as a relaxing escape. Motivation: Immersion in the game's beautiful art, music, and serene atmosphere. Stance: buy.

Value-Conscious Pragmatist: Cautious buyer who waits for patches or discounts; evaluates game based on price per hour and quality. Motivation: Getting good value for money balanced with fun gameplay, while being wary of bugs and content length. Stance: sale.

Performance varies significantly by VRAM: low-VRAM systems suffer from stutter and lag, mid-range is mostly stable, and limited data for 8-11GB shows a notable framerate issue.

Windows <8GB VRAM: mixed. Inconsistent optimization; many players report stuttering, lag, and resource-loading problems even when recommending the game.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: positive. Generally smooth performance with only minor complaints about combat feel and dialogue stutters; one blocking bug reported.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: mixed. Limited evidence: a single recommended review describes severe slideshow when limiting framerate to 72 FPS.

Steam Deck: The game runs inconsistently on Steam Deck. Significant frame drops and stuttering occur in larger areas, and excessive loading screens for minor actions disrupt flow. A cloud save sync issue was also noted, though infrequently reported. Some users find it playable at 40-50fps, but others deem it unplayable. Overall, the experience requires manual adjustments and tolerance for technical hiccups.

Linux and Proton: The game runs on Steam Deck (Linux via Proton) but experiences performance drops and inconsistent frame rates, especially in areas with water. No critical blockers like crashes or anti-cheat were noted, and the game remains playable for most users.

External guides: User feedback indicates no reliance on external resources; the game provides clear in-game directions for quests, exploration, and collection. The Wiki Tax is minimal.

Frequent updates and patches: Players consistently praise the developer for releasing updates almost daily and actively fixing bugs. This responsive approach to maintenance and improvement is highly appreciated by the community.

Game length around a dozen hours: Many players report the game takes about 10-15 hours to complete, with some saying 15-20 hours for full completion. The length is generally viewed as reasonable for the type of game.

First work from new studio: Reviewers often mention that this is the studio's debut title, from a small indie team. This context is used to praise the game's quality and to set expectations.

Great value for price: Players frequently say the game offers a solid experience for its price, even considering it better value than many AAA titles. The amount of content is deemed appropriate for the cost.

Soulslike genre comparisons: The game is often compared to other souls-like titles, with specific references to Dark Souls and the genre's conventions. Some reviewers appreciate its place within the genre.