FromSoftware is one of the most influential game developers in recent history, though most games inspired by the studio borrow the ideas of its post-Demon’s Souls output. For dark fantasy RPG Lunacid, however, developer Kira LLC took inspiration from the Japanese studio’s far lesser-known series King’s Field, which first appeared on the PlayStation 1.
Despite taking this leftfield approach, Lunacid proved a big hit, racking up a ‘Very Positive’ rating on Steam from over 7,000 Steam reviews. Indeed, Lunacid has been successful enough that it’s getting some DLC, even though its creator, Kira, is confused about the game’s success.
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While it’s been almost three years since the base version of Lunacid released, Kira has not been idle. Last year she released Lunacid: Tears of the Moon, a free spinoff of the base game built in Sword of Moonlight, a toolkit created by FromSoftware in 2000 for building King’s Field-like games.
Why did Kira do this? Well, in a post from last year announcing Tears of the Moon’s release, Kira says that she “enjoyed challenging” herself working within the constraints of the toolkit. But it may also have something to do with a yearning for obscurity. In detailing her plans for 2026, Kira remarks on Lunacid that “This was supposed to be niche. I thought I’d be a mysterious and unknown artist forever.”
Irrespective of its popularity, Lunacid is well worth your time, especially if you’re a fan of FromSoft-ish weirdness or old-timey Dungeon Crawlers. Kerry Brunskill took the RPG for a spin shortly after it released, and was impressed by how it recreated the feel of FromSoft’s pre-Demon’s Souls days. “Lunacid isn’t just convincingly old, it’s convincingly King’s Field old,” they wrote back in 2023. “This game captures the design philosophy of FromSoftware’s quirky first-person adventure games even better than it does the classic PlayStation aesthetic.”
