Strong Moon Review

Strong Moon tells the story of the titular protagonist as he explores Lunaria’s planet in order to find his brother who was kidnapped by a deranged magician and his gang of evil cronies. Explore the areas to find power-ups to become stronger to withstand whatever the evildoers are willing to throw your way.

Strong Moon is a 2D action platformer where our hero can explore the vast areas of Lunaria to discover secrets and conquer bosses. Our protagonist can do straight punches, uppercuts, and Flash kick-like attacks. The protagonist can also jump on two folds. Lightly pressing the jump button will have him do a normal jump whereas holding it down will make our pale hero jump as if gravity doesn’t exist.

As you successfully kill enemies, you’re rewarded with Moon essence that can be used by speaking with specific NPCs to get additional health packs for example. You can also find bandages throughout the various areas that will instantly refill one health bar; while the health packs can be used at any time. Although both beneficial items are extremely rare.

The game has a Metroidvania-lite appeal to it as when you arrive in a new area, you need to explore it in order to find and punch flashing lights in order to open a new door allowing you to progress further. Health can be upgraded… if you can manage to overcome the game’s poor execution caused by its flaws.

This brings me to the game’s biggest issue: combat. It’s clunky and just not fun to use; the reach for Strong Moon’s attack is very short meaning that you need to be very close to enemies to deal out damage, but in turn, you’ll take damage before they do. Also when hit, you get bounced back, which is annoying, especially when fighting rats because when you hit them, they keep moving toward you while you get pushed away. Also, why delegate ducking to the RB button? Not really intuitive especially when fighting smaller enemies such as the aforementioned rats.

The game looks fine for what it is. Areas differ greatly in style to avoid repetition, although character movements look clunky and more robotic than anything; this is weird to say, but this clearly has a look of a first game project from amateur developers. I’ve seen one-man-developed games that were more fluid than this. The soundtrack is annoying and completely uninspired.

Strong Moon feels like the final project of a high schooler. The core of it is promising, rough around the edges, but everything else is poorly executed including the most important part: the clunky and barely functioning combat. While the exploration is interesting, given that you need combat to survive, it completely brings down the game. Had it been an exploration, combat-less game, I could’ve recommended it, but as of now, this is an easy pass. Don’t waste your time and money on this game.