Moonscars

Moonscars is a 2022 action-platformer developed by Black Mermaid and published by Humble Games, released September 27, 2022 for PC, PlayStation, Xbox (day one on Game Pass), and Switch. It holds Metacritic scores in the mid-70s, a striking oil-painting visual identity — moonlit blacks and bruised reds closer to a canvas than a sprite sheet — and a genuinely divided audience, memorialized in the recurring community question “why does Moonscars get so much hate?”

You are Grey Irma, a warrior sculpted from clay, waking again and again in a world of fellow clayborne to hunt the Sculptor who made and abandoned them — a story of creation resenting creator told in fittingly bleak fragments.

Technical Specifications

Ichor and the Moon’s Hunger

Combat is fast and mean: sword strings, a parry, and witchery spells fueled by ichor harvested from kills, with a Bloodborne-style gland economy and a moonlight mechanic that periodically empowers enemies until Irma spends a resource to reset it — risk layered on risk. That design is precisely the divide: admirers praised the painterly dread and demanding duels; detractors cited stingy checkpointing, punishing resource loss, and difficulty spikes that post-launch patches only partly softened. The critical mid-70s masks that split more than it measures it — the same shape as GRIME‘s cult trajectory, without quite the same rehabilitation arc.

Where to Play It Today

Moonscars is on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch, discounting routinely under $10. The fair pitch: for players who found Blasphemous beautiful but wanted it crueler — knowing exactly which side of the game’s own argument that puts you on.