Una megacorporación, MRC se llama, nos ha encargado que viajemos a una de sus lunas (de color naranja) para que busquemos vida extraterrestre. Una vez en ella encontramos cosas que no deberíamos encontrar y todo empieza a complicarse...

Acción y plataformas pausado y metódico . Tiene un sistema de juego agradecido si dejas que te convenza. El primer contacto con él es desastroso , pero a los cuarenta minutos empiezas a entender como funciona. Entonces ya estás perdido, te ha enganchado . Yo lo he jugado con teclado y ratón, no me quedaba paciencia suficiente para intentarlo con el mando.

Lo recomendaría sin duda, aunque tiene una serie de cosillas que, aunque no afectan al desarrollo del juego, sí incomodan su experiencia. Verbigracia:

• Tan sólo guarda el progreso de una única aventura. Nada nuevo, esto lo usan muchos juegos. El problema es que si comienzas otra partida nueva, la anterior se elimina sin pedir confirmación. Cuidado con esto.
  
  
• No se pueden modificar los controles del juego. Tampoco importa mucho ya que los controles por defecto son cómodos. Eso sí, juégalo con teclado y ratón, te ahorrarás muchos cabreos.
  
  
• A veces da la sensación de que el juego no está terminado. Faltan algunas animaciones (como la del asistente robótico al desconectarse o la muerte de nuestro personaje) y la música es intermitente, muy acertada, pero intermitente. Me recuerda mucho a la del largometraje “Moon”. Un acierto.

He tardado cinco horitas en terminarlo, eso sí, lo he hecho en una sentada. Enganchado como hacía tiempo. Si te das un poco de prisa, por que yo soy un enfermo de la búsqueda de secretos en estos juegos, lo puedes terminar en tres horas. Tiempo muy bien invertido.

Si vas a jugar a Orange Moon ten cuidado, hay robots con barriga cervecera y poca cabeza.

Jugue una hora (hasta este momento) a este juego y me molesta mucho no poder configurar los controles en las teclas que yo quiero.
El juego en sí no parece ser muy novedoso, ni se presentó una historia que te atrape del principio.
La forma de apuntar a los objetivos no me gusta.
También que no este en español es algo un poco molesto, pero se entiende ya que está en desarrollo.

Orange Moon is a 2D action-platformer that features RPG elements. It is currently in the Steam Early Access program and is being developed and published by Betelgeuse Zero. They are an Ontario, Canada based digital design, marketing and game development company led by the highly talented Denys Shyshkin. This is the company's first game on Steam and second.


In Orange Moon the player explores an alien planet. The selling point of the presentation is the unique visual style. However, I found the world to be a little bland with a minimal color palette being used. Despite this feeling, however, the graphics do a fair job of highlighting the gameplay. Therefore, blandness aside, this is the strength of the presentation.

Unfortunately, the sound engineering is poor. The soundtrack and in game sounds are average at best. They do not help immerse the player into the game as they should. The style choices are currently poor. I believe that the dev needs to take a closer look at how the better games in the genre handle their sound and take some inspiration. Doing so would do wonders for the game.

Currently the only settings that you can change are sound and music both of which have bars and an on/off switch. There is also an option to play in or out of full screen mode.

Unfortunately, I found that the game tends to slow my computer to a crawl when I alt-tab out of the game to take notes. I am unsure as to why this is happening as it doesn't happen with other games. The game takes only a relatively small amount of memory and CPU usage. Consequently, whenever I wanted to take notes to write this feature I would close it and restart it. This is more than a little aggravating. As with other games in Early Access the game has other glitches and game crashing bugs. However, given the desire of the developer to release a good product these will be eradicated.


The game is presently played with keyboard and mouse. There is no controller option. A clever little on screen tutorial has been provided.

I have found checkpoints to be a blessing. While the overall game is not overly difficult there are places in the game that are ridiculously easier or more difficult than areas preceding this. These are true of boss fights and the like but are also present in normal platforming stretches. This is frustrating.

The game has a nice upgrade system. The first upgrade I made was to a machine gun. There are more weapons, better ammo and larger caps, jets and augmentations that become available. This is a well implemented system that gives a good feeling of reward whenever you level up. However, there appears to be a lot of upgrade options for a game that is ten levels long.

