Lunacid

Lunacid is a 2023 first-person action RPG developed and published by KIRA, released out of Early Access on October 30, 2023 for Windows. It’s a deliberate revival of the dungeon-crawler formula FromSoftware built in King’s Field and Shadow Tower decades before Demon’s Souls existed — lo-fi PlayStation-era visuals included — filtered through the horror sensibilities of a developer best known for Lost in Vivo and work on Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion. It holds an OpenCritic score of 82 (“Strong,” 83% recommend) and an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, where it’s become a fixture of “hidden gem” recommendation threads.

One review line captures its critical standing better than any score: RPGFan called it “the new gold standard for an indie homage” — a game that studied what FromSoftware’s first-person RPGs did right and rebuilt it for players who never touched the originals.

Technical Specifications

The Dark Souls Before Dark Souls

Lunacid’s own Steam page states its thesis outright: the King’s Field series “was the Dark Souls before there was a Dark Souls” — FromSoftware’s slow, oppressive first-person dungeon crawlers of the 1990s, legendary for dense level design and largely abandoned since. Where the industry spent a decade cloning Demon’s Souls and its descendants, KIRA reached further back, recreating the older formula’s deliberate pace, cryptic secrets, and dread — then modernizing its most notorious friction point by letting a speed stat lift the original games’ molasses-slow movement to modern comfort.

The Great Well

Long ago, a Great Beast rose from the sea and blanketed the world in poison fog; centuries later, society’s undesirables are thrown into the Great Well, a pit of chaos and disease. The player, cast in for crimes unknown, wakes in a moonlit subterranean world with one hope: the sleeping Old One far below. Storytelling runs on environmental fragments, strange NPCs, and cosmic-horror undertones, with multiple endings tied to what players uncover — and a metanarrative streak reviewers singled out as the game’s most distinctive layer beyond its influences.

Old-School to a Fault, on Purpose

Character builds run on classic stat allocation — strength, intelligence, and notably speed and dexterity — across a large arsenal of weapons and spells, with wall-hugging secret hunting as a core activity rather than a bonus. Reviews split predictably along tolerance lines: critics praised the atmosphere, exceptional soundtrack, and cohesion, while the recurring reservations were dated-by-design controls, traps some found unfair, and a balance that noticeably favors magic builds. The r/patientgamers verdict — “new game, old school” — is effectively the game’s whole pitch in four words.

A Sequel Built in FromSoftware’s Own Tool

KIRA’s follow-up, Lunacid: Tears of the Moon, takes the homage to its logical extreme: it’s built in Sword of Moonlight, FromSoftware’s own official King’s Field construction tool released in 2000 — a decision PC Gamer memorably described as using “FromSoftware’s 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first-person dungeon crawlers.” Early player reaction has been warm-but-divided, with some finding the fully period-accurate controls a step backward from the original Lunacid’s modernized feel.

Where to Play It Today

Lunacid is available on Steam for Windows — PC-only, with no console ports announced — and routinely discounts to under $10 during seasonal sales, making it one of the cheapest entry points into the entire King’s Field lineage.