To say DMA’s Lemmings was a hit in the ‘90s is an understatement. It sold an estimated 20 million copies across over 25 different formats. This success didn’t go unnoticed, with most publishers of the era creating imitations. Diggers, Troddlers, King Arthur’s World, and The Humans are just some that spring to mind. Moons of Darsalon both looks and sounds like it emerged from this period of gaming, with its system of choice being the Commodore 64 – as evidenced by the authentic SID chip tunes and loading screens with alternating pastel stripes.
The keen eye for detail makes for a positive first impression, boasting tidily drawn pixel art and tiny characters, known as Darsanauts, brimming with personality – albeit partly thanks to their random speech bubble musings. It’s your job to guide them to safety, issuing movement commands via the d-pad, taking down bipedal gherkin-like enemies using a laser gun, creating bridges with a ground maker tool, and generally making their paths safe. They follow behind closely, and can climb ladders and leap over small gaps, but won’t attack enemies and need light when underground. They can’t leap from tall heights either, always requiring a soft landing. This makes for a demanding experience, especially when enemy UFO warnings appear.
Moons of Darsalon is pushing neat tech too, including 3D objects pixilated in real-time to make them appear as rendered 2D sprites, in addition to deformable terrane. The sound effects are crunchy and raucous, while enemy encounters are the right side of chaotic; a messy clash of neon lasers, explosions and green goo. The SID chip tunes are funky, sneaking in a few renditions of pop classics, and characters converse with early robotic synthesized speech.
There are a few simpler stages to ease you in, and from thereon new ideas and playthings are introduced every couple of stages, such as vehicles that must be carefully driven from start to end, a ‘lamp gun’ to illuminate dark areas, and a jetpack with limited juice. You may be able to complete a stage on your first attempt by the skin of your teeth, gaining a 1-star rating in the process, but generally, most take multiple attempts as you gradually learn of that stage’s hazards and discover best routes. Max 4-star rankings are tricky to bag, often requiring you to finish stages unscathed while abiding to a tight time limit. Eventually you’ll need a certain star quota to progress, meaning revisiting past stages is highly likely.
The difficulty level is edging more towards retro than modern, and in most cases it’s understandable. There are no checkpoints, meaning if you die at the end of a 15+ minute stage then all that effort will be for nothing. However, it’s hard to understand how a checkpoint system could’ve been implemented as auto-saving could have potentially resulted in no-win situations. To get around this the difficulty is adaptive, in the way that wooden crates will provide health if you’re on death’s door, or ammo for weapons running dry.
That’s not to say Moons of Darsalon doesn’t have a few modern day problems though, leading to mild frustration. While not weak, the main character takes fall damage, and can even be harmed just by shoving wooden boxes out of the way. This makes finishing levels unharmed vastly challenging. A single miss calculated jump can be costly. Additionally, there’s a huge difficulty spike around an hour in, with a lengthy stage that needs to be illuminated with lamps…which can run out, rendering progress impossible. This level also has enemies that can break your bridges, yet the ground making tool again has limited ammo. This stage ended up taking me an entire evening to beat, and even then, it was more about luck. Part of me feels that this stage was tough just to prepare players for the trials ahead, as the remaining levels are better planned out, but I can’t say for certain.
One thing worth mentioning is that upon death you’re often taunted. Not by the enemy that killed you, but rather by the game’s developer. Moons of Darsalon has a peculiar running motif that every Game Over is fair, and that you either aren’t a good enough player to overcome its challenges or that you simply don’t understand how the AI works. Don’t blame the developer, play better. This wouldn’t be so bad if everything here is robust, but glitches did creep in – my interstellar spaceman became snagged on ladders twice, requiring a level reset, and was also once observed bouncing up and down for no reason, taking damage with every faceplant. Even during the tutorial, you’re asked not to complain about jumping being mapped to LT and just to accept that it’s for a reason. Thankfully, controls can be remapped. Still, why not spur players on instead of making them feel inadequate? It does sully things a bit.
Moons of Darsalon offers up a stiff yet satisfying challenge with a few irritations to contend with. It isn’t something that’ll be beaten quickly, especially if you try to see everything. The unique and appealing presentation helps to paper over some of its minor flaws – the developer has clearly put a lot of time and effort into the backdrops, animation, and music to give the experience a one-of-a-kind feel. Being a solo developer, even the use of AI art for large images is just about understandable. It’s recommended to anyone who spent their youth playing some of the games mentioned in the opening paragraph, but it also comes with the caveat that it will make you want to curse. Talk about keeping things authentic to the era – Lemmings also came with a warning of loss of sanity.
Dr. Kucho! Games’ Moons of Darsalon is out 6th Feb on consoles. A PC version is also available.