A lot of games claim to authentically recreate some beloved old style, whether that's 16-bit RPGs or a particular horror vibe, but few truly capture the spirit of their chosen era as well as Lunacid does. From the very beginning it's clear indie developer Kira understands that the PlayStation look—now almost 30 years old—is about much more than building something out of 20 pointy polygons when we're all used to seeing 20,000 smoothed ones. Lunacid's simple textures are heavily pixelated and often repeated, background details fade into simple silhouettes at a distance that's far too close for modern tastes, and wafer thin waterfalls endlessly slide their way into pancake-flat water.
Heck, even the menu fonts are oversized, as if they're intended for low resolution TV screens rather than modern displays. As crude as that may sound, there's a consistency to it all that makes any longing I have for cutting edge technical progress fade away in an instant.