The puzzle and secrets are the highlight of the game. I'm not someone who generally hunts them out. Therefore, I feel that the game design in this area is very good. Some are easy to find, as hoped, but others are a challenge. The puzzles themselves are also solidly designed and none of them feel unfair.


I don't usually make a specific mention of the price point of a game. However, I do feel that $14.99 for a game of this quality and type is outpricing itself. There are other games within the same genre that are of critical acclaim that dare not charge this price. Consequently, I am skeptical that the game will sell as hoped. While this does leave room for the occasional sale, a price point where I'd happily purchase copies for friends, I am left to ponder how much non-sale periods will be hurt.

Edit: The dev has advised me that he has put in a price request change to $9.99. This completely eliminates any concern that I have for the pricing of the game. This is a very good price. My initial suggestion was to sale price it at this point but as he was unable to do so (there has to be an eight week gap between sales on Steam and he had a launch discount) he went ahead and made the price request. Good on you dev. Thank you.


I feel that I have been overly critical of the game in this review. I've diagnosed a lot of faults with it. Although I stand by those criticisms the game does deserve its share of praise. The game has strong RPG elements following up from a strong tutorial. I really do like the upgrade system despite querying its potential to be excessive. The platforming is fun aside from the parts that are ridiculously difficult given their context to the game. The puzzle and secrets are the highlights that I really have enjoyed discovering. The game has potential to be very good if the presentation levels can be increased and the difficulty throughout parts of the game reconsidered. I only recommend purchasing now if you are willing provide feedback for future updates.

Steam note: This is a game worthy of an in between yes and no vote. However, as Steam doesn't allow you to vote that way and there are strong positives to the game it gets a thumbs up.

For similar reviews and our popular giveaways (including hardware giveaways) please consider visiting Steamified[www.steamified.com].

Overall

- Detailed tutorial
- Puzzles
- Good stage design
- Simple and fast upgrades menu
- Boss fights

- There are bugs
- Jerky animations
- Enemies are too easy / low challenge
- Sound settings reset all the time
- Repetitive

- Average

https://youtu.be/wZBfHpn1iMc

Review

It has been a few months since I last had the opportunity to play a 2D platformer. Orange moon is a 2D platformer in which you explore a new planet (and guess what? It's orange). On this moon, the player has to go through multiple enemies and puzzles to complete each level. There are a handful of bosses, and also a few secret places to find.

In general the game is interesting, it has a basic tutorial that explains the basics of the game right away. Since it is also not very difficult, the stages are relatively stress free, but become frustrating when you encounter some of the game's bugs and behaviors.

For example, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary during my first play through of the second day. The enemies were, in general weak-- the torrents of bullets are extremely slow and most of the enemies were easy to kill. But very annoyingly, I encountered a bug that did not open the door that was required to finish the stage. After repeating the stage 4 times with no success, I decided to reinstall the game, and that finally solved the problem. It was a real test of patience.

Speaking about the stages, I really liked what I saw. Orange Moon has an absurd amount of secrets per stage, which makes you, as the player, want to explore. You'll also encounter tricky bosses which keep things interesting. And that feeling is important, because without the puzzles, boss fights, and secrets, the game lacks a certain objective to keep you playing. Without them, the game would be boring.

What about the audio and visuals? I really liked the starting screen and the environment present in the stages, but even so, I can't forgive the terrible animations, from the feet of the your character to the movement of the bullets, that make it feel like we’re in the middle of the Matrix. If only the animations could be more fluid, this wouldn't be a problem. I also encountered one annoyance with the sound. When I was replaying the second day as described above, everything was very loud. I'm sure I set the volume lower, but it seems my settings never seemed to save.

In short, I think that Orange Moon has a good foundation, but that it could have been better developed in order to avoid the various problems described here. If those bugs could be resolved, if the game had more of a challenge, and if the animations were more smooth, then the game would be much more interesting in general.

Final Evaluation: 58/100

I can't really say I've enjoyed playing "Orange Moon"...

Nothing to complain regarding its atmosphere, graphic design and general feeling with this game, but let's not pretend like it's been nicely playable for me at this very moment of development.

Controls felt clumsy (at best): both left and right stick have issues. Jumping and moving forward at the same time is quite difficult and, about the right stick, aiming is a PITA; most of the time you'll lose aim or you won't be able to aim properly because it's not responsive. Also, a Generic Gamepad I own, which is enabled in Big Picture with "Generic Configuration Support", isn't working - I can only move right.

