Published by Dr. Kucho! Games and developed by Astrolabe Games, Moons of Darsalon is a retro-themed 2D side-scrolling indie game that takes some inspiration from similar games such as Lemmings and Oddworld. It was originally released on PC in 2023 and is now available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4|5 and Nintendo Switch.

Teams of Darsanauts got lost during their mining missions on the different moons of the planet, Darsalon. Players will take control of an unnamed protagonist and must complete several rescue missions by leading them to the closest base station. The Darsanauts will follow the players and obey their commands. On your way to the base, you must protect them from dangers and enemies using various tools in your arsenal.

The best way to describe Moons of Darsalon is a Lemmings-style game with the art style of Oddworld, but it has quite a few unique gameplay designs. Players must traverse each of the 30 stages and rescue as many Darsanauts as possible. The game starts simple to get players acquainted and becomes increasingly challenging as they progress. Players will have the tools they need to complete each mission with a flashlight to light up dark paths, a laser gun to take down enemies and destroy terrain, a ground maker gun to create terrain, a jet pack to reach faraway platforms, and vehicles to traverse on land and in air.

The controls take some getting used to at first, mainly cause the jump button is assigned to the right shoulder button on the controller, which is an odd choice, but being able to shoot in any direction using the right joystick is handy. As players rescue each Darsanaut, they can use commands to have them follow, stay, and move left or right as they still need to get them to the base station safely. Darsanauts can get killed easily by enemies attacking them or even players accidentally shooting them, adding to the game’s challenge.

The challenging gameplay should make the game fun, but players will likely get frustrated due to the finicky controls. It’s good to have a challenging game that’s addictive and keeps players invested to keep trying, but here, it feels more discouraging. This depends on each player, but more reliable controls would create a better experience for everyone. Perhaps this is better played on a PC with a mouse to help with better aiming as it was originally intended, but it’s clear that playing with a controller isn’t ideal. Despite unreliable controls, the game is still beatable, but it could’ve been better.

There are quite a few interesting gameplay elements with having to guide the Darsanauts through treacherous terrain and guiding them across the moving platforms, as they’re limited with what they can do. The puzzles are fun to solve, and players can also create terrain to get them and the Darsanauts across large gaps. They can even destroy terrain with the laser gun to open new paths and find hidden areas. It isn’t always clear which terrain can be destroyed, so players will sometimes have to waste a lot of ammo to figure things out, which could make things tougher when encountering enemies. The enemies are tall green aliens with their laser guns who move a little too fast to react to, making it a bit unfair and adding to the frustration. It will take a lot of trial and error to learn the layouts of each stage and plan for their next attempt.

Being a retro-themed 2D side-scrolling platform game, it uses 8-bit style graphics, which works quite well, and there are options to have scanlines on the screen or make it a bit round to give it that classic CRT television look. It looks like a game from the 80s and early 90s, and the level designs are well thought out.

A pixelated image is displayed on the screen between each stage to show different aspects of the game. Still, each image also has a non-pixelated version, and it’s clear that the development team used AI image generators to create all their ‘artwork’. The flashing lines behind the images can hurt the eyes, especially those with epilepsy, but overall, it is just completely unnecessary. AI art has been an extremely controversial topic over the past few years, as it has taken jobs away from hard-working human artists and scrapes off various images from the internet. It’s already had a big negative effect on the creative industries, whether it’s movies, comics, books, animation, graphic design, and of course, game development.

The game’s images have characters with odd poses and bizarre proportions. It looks like they were touched up using Photoshop or a similar program to clean them up and give them the correct number of fingers, but upon looking closely, there are still too many faults that ruin the so-called ‘artwork’. The characters don’t reflect their in-game counterparts; some hands aren’t properly gripping the gun, and the guns have strange designs, such as the scope being at the front instead of the back. It’s not hard to find an artist who would love to work on this game, and some would even do it for free to add to their portfolio if the budget was the reason for using AI image generators. Unfortunately, the reality is that many companies will resort to AI instead of paying a real artist.

The soundtrack has a fair share of catchy tunes with the classic 8-bit sound that compliments the retro-themed game. One track in particular sounds too much like the hit 1962 song “Misirlou” by legendary musician Dick Dale and even uses the same song title. Because AI was used to generate the images, this raises speculation that the original song was fed into an AI program to create an 8-bit version. The same was likely done with other songs to make them less recognisable. It’ll be interesting to see if Dr. Kucho! Games and Astrolabe Games legally licensed these tracks, as even 8-bit versions of licensed music can get them in trouble.

From what I can find, the use of AI to generate images, music, and possibly even level designs isn’t explicitly stated anywhere other than the AI of the Darsanauts and enemies, which isn’t the same thing. It feels like they’re trying to hide the fact they used AI, but there’s too much evidence that says otherwise, especially with the poor attempts to touch up the images.

Moons of Darsalon has a lot of creative ideas but has too much going against it. The game can be fun, but constantly losing can be discouraging rather than urging you to keep trying. The controls need a lot of refining as they can dampen the experience. The unethical use of AI to generate images and possibly create 8-bit versions of licensed music will also rub many people the wrong way, especially because the images have too many faults. The level designs look good, but those could’ve been made with AI and pieced together. Despite its controversial design choices, Moons of Darsalon can be a fun game, but it may not hold your interest for long.

Written by: Sammy Hanson