Moons of Darsalon is a gloriously silly game about rescuing astronauts
Lemming rush.
Few players relish the thought of escort missions nowadays, but there was a time when developers built best-selling games around the act of saving NPCs, from Lemmings to Abe's Odyssey. Moons of Darsalon, out now on Steam after a whopping eight years in development, is an immediately delightful homage to that kinder era. In this level-based 2D platformer from Spanish developer Dr Kucho, you play a spaceperson sent to rescue a bunch of other spacepeople from a collection of small but very intense alien planets, shepherding them to a base using simple "follow me" or "go here" commands.
Your other tools include a flashlight for underground exploration, a laser rifle which can be used to tunnel through certain materials, and a soil cannon which lets you blob together bridges, a la Prey 2017's gloo gun. Some levels have gates that require a certain number of spacepeople to unlock, and there's usually one or two hidden inside a hillside or similar, given away by a plaintive speech bubble as you pass.
It's a blend of retro styles. The CRT overlay and fidgety, layered backdrops are pure 16-bit side-scroller, while the chintzy 3D spaceships look like Netscape loading icons upgraded into UFOs. In the hands, it feels a bit like a great Flash game from the late noughties, with a surprisingly in-depth physics system and a level editor waiting in the wings. But the tapering, floppy characters and bobbly, Happy Meal terrain also evoke Earthworm Jim – as does the game's sense of humour, which consists partly of meta jokes such as hurrying home for "pizza and PS4", but mostly of things going terribly awry.
Moons of Darsalon is that very special kind of imprecise that often leads to hilarious accidents, while still rewarding finesse. It's both a high score chaser – you'll get bonus points for beating the clock, or avoiding damage - and a giggly, post-pub exercise in messing around with 2D physics. The tools are all slightly too big for their boots. The laser rifle scatters bolts all over, which is handy when you're battling a mob of prancing alien troopers, but less so when you're tunneling through a wall with a fragile castaway on the other side. The jetpack boosts you up and levels you out a little too sharply, slamming your head into overhangs or dunking you into deadfalls, inches from safe landing.
Teleporters activate when anything passes over them, be it you, the rickety rocketship you're fighting, or the fleeing friendly astronaut caught in the crossfire. And that's just the stuff from the seven-level Steam demo: deeper in, you'll get to fly gunships and drive multi-wheel rovers which I just know I'm going to capsize at the first opportunity.
It's not as outright unhinged as Noita, but it's not far behind, and unlike Noita, it's all about keeping other people alive, so unplanned knock-on effects have steeper consequences. It's both helpful and unhelpful that the lost souls you're rounding up have a healthy sense of self-preservation. They won't walk through pitch-black areas – you'll need to expose the path with your flashlight. They won't jump down from dangerously high ledges, either – you'll need to shove a crate into position, or weave an incline with the soil cannon. They'll also laugh at you when you hurt yourself, moan periodically about needing a shower, and question your sense of direction. A word of advice, just between you, me and the high score table: you don't have to save them all.