I've got this game from a friend - so, yeah, for FREE, but not from Developers.
I'll happily change this review to positive once I see news about controls fixing. I'm always following Early Access games I own, so that won't be a problem and I also saw that Devs are constantly updating it, so... Keep it up.

I will be honest—I was not immediately blown away in the first 5 minutes, but after 2 or 3 hours with this game I am getting pretty hooked on it. I was expecting kind of an actiony run and gun affair, but that isn't really Orange Moon's thing... It is a thoughtful, atmospheric game with a bit of story to it, and lots of little secrets and curiosities to investigate.

The pace of gameplay is rather slow and deliberate, it generally doesn't work well to act like you are playing Contra... Every bit of fuel and ammo needs to be carefully managed, and you can expect to spend some time in each level scrounging for resources. The controls take some getting used to (I am using the X360 gamepad), and the frame rate is just a tiny bit sketchy on my system... but these are only minor flaws in what is otherwise quite a fun and immersive little game.

There is so much to love about the art and design of Orange Moon I hardly even know where to start! The pacing and difficulty curve are just right. I found the sound and music very subtle and effective. The interface is quite good—particularly the complex equipment system where you can purchase precious ammo, unlock ever-more-gnarly weapons, and apply all kinds of sweet upgrades. My favorite part of Orange Moon is the art style and use of color! There are so many nice visual touches, from hulking abandoned alien machinery to tiny ambient particles of space dust everything looks balanced and consistent. Final analysis: it is definitely worth your time to check this game out!

Gameplay: (7 / 10)
Visuals: (9 / 10)
Sound: (8.5 / 10)
Interface: (8 / 10)
Controls: (8 / 10)

Overall: (8.1 / 10) Recommended!

This is a good game for the sale price of 67 pence, already got my monies worth, it reminds me of exolon an old game for the spectrum.I find it atmospheric and real fun.You are in a space suit with thrusters and weapons and you get a real feel for the suit, getting upgrades for fuel,weapons and health.Explore and enjoy.

The game is not without its glitches and bugs but none have been game breaking so far and go away with a reload.Plenty of value for money even in early access.

Orange Moon (OM) is a classic-style platform with RPG-style progression elements, set in an alien sci-fi environment. The story talks about MRC Corporation, an interplanetary mega-corporation determined to make huge profits, and you, one of its employees, sent to the mysterious Orange Moon, a dangerous but resource-rich planetoid, where so many before you lost their lives in obscure ways.

The proposed gameplay comes straight out of the most classic platformers, featuring levels full of environmental hazards, such as spikes, fire, lasers and more to avoid, stationary and moving enemies using pre-determined patterns, some simple puzzles, and of course many secrets to discover. In addition to this, OM also features a quite rich progression system, in the form of upgrades for your weapons and mechanized suit, categorized per sector, and influencing things such as maximum ammo capacity, maximum health, weapon damage, bullet effectiveness, armor penetration, and more statistics.

Combat is exclusively ranged, using the various weapons of your suit against the alien, and human, threats of the Orange Moon. Featuring machineguns, shotguns and even grenade launchers among its arsenal, your suit is more than capable of facing any threat, provided you can unlock weapons first. Combat is also influenced in a RPG style, featuring displayed HP damage, headshot bonuses, and vulnerability to different types of damage from enemy to enemies.

Killing enemies and finding resource depots in the Moon will grant you points and reputation with the Corporation, two resources you can spend to get new weapons, or obtain upgrade modules to augment your suit and already unlocked ones. This game rewards careful explorers, as finding secrets and hidden items will grant a lot more upgrade points and resources, allowing you to have a much easier time in your adventure.

Overall, Orange Moon is a good platformer, and I'm saying this as someone who really doesn't like this genre much, but in OM's case the RPG mechanics inserted in it make it a lot more interesting, while preserving aswell the core platform experience. The only downside would be the difficulty, pretty much moderate at best, and not as challenging as other similar games. I suggest this game to people that want to try an alternative and quite different experience than the usual platformer.

Liked this review, and want to see more of the same quality? Check out Tamaster's Review Archive to see all my Reviews in a single, convenient location.

General Gameplay
Gameplay will be divided mainly into Exploration, Combat and Puzzle Solving. While exploring, paying attention to hidden caves, upgrading your suit to fly you further with more fuel, and finding prospector drones to get in narrow passages, will be things that pay off in the long run, allowing access to much more combat and tactical options, and improving your chances of survival on the Moon.

