Video Game / Moonlight Pulse

Moonlight Pulse is a 2D Metroidvania by Seafloor Games, the creators of Vision Soft Reset. The game is set within a planet-sized world turtle called Aorasque that serves as a home for countless inhabitants. Unfortunately, some of those inhabitants are parasites who threaten Aorasque's life. To preserve their home, the inhabitants formed a Creature-Hunter Organization, the "Curative Agents", who seek out and destroy parasites as well as maintaining Aorasque's general health.

The game begins with you in control of Silex, a Boisterous Bruiser and veteran Curative Agent, on a mission to defeat a dangerous parasite. He is eventually joined by three other characters: Laguna, a shy fox who can control water; Charlotte, a snarky and cynical sheep who fights with a whip; and Clyde, an old engineer who fights with a Mini-Mecha. The player can swap between characters at will to take advantage of each of their unique abilities, but the death of any character results in a Game Over.

Moonlight Pulse contains examples of the following tropes:

• Action Bomb: Rupo enemies, much like their namesake, shatter explosively if their tail is struck, spraying glass shrapnel horizontally. You can avoid this by only striking their head, but they have a lot of health if you take them down this way.
• Ambiguous Gender: Aorasque is only ever referred to with "they" pronouns, implying either they are genderless or the inhabitants don't know their gender and don't want to make assumptions.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Few of the Funny Animals wear clothes, but none of them show anything that would make that problematic. The only exception is Kristie, who has visible breasts, but she's fully covered.
• Animal Stereotypes:
  • Subverted with Laguna, a fox who's extremely honest and upbeat and serves as The Heart of the team.
  • Subverted with Charlotte, a cute, fluffy sheep who's extremely cynical and bitter and has a hard time getting along with others.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If a rescuer would die from the attack they took for another character, they're instead reduced to 1 HP. This allows rescues to continue functioning as an Extra Life even if all your characters are low on health.
• Anyone Can Die: During the Final Battle, We Cannot Go On Without You is no longer in effect, and any defeated characters are Killed Off for Real. Their deaths alter the ending, assuming you win.
• Appropriate Animal Attire: The characters wear wildly varying amounts of clothes. Quadrupedal characters like Laguna typically wear nothing, while bipedal characters can vary from only a single piece of clothing (Charlotte) to a full outfit (Kristie).
• Badass Cape: Charlotte wears an impressive red one she made herself. It's especially badass since she designed it to function as a glider with an application of her electric powers similar to Batman Begins.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: Silex's Mind Control is cured through a good old-fashioned Boss Battle.
• Bleak Level: Bhirvasque. Everything is a bleak, washed-out gray and the world is swarming with strong parasites. To emphasize the decay, there is only one functional camp in the whole place; the other crumbles when the heroes attempt to touch it. The whole place is a grim premonition of what Aorasque will become if Efbee succeeds.
• Bloodless Carnage: Mostly played straight, but averted during the Final Battle. Efbee opens by taking two bites out of Aorasque's heart, generating enormous blood geysers that form the boundaries of the arena. During the fight itself, Efbee can bite a character's head off with visible blood spurts as a result; the only concession to decency is a Monochromatic Impact Shot.
• Cliffhanger: The demo ends with a mind-controlled Silex throwing Laguna into an acid pit from which he cannot escape, seemingly to his doom. In the full game, this is resolved by Laguna manifesting his bubble power, allowing him to rise to the surface.
• Climax Boss: Mind-controlled Silex, fittingly fought in the brain. This serves as the climax of the second act and ends with you regaining Silex after a prolonged absence.
• Convenient Weakness Placement: The ambush at the top of the Shell has enemies that can only be beaten by pushing them into spikes. Fortunately, there's a conveniently-placed spot within the arena.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: The Curative Agents, who seek out and destroy parasites who threaten Aorasque's health. However, it's mentioned that the organization also includes non-combat support staff who provide research and general maintenance on Aorasque's health as well. Clyde is primarily a healthcare technician, though he joins the fray in his Mini-Mecha when things get dire.
• Crutch Character: Silex is initially much stronger and more useful than the weak Laguna, and you're likely to default to him while exploring. However, by the time he rejoins in the endgame the other characters have not only been brought up to par, they're often more useful due to having a wider variety of abilities. Even his specialty of strong melee damage can be outdone by Charlotte, assuming you can use her correctly.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: If Laguna successfully bubbles an enemy, they become weak to electric attacks. A late-game item also turns his shots into oil, making the targets weak to fire for a time.
