Space Moth: Lunar Edition on Switch, PS4, Xbox and Steam

[dan76]

Space Moth: Lunar Edition is the reworked and updated version of our first game Space Moth DX.
It's out now on all platforms priced at £5.99 / € 6.99 / $7.99.



JDE and I have updated the scoring, adding the Skull Circle which enhances the original Soul Drain mechanic.
Enemies have new attacks, layouts have been tweaked and the OST enhanced.
We've added YOKO and TATE bezels, scanlines, in-game challenges and an updated practise mode.



Some info about the Skull Circle. This transforms enemy bullets into skulls which builds the multiplier.
The multiplier is applied to all destroyed enemies. Soul Drained enemies are now worth X10 their
base value plus the multiplier. An example:

Butterfly enemy no Soul Drain = 50 points
Butterfly enemy Soul Drained = 500 points
Butterfly enemy Soul Drained at max multiplier (X24) = 12000 points



A couple of early reviews.
Shmups on Switch review
Indie Gaming Guild review
Bullet Heaven review

Space Moth: Lunar Edition has been updated to v1.50 on consoles.

- Fixed: soul drained enemies display was sometimes incorrect
- Fixed: skull circle would sometimes not reset after using a quick restart
- Fixed: player could sometimes skip stages after using a quick restart (no longer a "feature", sorry!)
- Fixed: On Switch scanlines now display properly in docked mode and skull circle is aligned.

The v1.50 update will be out on Steam soon as well, with a few PC specific fixes.

Enjoy!

[banjoted]

I bought this earlier and shall be getting stuck in later!

[Astro City II]

Thanks for making an Xbox version this time dan76, Much appreciated!

I'll give it a try on the weekend.

[To Far Away Times]

Yeah, this looks tight. Congrats on the release. Will buy when I get home.

[AAA]

I put an hour into this last night.
It's great! Fun to control and I like the worldview and music a lot. Still need some practise of course.

[ATTRACTS]

Thanks for putting this out on the Switch. I love Star Hunter and was eager to check out your earlier work. Much like Star Hunter, it runs great on the Switch and is beautiful to look at. Really dig the circle/skull scoring mechanics as well. Keep up the great work!

[banjoted]

Yeah, can confirm that this is absolutely sweet. Not sure I've ever played a shmup before where the scoring mechanic manages to be this simple AND this satisfying. Love it love it love it.

[Christopher7391]

Thanks for making an Xbox version this time dan76. IndigoCard

[To Far Away Times]

I found a "hidden" life in stage 3 along the right hand side of the wall. Very CAVE like. I'm assuming there just might be one in stage 5 too? Are there score based extends?

[Despatche]

This is good news. Hope to check this out in the near future.

[dan76]

Space Moth: Lunar Edition has been updated to v1.50 on consoles.

- Fixed: soul drained enemies display was sometimes incorrect
- Fixed: skull circle would sometimes not reset after using a quick restart
- Fixed: player could sometimes skip stages after using a quick restart (no longer a "feature", sorry!)
- Fixed: On Switch scanlines now display properly in docked mode and skull circle is aligned.

Steam patch arrives in a few days with a few extra PC tweaks. I've updated the OP.

I'll drop a scoring tip as I've not seen it used in vids yet. The multiplier resets at the beginning of each stage but the size of the skull circle doesn't, so try and finish a boss with a large skull circle. This way you can get the multiplier maxed out much earlier - on stage 3 you should be getting max skulls on the first lily.

[Fudoh]

Dan, will we this this updated version of Space Moth on the physical disc/carts coming from SLG ?

[dan76]

Dan, will we this this updated version of Space Moth on the physical disc/carts coming from SLG ?

Unfortunately not, at least I'm pretty sure we've missed the deadline. Obviously this is disappointing, but on the plus side, it was a minor fix for a restart bug, nothing else in terms of gameplay and scoring has been altered. It's not ideal, and we apologise for that.

[Fudoh]

no worries. With SLG's release schedule, I'm almost surprised that there was a deadline for the discs (or carts) already. Good to hear!

[SPM]

Has anyone played this on Switch with the Joy-Con stick? (or any other platform with an analog stick?).

Star Hunter DX felt unresponsive that way and I think it's because the game is too sensitive towards diagonals when using an analog stick (as if the 360º range was split into 30º for vert/hori movements and 60º for diagonals, instead of 45º each which would be closer to a digital stick).

I have to play that game with an arcade stick to enjoy it, and if that's the case here I'd rather get it on Steam. But I want to play it on Switch

[heli]

How do you release a game for PS4 i like to know.

[Jonpachi]

What's the trick to triggering the 1CC achievement? I finished a run with no continues, but was denied this one unlocking on Switch. Maybe I've run into a bug? The final "boss" was just a bullet spew I had to survive for a period of time, and now I'm wondering if there's a TLB I can somehow trigger? I saw a 1CC run on Youtube and it looked identical to my experience. It's a disappointing final encounter if that's really how the game ends.

Also, I heard Mark in his video saying there was a Hard mode? How do you unlock this? I've finished the game a few times (and thought I had 1CC'd it) but nothing has unlocked and there are no difficulty options.

[Jonpachi]

What's the trick to triggering the 1CC achievement? I finished a run with no continues, but was denied this one unlocking on Switch. Maybe I've run into a bug? The final "boss" was just a bullet spew I had to survive for a period of time, and now I'm wondering if there's a TLB I can somehow trigger? I saw a 1CC run on Youtube and it looked identical to my experience. It's a disappointing final encounter if that's really how the game ends.

Also, I heard Mark in his video saying there was a Hard mode? How do you unlock this? I've finished the game a few times (and thought I had 1CC'd it) but nothing has unlocked and there are no difficulty options.

I just realized it's because I used the "restart" function, as it also didn't save my high score. The restart takes you all the way back to the beginning of the game! It's not even a stage restart, rather just a whole game reset. How is this cheating? WTF. Now I gotta replay from the main menu...

[dan76]

What's the trick to triggering the 1CC achievement? I finished a run with no continues, but was denied this one unlocking on Switch. Maybe I've run into a bug? The final "boss" was just a bullet spew I had to survive for a period of time, and now I'm wondering if there's a TLB I can somehow trigger? I saw a 1CC run on Youtube and it looked identical to my experience. It's a disappointing final encounter if that's really how the game ends.

Also, I heard Mark in his video saying there was a Hard mode? How do you unlock this? I've finished the game a few times (and thought I had 1CC'd it) but nothing has unlocked and there are no difficulty options.

I just realized it's because I used the "restart" function, as it also didn't save my high score. The restart takes you all the way back to the beginning of the game! It's not even a stage restart, rather just a whole game reset. How is this cheating? WTF. Now I gotta replay from the main menu...

I've just checked this on PS4 and using the quick restart saves my score.... we are looking into it on Switch. To be safe, quit out and start from the main menu. It a pain, I know.

The moon is the final boss, and like the original game it's a pure survival until the timer runs down. You can't build the skull circle on the moon, so it's dodge and bombs away. No hidden TLB.

Mark was getting confused with his shmups, the original DX version had a hard mode and an auto-bomb mode. We got rid of the auto-bomb in Lunar Edition. Neither JDE or I are fans of the auto-bomb in general, so it's gone!

[Jonpachi]

Thanks Dan! Loved the game! I'm playing Z-Warp now and can't help but feel they aped a few things... :O