Moo Lander crashed its way onto the Xbox marketplace along with other console and PC versions in late May. Developed and published by TheSixthHammer, this quaint indie developed game is a 2D action-adventure game with some metroidvania elements. Ultimately, you play as a foreign alien, Lander, scouting the Galaxy with his AI ship, Hamilton. In this universe, milk is power, powering weapons and your ship. A great war broke out between two species that lasted centuries and the search for the Elwir is the primary objective, a machine capable of producing infinite milk, along with helping your kind with milk shortages. There was a mass Cow genocide which left milk something to fight over to empower their species.
The gameplay of Moo Lander is something I was unsure of when I first heard of the game about a month before release and the trailer convinced me to give it a shot. I tried the demo out and enjoyed the hour of gameplay it provided enough to dive into the main game. This Indie game is goofy at times, but has some wonderful dairy puns riddled throughout the gameplay as well as the achievement list. The narrated audio is the key delivery of story along with animated cutscenes. It makes for an udderly mootastic laugh when you read some of the names and hear the dialogue. Colonel Sanders even makes a small appearance in light of a joke. The humor is on the nose in most cases with this game. The story is entertaining enough to pull a player in and keep pushing to the next boss. Speaking of bosses, there are about 20 mutated Cows the player will fight throughout their several hour-long journey exploring Mars, which we crashed on more than landed.
The difficulty options available span between 4 selections: Story, Cheasy, Challenge, and Legendairy mode. The latter choices affect the health and damage output providing gamers a choice of making the gameplay a bit tougher, if it was too easy. The game does have upgrades and a levelling system which lets the player choose their desired upgrades to improve and provide passive abilities. I found using the shield in combo with a weapon to be good enough until a new tool was introduced that did significantly more damage than my last weapon. New enemies are fought in different areas and some will require quick use of the shield to vanquish threats or a new way of killing. The range of enemies spans from aliens, to cows, to even plant life that’s ferocious if not taken out quickly. The UFO that Lander flies in is powered by milk and must be recharged by milk wells to use your tools and guns. There is also a dash ability that’s helpful for moving quickly out of the way of danger. Along with the milk meter for Lander’s ship is his health bar, this can be refilled at green vegetation stations. When Lander bumps into these it shoots out a green glowing fruit that heals some health. These are conveniently placed at boss fights and paired with milk wells. When the player levels up they also increase their general health and milk capacity.
The combat isn’t as simple as spam a button and move to the right of the screen. The Metroid aspects in this title are finding powerups to advance while having a levelling system to upgrade powers to access new areas with tougher enemies. As new enemies are introduced, the fighting style will change along with it. The RPG elements let the player have choices of their playstyle, but some enemies require a particular fight pattern such as reflecting plant shots to clear certain vines blocking paths. The best parts of this game in my opinion are the story, art, and sound. The story itself will take a player about 10 hours to clear the story based on their difficulty selected and skill. The controls can feel clunky at times, but with little practice sections can be completed thanks to forgiving checkpoints.
The sound design in Moo Lander left me impressed, featuring an OST which has inspirational moments and some intense battle portions. However, the music changes with areas and is very reminiscent in sound to that of Ori. It is not often that you are to hear a repeating song with such a small team such as TheSixthHammer. The game has many inspirations seen from Ori and Rayman apart from sound design such as the art style.
The visuals of Moo Lander are actually stunning, making Mars seem vibrant exploring underground caves fighting off foreign life as they attack your ship. This 2Dimensional layout uses Unity to make it seem like it’s a 3D world adding layers to the art style. The general movement of our ship can scrape and interact with the walls and surfaces around the player. The ship we fly in has a stream of energy behind as it moves around, and the shield is fun to use to deflect projectiles. The shots fired out are white making it easier to see enemy projectiles. The game’s art design doesn’t look like much at first glance, but the depth of design for each area is what makes this an impressive feat. The design of enemies is also alien and look scary up close with flying eyeball plants or vines that grasp onto passing meals. The fact the cows are mutated explains their odd powers and are designed intently on being unique, indistinguishable from another.
The longevity of Moo Lander will certainly pull a player in if they are a fan of the metroidvania series’ or looking for a fun adventure using milk to empower themselves. The length of the game is roughly 10 hours for a first playthrough exploring the areas and fighting off enemies. Over time the gameplay can feel repetitive, but new enemies or upgrades are right around the corner if the player continues to advance past bosses. The difficulty options will require a hard playthrough where you’ll become a Legendairy explorer if trying for the achievement completion. The story, art and music are what pulled me into trying this game out, and was fun enough on story with simple checkpoints to throw me back into the combat if I died. The checkpoints were lenient enough to help with some of the clunky feelings the controls of the game provided. The pace of gameplay was often fast in later parts and will require an understanding of the combat to be able to beat the bosses with their different moves and patterns. This game is worth the price point, but I don’t see myself playing the story more than twice.
Conclusion
If you love Metroidvania games, Moolander is very similar to those such as Ori and is packed with quality content. The gameplay at times feels as if this was intended to be a mobile game, well that’s because that is how Moo Lander started out in 2013. This game has been in development for years and the love from the developers shows in their product they’ve made together. Moo Lander was inspired heavily by Ori and plays much like it with a simpler design from a significantly smaller group. The story is engrossing and cooky enough to entertain those looking for a simple singleplayer story. There are multiplayer elements with Moo Lander such as couch coop game modes and PvE & PvP, but the story is the key part for this indie developed game. Support this small studio based in Bulgaria with members from different countries around the globe, as the game is deserving of a playthrough for a good laugh about cows and light humor. Try out the Free Demo on the marketplace today! The demo did a wonderful job of showing off the game without spoiling the core story elements.
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This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