• Decoy Protagonist: Despite being the starting character, Silex is taken by Mind Control at the end of the first act, and doesn't rejoin until much later. Laguna becomes the de facto protagonist as he finds a way to save Silex on his own.
• Die or Fly: Laguna discovers his bubble power when he's on the brink of death after falling into an acid pit from which he cannot escape. Conveniently, the bubble shoots him to the surface, allowing him to escape his predicament.
  • Later subverted with Laguna's bubble slam ability, which he's only able to do after relaxing in a hot spring to relieve the nonstop stress he's been under.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Charlotte has good range and the highest damage potential of any character, but this depends on hitting enemies with the tip of her whip, which takes practice to pull off consistently. Unlike other characters, she can only inflict elemental damage if you can pull off the tip attack.
• Dimensional Cutter: Efbee's claws can tear holes in space. Once under Efbee's control, Silex also gains this ability. He retains it after he's cured, though to a more limited extent.
• Elemental Powers: The characters all have an associated power which factors into both their combat and movement abilities.
  • Silex: Non-Elemental, but he can use Shock and Awe with a specific item equipped.
  • Laguna: Making a Splash
  • Charlotte: Shock and Awe, though only the tip of her whip actually does electric damage.
  • Clyde: Playing with Fire through his mech's flamethrower.
  • Nephelie: An Ice Person
  • Goldryn: Light 'em Up, according to his journal entry.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Some parasites are weak to particular types of attack, and a few have resistances as well.
• Evil Makeover: After falling to Mind Control, Silex's coat changes color and patterning to look much more sinister.
• Extra Life: Rescues function as these; as long as you have one active when a character suffers a fatal blow, another character will swap in to block it. This results in the rescued character becoming unusuable for a short time, however. You gain more rescues over the course of the story, eventually capping at 5.
• Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Most characters walk on two legs, but some (most notably Laguna) remain quadrupedal. There's no clear pattern to this, and none of the characters draw attention to it.
• Giant Corpse World: Bhirvasque, another Turtle Island visible in the skies of Aorasque. They fell to parasite attacks some time ago, and are now a floating corpse that serves only to feed parasites.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Charlotte suffers this to such a degree, other characters have to practically demand that she feel good about her accomplishments, of which she racks up many over the course of the game.
• Instant 180-Degree Turn: As expected from a 2D platformer. This becomes a problem with the Rupo enemies, who explode if you hit the tail hanging off their side. Their tail switches sides in a single frame if they decide to turn around, which can make you hit them by accident if you already initiated an attack.
• Interface Screw: In the Final Battle, Efbee uses his Reality Warper abilities to distort the game's screen and objects, most notably making the characters wider to increase the difficulty of dodging a Bullet Hell attack.
• Life Meter: In addition to the characters' Hit Points, Aorasque themself has a life reading visible in the bottom-right corner. Clearing eye leeches and patching the lungs faster will improve it. During the Final Battle, every one of the Big Bad's attacks will reduce it a little, giving you a time limit based on how high the life meter was beforehand.
• Lightning Lash: Charlotte's weapon of choice. While she herself provides the electric current, her custom whip allows her to weaponize it to fight off parasites.
• Make My Monster Grow:
  • The second phase of Nephelie's fight has her turn into a massive Kaiju with over a million hit points. You can only defeat her by entering her blood vessels to attack her eyes.
  • Efbee varies in size throughout his appearances, implying he is capable of doing this. In particular, when he's in his room in Bhirvasque he's only the size of the other characters, rather than the titan he appears as in the Final Battle.
• Mind Control: Kookhworm parasites can latch onto the victim's spinal cord, putting them under Efbee's control. Fortunately, in gameplay their attacks only inflict damage. Silex falls victim to one at the end of the first act, giving him an Evil Makeover.
• Mini-Mecha: Clyde isn't very strong on his own, but he uses his engineering prowess to construct a combat mech that fights parasites with flamethrowers.
• Mission Control: Kristie directs the Curative Agents, aided by her Super-Hearing giving her up-to-date intelligence on events. If you're ever unsure where to go next, she can give you directions.
• Monochromatic Impact Shot: Efbee's One-Hit Kill attack features this during the victim's headless blood spurt to make it slightly less gruesome.
