Moo Lander is a heck of a name. If this game came about because someone wrote “moon lander” on an idea board and someone deleted the N and people ran with it, I would not be surprised. It’s a very odd name, but it’s an eye catching and appropriate one since in this very silly Metroidvania you play as a human astronaut piloting a milk powered flying space pod and attempting to capture Alien Space Cows to for fuel to power their milk-based power grid. The plot of this game – well demo, currently – is very silly and tongue in cheek.
The demo begins with your spaceship – having been stripped of most of its extra features and weapons by a particularly nasty landing – navigating a series of tunnels with only a milk based shield to protect yourself or fight back against hostile plants and creatures. I found this part of the demo the most difficult, due to the lack of weapons and the large gaps between energy refills. After several puzzles and dangerous gauntlets, you will find your first weapon, a milk gun. After this the demo turns a bit more action oriented, but there are still plenty of puzzles to stump you as well, primarily oriented around trying to find the right alien device to open an alien door blocking your way, usually guarded by strange plant creatures. The bulk of the game’s enemies are plants, at least so far, with only the Cows being recognizably Animalian.
About half the demo is divided between sections where you only have your milk shield, and sections where you have a bevy of milk weapons and tools. I also feel like health and milk pickups were a lot more plentiful after the demo gave me weapons, but that might just be because of enemy drops. The demo also shows signs of a skill tree with level (and milk points) gated skill, and unlockable ship upgrades that unlock after performing in game tasks like destroying enough of certain plants, which all suggests there’s gonna be a lot of options available for fighting and exploring what we are told is Mars, but who knows if that will be true in the finished game. The demo is very short and sweet, ending shortly after the game’s first real boss fight against one of the milk producing cows you have been sent to capture, but hey, the game is nowhere near done and is not even available for early access. The demo is, though, so give it a gander over on steam, and we can all hope for big things when the final product comes out!
