Space Moth: Lunar Edition

Space Moth: Lunar Edition; a bullet hell shooter with an interesting take on the genre. + Great scoring system. + Good control. + Nice presentation. + Simple to learn though very difficult to master. + Longevity, keeps you coming back for more. + Sort of a love letter to Musihimesama. - No tate mode.

Bad game with a few cool scoring mechanics. Stages are REALLY boring, there are multiple sections where, for over a minute, the same 1 or 2 basic enemies appear in ~5 second intervals and shoot a very simple basic shot until you kill them. At least in the last stage (5th) it gets a bit harder, but it doesn't really make up for the other four. The bosses have nice visual designs but the attack patterns are not good. I got the impression that when the developers were testing this and they got the feedback that something was "too easy", their solution was to just add more projectiles and clutter rather than making fun to dodge patterns. Every static shot is easy and every random shot has a ton of clutter, neither variant looks good nor feels fun to dodge. The thing I am shocked by the most is that no one in the reviews bothered to bring up that throughout the entire game only ONE SINGLE SONG plays on loop. For a genre that is known for its great soundtracks, having a single song play throughout the stages and boss fights - and one that isn't very good (... or fitting, for a laser-moth-shooting game) - is awful. So what is left for a shooting game with unfun stages, boring boss attack patterns, a single song playing throughout the entire game, no dialogue and no story? A bit of nice visual design and a few neat mechanics related to scoring. Is a game like this worth trying to land a high score in? No. *Unrelated to the actual game, but I wanted to investigate some of the positive reviews. Let's start with the three listed in the store description: The first one, by "Two Beard Gaming", is hosted on a website that is now for sale (review unavailable). The second one, by "Xbox Tavern", has the author say: "[...] my limited skill set has only let me get to the third boss out of five so far[...]" while also saying "If you’re a fan of the genre or just curious to try a title like this out, you won’t find much better than this.”. So he got halfway through the game and says its one of the best ones. lol. The third one, by "Six One Indie", leads to a dead page, but the site is still alive (review seems unavailable). Continuing on that "can't beat the game but says its really good" trend, let's look at the positive reviews on steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Sysg3n/stats/1570500/?tab=achievements Used a continue on stage 1, beat stage 1, beat stage 2, died. Positive review. https://steamcommunity.com/id/blackholeartist/stats/1570500/?tab=achievements Used a continue on stage 1, beat stage 1, died. Positive review. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198136975055/stats/1570500/?tab=achievements Used a continue on stage 1, beat stage 1, beat stage 2, beat stage 3, died. Positive review. Calls it "One of the best SHMUPS on PC". These are 'only' 3 examples, but there are also 'only' 20 positive reviews, and not everyone has their game details public. "Person who hasn't beaten the game leaves a positive review" is, in most cases, pretty normal, especially for longer games. However, this game is only twenty minutes long, and I can't really figure out what otherworldly things happen in the first half of the game that can compel people to claim that this is one of the best SHMUPs ever made when there are hundreds of games in the genre that will generate more excitement in you within their first stage than this game will generate throughout its entire length.

This game has a complex scoring system with lots of different ways to score and a focus on risk versus reward. The bullet patterns are interesting and the gameplay is good! It also works with my Saturn USB pad without issue. However, this is NOT a beginner's game. I've played a lot of shmups, and this one is quite difficult. There is only one difficulty level, and the the only way to make the game easier is to ignore the scoring system altogether. Star Hunter DX, by the same developer, is another good game with an interesting scoring system, but it's a little easier for beginners (but still pretty hard).

I wasn't a big fan of Space Moth DX, but this. This is some good stuff. Here's a brief video review. https://youtu.be/hjXi-goErx8

[h1] Unusual shoot'em up where you fly through various insect infested biomes. Make enemies angry and suck their souls while collecting skulls. Bigger skulls equals higher bonus. Plays decent, music is good. Pixelated and colorful art style. You gonna be tripping balls on this one. [/h1]

