We recently had a chance to check out Renegade Kid’s Moon Chronicles for Nintendo 3DS during a briefing in New York City last week.
First person shooters are a rare breed in Nintendo’s portable gaming system, and we left the briefing excited for the launch of this title in the coming weeks. It’s a relaunch of an older title, the original Moon for the DS, but this time you’re getting 3D elements and full-screen anti-aliasing.
We’re told that it will retail for $8.99 when it hits the eShop, and that the first game will be followed by episodic content that will cost about $1.99 each. Four episodes will be available in total, each offering about two hours of gameplay. This is season 1. So what can you expect?
Moon Chronicles takes place, of course, in outer space on a lunar base. You’ll travel throughout each level with a small drone, which is required to access certain parts of each level to let your main character advance. In other words, there are points in the game where you’ll get stuck, and you’ll need to then take control of the rover to navigate through small corridors and unlock switches that open up new parts of the level for your character.
Controls are easy enough on the 3DS. You can use the device’s pen to walk around each stage, though the game also supports the Circle Pad Pro controller if you prefer to use a double-joystick layout. We played about an hour-long preview, and found that the levels are rather difficult largely because everything looks so similar as you progress. We wish the scenery changed up a bit. Still, if you’re itching to play a first-person shooter on the 3DS, Moon Chronicles is a solid choice right now, so long as you also enjoy the added puzzle element.
The game is expected to launch in March or April, and you can expect new episodes from season one to launch in the subsequent quarters. If the game is popular enough, we’re told a Season 2 will launch sometime in 2014.