• The Needs of the Many: This is Kristie's argument for why she can't help Charlotte free Peak Scute from Nephelie's tyranny: the Curative Agents are spread thin as it is, and she has to allocate resources towards the new threats that endanger all of Aorasque rather than just one village. Charlotte isn't happy about this, accusing Kristie of seeing Peak Scute and all its inhabitants as acceptable losses. Even after Nephelie is defeated, Charlotte doesn't forgive Kristie and their relationship remains strained.
• Obviously Evil: Lampshaded with Racnore, a Giant Spider living on a Giant Corpse World who can't stop referring to the heroes as "morsels". Despite believing himself to be a Manipulative Bastard entangling the heroes in a web of schemes, they are all completely unsurprised when he betrays them.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Despite getting hyped up as the strongest Curative Agent alive, we never actually see Goldryn in action. He claims to have fended off an army of parasites just before the Final Battle, but this conveniently happened offscreen.
• One-Hit Kill: One of Efbee's attacks in the Final Battle is to grab a character and bite their head off. This does a fixed 999 damage, rendering it unsurvivable, and it bypasses rescues too.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Goldryn, the only character who's a Funny Animal of a mythical rather than real creature. He's the strongest Curative Agent alive and possesses power over light... according to the journal, anyway, because we never actually see him fight.
• Puzzle Boss: Laguna is your only available character for the parasite ambush at the top of the Shell, but the ambush pits you against Evo Phios, who are immune to Laguna's attacks. To win, you have to bubble the parasites, then push them into the conveniently-located spikes; spike damage is Non-Elemental, so it bypasses the Evo Phios' water immunity.
• Reality Warper: Efbee can create wormholes by tearing holes in space, which he uses to transport parasites onto Aorasque. During an Efbee ambush, the exits of the area also Wrap Around, implying he can warp space to trap his victims. This goes even further during the Final Battle, where he can stretch and distort parts of the screen to make his attacks harder to dodge.
• Shout-Out: Charlotte's whip is a clear reference to Castlevania. With her dark cape and white hair, she even looks a bit like Alucard. Her cape also can turn into a glider by running her electric current through it, just like in Batman Begins.
• Super-Hearing: Kristie can hear anything that happens in Aorasque owing to her huge bat ears. This makes her well-suited to a Mission Control role for the Curative Agents.
• Support Party Member: Downplayed with Laguna. Though he can fight, his damage output is far lower than anyone else's, and his special abilities involve immobilizing enemies and inflicting Damage Increasing Debuffs for other characters to exploit. He is, however, handy for sniping faraway enemies in locations that are hard for other characters to reach.
• Taking the Bullet: Rescues involve a character performing a Diving Save, taking what would be a fatal hit for another character. Downplayed in that the game fudges this a bit; if the rescuer would also die from the attack, they're only reduced to 1 HP.
• Timed Mission: The Final Battle takes place on Aorasque's heart, so even if your characters dodge the Big Bad's attacks, Aorasque still suffers as collateral damage, reducing their Life Meter a bit. As there's no way to block the attacks or recover Aorasque's health during the battle, you have a limited number of attack cycles before Aorasque dies and the battle ends prematurely.
• Turtle Island: Aorasque is one the size of a whole planet who swims through the cosmos.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The world is generally bright and colorful with a cute Funny Animal aesthetic for the characters, and even some of the parasites are a little cute. The Big Bad Efbee is a terrifying Reality Warper who devours entire worlds and delights in taunting the heroes with their inevitable deaths. He can make good on the threat, too, as defeated characters are Killed Off for Real in the Final Battle.
• Weaponized Teleportation:
  • After gaining Dimensional Cutter powers, Silex throws Laguna through a portal into an acid pit from which he cannot escape. During their Boss Battle, Silex also moves through portals to cross distances quickly and perform surprise attacks. He retains this ability after he rejoins, allowing him to perform a strong slash after exiting a portal.
  • In the Final Battle, Efbee attacks through his portals, extending his reach and producing more confusing attack patterns.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: If anyone's HP reaches 0, it's a Game Over. This is mitigated by rescues, which can save a character from an otherwise fatal blow. Averted during the Final Battle, where defeated characters are instead Killed Off for Real, affecting the ending.
• Womb Level: The entire game. Aorasque's brain, lungs, stomach, and heart are all areas you can visit, and you can travel between areas by hitching a ride in their blood vessels.
• World of Funny Animals: All of the characters are anthropomorphic animals of some kind, though some, like Laguna, remain quadrupedal. The heroes are mostly mammals, while villains are all insects or arachnids.