Furry character switching metroidvania about fighting a virus invasion inside the body of a giant celestial world turtle? Sounds like a fun time.
From the team that made the wonderful little metroidvania Vision Soft Reset, about strict time limits and jumping through a branching timeline, Moonlight Pulse doesn’t retread old steps or leave itself without a unique feature. In this game, you play as a team of little critters called Curative Agents, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and abilities.
You start off as Silex, a mole critter who hits super hard and can deal with most enemies early on quite efficiently, and eventually find your way crossing paths with the water fox Laguna (does this technically make this a fox game? I’m gonna say it does.) when he saves your bacon when you’re in a pickle. From there the character swapping shenanigans start.
Silex hits hard, but is melee only, whereas Laguna’s attacks are more of a tickle, but are ranged, so good for taking out enemies that Silex struggles with, and thats just the beginning. As the story progresses, each character unlocks their own moves, and so you have to start considering when to use and switch characters during the gameplay. Once you unlock Laguna’s dash move, he becomes a lot more mobile than Silex, and the other characters, Charlotte the sheep, and Clyde the dog, also have their own distinct movesets and attacks to help navigate through Aorasque. Charlotte has a high damage electric whip that she uses to grapple ledges and hit hard, but only when you get the spacing right and hit right at the tip. Clyde has a high DPS flame thrower at the cost of reduced mobility.
Aorasque is not only the world our little critters inhabit, and the world thats under threat from a powerful parasite infestation, they are a giant living breathing organism. A celestial world turtle. Each of the locales you visit are different parts of Aorasque’s body, and their blood vessels become fast travel for you to navigate around faster, as well as obstacles to navigate around, leading to some interesting routing puzzles. The parasite invasion has blocked shortcuts and prevent the use of blood vessels until they are cleared, as well as try and attack the Curative Agents.
Each agent has a relatively small health pool. Each only being able to take 3-5 hits against powerful enemies, but as the team grows and the critters bond with eachother, you extend your pool of revives. If you would take a fatal blow, another party member will take the hit for you, leaving you at 1HP and out of commission for a small moment (for the player, this involves automatically swapping to another party member.) Once you’re out of rescues though, any character falling is a game over.
Overall a very cute and slightly creepy little game with a wonderful cast of characters who grow and get better as the story progresses. A world I enjoyed exploring and fighting for, and a very interesting end of the world plot on a rare scale where what that means is understandable, and made all the more effective by a short arc about 2/3 of the way through the story. Absolutely give it a go!
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2243250 £9.99 (Demo available)
Itch.io: https://seafloorgames.itch.io/moonlight-pulse $11.99
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