As someone with a deep love for shmups and Mothra you can imagine just how big of a grin I had on my face when I saw that one of the achievements in this game bears the name of our beloved Queen. Space Moth: Lunar Edition is an excellent shmup with an outstanding aesthetic, mesmerizing soundtrack, and a very interesting scoring system which results in a rather peculiar way of handling difficulty. Space Moth: Lunar Edition doesn't have a difficulty select in a traditional sense, instead difficulty comes directly from how you play, and more importantly: how you score. To put things into perspective: it took me several dozen dedicated attempts to acquire the "The Professional" achievement ("Score over 12,000,000 points"), but once I had that it only took me another two attempts to successfully complete a 1CC run. If you ignore scoring in its entirety, Space Moth isn't actually all that difficult (though bullet patterns can occasionally still get a little tight, especially with bosses). But once you start playing for score, this game can be incredibly unforgiving. Scoring requires specific use of your wide-shot, focus-shot, and special. When you attack an enemy with your wide-shot two things happen: you drain its soul (giving it a more aggressive bullet pattern), and you charge up Skull Mode (your special weapon which allows you to cancel bullets into scoring items). Additionally, if you kill any larger soul-drained enemy with your focus-shot, you get a huge scoring bonus. So to score you first attack using your wide-shot to drain souls and charge up your special, then use your special to acquire scoring items, and then use your focus-shot to kill to get the final scoring bonus. Only medium and large enemies can be soul-drained though, so you can use your wide-shot to kill smaller popcorn enemies when needed to build up Skull Mode. Then comes the multiplier; and oh boy do things get fun from here because is it unusually punishing to maintain. See, Skull Mode is the only way you can increase your multiplier (which starts at 1X and goes all the way up to 24X; a big deal then). The good news is that you do not need to maintain a chain to keep the multiplier (i.e. there's no natural drain over time and you're not required to keep killing enemies to maintain it). The bad news is that dying cancels the multiplier instantly from 24X all the way down to 1X (even if you've still got a healthy number of extends), and even bombing results in a multiplier penalty (a 24X multiplier can drop down to about 16-18X on bomb depending on how many enemies it hits). Thus a perfect scoring run pretty much requires a no-miss no-bomb run for the entirety of the game. It really is brutal. Brutal and frustrating it may be, but what an immense amount of fun it is; because once you have several large enemies on your screen at once, what you want to do is to soul-drain each of them with your wide-shot without killing them (which means you're now in giga bullet hell with more aggressive patterns since they're all alive), before activating Skull Mode and then picking them out one-by-one with focus-shot. What this does mean though is that you can actually treat the scoring system in Space Moth kinda as an at-will dynamic difficulty system because it is entirely up to you on how aggressively you want to score each and every second of the game. And thus when things really start to get messy you can choose to just say "eff it," kill everything, and back off for a few moments to catch your breath and regain momentum. It's frankly brilliant and there's an immense amount of strategy which goes into how to score. And while I've already mentioned Space Moth's outstanding soundtrack in the opening of my review I really do need to mention it one final time because it's absolutely sublime. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of music when I purchased this game, but it is seriously a match made in heaven. It's not quite as up-beat as what you'd expect from a shmup, and in many ways it actually has quite a serious undertone to it; but it has an immense amount of synergy with the game, and more importantly: it's there to make you focus. It puts you into a rather specific trance; one which shifts your brain into that deep hyper-focused state to analyse every single second and pixel of the game to dodge and score to the best of your ability. Thank you so much for this outstandingly beautiful game; and thank you so much for giving moths the attention and recognition they deserve as they are truly such breathtaking, wondrous, and mysterious little beings. I would have never in my wildest dreams ever imagined that I'd one day be able to pilot what is essentially a miniature Mothra in the one video game genre I hold dearest to my heart. Thank you!~ <3

I've just started playing the Lunar Edition of Space Moth and it is a top tier indie shmup in my opinion. The scoring system is super simple and engaging for beginners and the skill ceiling seems high enough for most die hard fans of the genre. It also has a tate mode for us vertical monitor users (I do wish the game supported portrait resolutions, but thats only a slight inconvenience).

Ça faisait vraiment longtemps que je n’avais plus eu l’occasion de tester un shoot’em up, surtout un vertical. Je me suis donc rué sur Space Moth : Lunar Edition dès que je l’ai vu passer ! Dans ce jeu développé par 1CC Games (j’adore ce nom), vous allez diriger un papillon qui essaie de rejoindre la lune alors que des hordes d’insectes font tout pour l’en empêcher. Heureusement, pour vous frayer un chemin vous pourrez compter sur plusieurs armes : votre tir principal, peu puissant mais couvrant une large surface, votre laser, bien plus efficace et permettant de ralentir les déplacements pour esquiver plus facilement les tirs ennemis et enfin une bombe pour éliminer tous les tirs présents à l’écran. Autre mécanique de défense, utiliser le tir principal fera peu à peu grossir un cercle autour de votre papillon. Dès qu’il se mettra à clignoter, vous pourrez déclencher votre pouvoir spécial qui remplacera les tirs qui pénètrent dans le cercle par des crânes dorés rapportant beaucoup de points. Le jeu est très abordable si vous jouez juste pour le plaisir sans chercher le record de points. Le pouvoir spécial et les bombes permettent de gérer les situations compliquées et avec un peu d’entraînement vous devriez pouvoir boucler les 5 niveaux sans trop de problème. Par contre dès que vous souhaiterez commencer à scorer le jeu deviendra bien plus difficile car vous devrez “énerver” les ennemis en leur tirant dessus avec le tir principal, attendre qu’ils changent de couleur et arrosent l’écran pour ensuite les achever avec le laser et obtenir un gros bonus. C’est vraiment malin et ça offre un excellent sentiment de progression au joueur qui va pouvoir s’améliorer petit à petit en optimisant chaque passage. Pour être honnête je ne savais pas à quoi m’attendre avec Space Moth : Lunar Edition. Je n’avais jamais joué à la version de base et graphiquement je trouvais les couleurs un peu trop criardes à mon goût. Mais une fois en jeu c’était tout simplement génial. Les patterns sont variés, les boss impressionnants, le système de scoring est intéressant, le seul bémol que je relèverais se situe au niveau de la bande-son que j’ai trouvée peu entrainante. Mais si vous cherchez un bon shmup vertical sur PC vous pouvez foncer, d’autant plus qu’il gère le mode tate si jamais vous possédez un écran qui pivote ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4CTKXmK3zY

I can honestly recommend this game just for the aesthetic but good god is it hard. Level 2 defeated me, hopefully I will come back and somehow have gotten better at this game.

前作プレイ＆クリア済みです。 前作から敵の攻撃を激しくして、天の季節開放的なシステムを搭載したリメイクバージョン。 中型機をショットで攻撃すると暗転（ソウルドレイン）して、レーザーでトドメを刺すとボーナスがもらえる点は同様。 見た目は弾幕系で派手にはなったものの、肝心の敵配置が雑で、ほとんどの場面で雑魚群と中型機のどちらかが順番に出てくるだけと単調だったり、ボス戦も攻撃が単調でひたすら地味なのがマイナス。 開放で中型機に接近して弾消し稼ぎしつつ、倍率を上げていくのは面白い点だったので、 雑魚と中型機をほどよく混ぜて、ショットで雑魚を散らしてゲージを貯め、 中型機に開放を当てて弾消し稼ぎしながら処理していく、といったデザインであったなら、 もっと面白いゲームになっていたと思う。 一度クリアしたらもういいかな、という感じ。