REVIEW: Moony: Black_Lotus (2025 Vide Game) by Icegrim Softwork

Review by Jon Donnis

Icegrim Softworks' Moony: Black_Lotus invites players into a world of corrupted memories and shattered identity, where a ruined city hums with mechanical ghosts of its past. It's a 2.5D side-scroller that blends traditional jump-n-run mechanics with puzzle solving and light stealth, framed by a hauntingly beautiful orchestral score. On paper, it's familiar territory. In practice, it's a moody and thoughtful experience that manages to charm, even if it occasionally stumbles.

The atmosphere is Moony: Black_Lotus's greatest triumph. The visual storytelling carries the weight of the game's mystery without the need for dialogue or exposition. Every flicker of shadow and echo of metal feels deliberate, pulling you into its dreamlike world. The environments, though restrained in palette, are textured with decay and memory. It's the kind of world that feels alive despite being long dead.

The live-recorded orchestral soundtrack deserves a spotlight of its own. It's rich, dynamic, and seamlessly adjusts to your actions. When the strings swell as you leap across crumbling platforms or fade to a lonely piano during quiet exploration, it hits with real emotion. It's a reminder that even smaller indie titles can reach cinematic heights with the right musical direction.

Gameplay is accessible and responsive. You'll be running, leaping, and solving environmental puzzles within minutes of starting. The introduction of special abilities such as teleportation or walking through barriers adds a welcome layer of complexity without overcomplicating the core flow. The stealth segments, while not revolutionary, bring tension and variety to the pacing.

That said, the genre is saturated. For every creative spark Moony: Black_Lotus offers, there's an unavoidable sense of déjà vu. It sits in the shadow of giants like Little Nightmares and Ori and the Blind Forest, which set a high bar for emotional storytelling and mechanical precision. Icegrim's effort doesn't quite reach those heights. 

Some sections suffer from mild repetition, particularly during climbing sequences where one small mistake sends you back through long, uneventful stretches. It's not difficult, just tiresome.

Still, there's heart here. The game's willingness to tell its story through imagery rather than dialogue gives it a poetic quality. It trusts the player to pay attention, to notice, to piece things together. That's rare, and it's refreshing.

Moony: Black_Lotus is a quietly compelling experience. It doesn't redefine its genre, but it doesn't need to. For those drawn to atmospheric platformers that whisper their stories instead of shouting them, this is a fine addition to the collection.

7.5 out of 10, Beautiful, moody, and familiar. Not groundbreaking, but well worth your time.

Out Now on PC (Steam) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2900900/MOONYBlack_Lotus/

REVIEW: MotoTrials™ (2025 Video Game) - A Brutal, Beautiful Little Gauntlet

Review by Jon Donnis

You wake in a shipping container, groggy and disoriented, and the game makes you figure out a few things first before allowing you to get on a bike, the very first puzzle is a simple one, you need to remove your handcuffs, find a giant saw, turn your back to it, time it right and voila you are free, get it wrong and you are shredded to pieces. That blunt opening sets the tone. MotoTrials™ is a compact, 100 per cent physics-driven motorcycle platformer that asks one simple thing of you. Learn the machine. Keep trying. Survive the gauntlet.

Ricky is not a hero with a backstory laid out in cutscenes. He is a name, a body and a bike, and the environment does the talking. The concrete labyrinth is industrial and claustrophobic, full of moving platforms, flame jets, crushers and bridges that give way underfoot. The design merges tight, exacting sequences where momentum and balance matter as well as reflex and quick thinking. Everything is governed by the physics, crashes feel consequential and recoveries feel earned. That honesty makes success quietly thrilling.

Controls are the heart of the thing. The bike behaves like a real object. Throttle, brake and lean change outcomes in an immediate, tactile way. At first it is unforgiving, because the bike is twitchy and your timing will be off. Spend a little time with it and the reward is big. Landings that would feel like luck in a scripted game become obvious once you understand speed and weight, and those moments are where MotoTrials lives. Checkpoints are placed with an eye for balance. Instant respawns mean you are nudged back into the loop rather than punished out of it. The loop is short, sharp and addictive.

The decision to include on-foot sections is bold. I prefer riding, personally, but the occasional moment where you leave the bike to solve a small puzzle adds variety. It is not flawless. Ricky's movement on foot can feel slightly floaty, and that undermines the otherwise consistent relationship between input and result. When the physics that make the bike sing do not translate perfectly to the character, the contrast pulls you out of the experience for a second. Still, those small puzzles break the rhythm in a useful way and stop the game from being relentless in one gear.

Story and voice work do more than you might expect. Cryptic messages and unsettling vocal lines stitch a loose narrative into the gameplay. Ashley and Crusty are memorable in different ways, MOM and Silent Mike add flavour, and the Announcer keeps things eerily formal. The cast does not handhold. Instead, it hints and teases, and that ambiguity works with the environment to create an atmosphere that is quietly unsettling. It does not aim to be profound, just unnerving enough to make you keep listening on the off chance the next line will spell something out.

Visually the game is modest. Textures and models are functional rather than showy. Lighting and sound do the heavy lifting for mood, and they do it well. The soundtrack is minimalist and atmospheric, shifting as you progress and underlining the tension without getting in the way. Together with the voice work it pushes the small studio presentation into something that feels cohesive rather than unfinished.

There are rough edges you should know about. The graphics could be cleaner, and a few physics quirks crop up away from the bike. Some transitions feel abrupt. These are the sorts of issues you forgive if you care more about the loops and less about visual polish. For a project that, by all appearances, was made on a modest budget, the trade-offs are understandable. The core mechanics are intact, and that is the main thing.

Replayability is solid for what it is. Time runs, collectibles tucked into awkward places and a handful of hidden secrets give players reasons to return after the first clear run. It is a short game if you rush, a bite-sized challenge if you take your time. That brevity helps it avoid filler, which feels intentional.

I am pretty strict with Trials-style games. I expect tight, fair design and a feeling that every failure can be learned from. MotoTrials meets that expectation more often than not. It stumbles in small spots, but it kept pulling me back, which is the highest compliment I can pay. It is a lean, occasionally rough gem that rewards patience and practice.

Score: 8 out of 10. It is not polished to excess, but it nails the satisfaction of learning a machine and beating the course. I hope ProudArts gets the chance to expand on this.

Out Now on Xbox

https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/mototrials/9N8GC20N1R76/0010