Puzzles are fairly simple and are mainly about fetching items to insert in machinery or slots, to progress with the adventure. Some more complex puzzles and enigmas could have been nice, but are not present.


Story
Not very elaborate, and mainly consisting of one-way dialogues on the radio from various characters. Much of what happened on Orange Moon is left to the player for understanding, in a voluntarily lacking and obscure narrative style. No additional lore pieces are present.

Combat System
Combat is half platform and half RPG style with elemental weaknesses, armor statistics, and different effectiveness of weapon on different enemies. It is overall satisfying and "meaty" enough to not be just a contour feature.

Content & Pricing
Priced at 10€ normally, featuring no other modes than Campaign, and lasting about 4-5 Hours depending how thorough you are in finding secrets, i'd say the price is almost decent for the provided quality, maybe with a 20% discount would be better. Get it cheap if you can.

Balancing & Challenge
The balance sadly is not very good. Enemies in general, and even boss fights, will all be blasted away by the power of your armored suit, provided you have been careful in finding most of secrets during each level. Some basic care in avoiding bullets, and environmental hazards, will prove all you need to survive the whole game without dying even once. The absence of any difficulty option does not help the situation. Challenge is pretty much on low standards for the most part.





Graphics
Very good art style, with well-made 2D models, animations, effects and art. On the style side, Orange Moon delivers well for an Indie game, nothing to complain about.

Sound
Good soundtrack, decent effects, no voice acting. Sometimes sound can bug in more intense battle situations and become a bit annoying, but that lasts briefly.

Performance & Stability
Nothing to report.

AI
Enemy AI uses a basic follow and attack pattern.

Quality of Life
A mini-map would have been good. Nothing else other than this.

Bugs / Issues
Resolution selector is absent, leading to strange "black borders" at the edges of the screens on very high (4K in my case) resolutions; these borders are probably part of the UI that gets stretched too much for this resolution and so bugs out a bit. Nothing to make the game unplayable though. Should be fine on 2K and 1080p.


Orange moon is a nice little indie platformer with charming style and good mechanics, that delivers what is needed. Get it if you like sci-fi games and platformers.

Update 15/February/2019

As I promised about 1.5 years ago, I've given this another shot and was quite impressed by the progress that has been made on this game.

The game runs much, much smoother now and is actually quite fun to play. Whereas some issues with the rifle and your pointer still remain, as in shooting a bit higher than it is pointed at, the issue after the jump has been fully resolved, allowing you to dodge the traps barring your way.

By now this game is quite enjoyable and I can say that you should give at least the demo a try that the developer has so kindly provided.

Early Access as of 12/September/2017.

Honestly, even if I try to find favourable sides about this game, I really can't.

The landscape is kept in most black, red and orange with hardly any other colour ever appearing which creates a really monotone scenery. The graphics in generally rather detailed for a rather unknown title. This is only hardly noticeable as of the aforementioned monotone landscape making the graphics rather uninteresting.

The sound is bland at best, lacking even badly done voices for communications. The storyline is barely outlined so far although it does have a few sprinkles here and there.

For the gameplay itself - it is slow-paced with several downsides as some traps around the maps move too fast to be effectively avoidable as it takes about 0.5 to 1 second for you to be able to move again after landing from a jump.

Your main rifle does not fire at where the pointer is, ratehr than a bit underneath it. With the (for this game) rapid movements of the enemies it makes them frustratingly hard to hit.

So far, with some improvements to the general gameplay and maybe a thing or two to tweak about the general look of the game, this could be fairly enjoyable. As it stands, however, I can't recommend this game.

Much like oil and water, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Orange Moon embodies wonderful attributes that are overshadowed by its more floundering blunders in its controls and simplistic execution of genre detailing. A double-edged sword, or whatever analogy one wishes to use, is a perfect description of the final product of a spaceman frolicking on a strangely-colored moon full of creepy crawlies. Good enough to play through once, but not good enough to recommend with good conscience. In this case, it's probably better to stay off the moon.

+ More fun as it progresses
+ Soundtrack delivers, when available
+ Upgrading system keeps up motivation

- Simplistic in almost every aspect
- Controls can be frustrating
- Lacking in memorable content

Read the full review at https://www.keengamer.com/article/17253_orange-moon-review