Lunar Strike: Everything We Know

There’s no shortage of space adventure games. But every now and then, we do get something special. Lunar Strike might be that next “something special,” taking you on a futuristic adventure on the South Pole of the moon. No doubt, there’ll be challenges to survive the scarcity of water and resources. Also, the game seems to place prime focus on players driving their story and experience, not so much the combat. In fact, combat may be nonexistent. 

It’s all intriguing to discover everything developer Cognition plans to incorporate in the final game. Let’s take a look at everything we know so far about Lunar Strike below.

What is Lunar Strike?

Lunar Strike is an upcoming single-player, sci-fi, narrative adventure and exploration game. It takes place on the South Pole of the Moon, in the year 2119, incorporating both speculative fiction and hard science. 

You’ll navigate engaging survival elements while unraveling a compelling story driven by the protagonist. The narrative exploration will take center stage above combat, where you’re on a ticking time clock to preserve the expeditions of humans on the moon before inevitable destruction. 

Story

Your character is a female, junior archivist, sent to the moon to document humanity’s exploits. It’s a mission of urgency, as the inevitable collapse and destruction of humanity is underway. You’ll be archiving information about the final lunar colony, scanning items in the environment, and preserving their scientific, cultural, and personal significance in multiple records. 

This isn’t a leisurely game as the lunar colony has been sabotaged and is on the brink of collapse. It leaves you scrambling for survival, with scarce resources ranging from oxygen to energy and time. You might have to prioritize what knowledge and memory you want to preserve (and endure). And ultimately, your choices will determine how you archive information, as well as impact the fate of the colony itself.

It’s interesting that the developers state their integration of ethical dilemmas to do with memory, legacy, and responsibility. This’ll no doubt create tension as you unravel the narrative, in addition to posing difficult challenges to the player. You’ll build and preserve the archive during exploration, and uncover multiple endings based on your decisions and ethics.

Gameplay

Lunar Strike is, firstly, a narrative adventure, taking you to the Moon’s South Pole in 2119. And most of the time, it seems you’ll be exploring a lunar colony on the brink of destruction. In case you were confused as I was, the game does, indeed, lack any combat; only exploration, survival, and adventure. Your main goal is to preserve all the science and culture you can, logging them in records. And you’ll do so using scanners, which can analyze data for storage. You’ll also recover lost data, prioritizing them based on their scientific, cultural, and personal importance. 

Among the survival elements you’ll master is managing your oxygen, suit energy, and home. This’ll require tactical thinking, wrapped around the limiting scarcity of life in lunar space. 

Meanwhile, multiple endings await. Based on your decisions, the narrative will take a different route. Some of these decisions are reliant on what you choose to archive or abandon. In the end, your choices will reshape the lunar colony’s legacy, directly impacting its fate. 

Another interesting gameplay element is analyzing crime scenes. Lunar Strike also seems to include forensic gameplay, including reconstructing any important scanned artifacts. 

While the trailer only shows the protagonist wandering the Moon’s South Pole all alone, Steam’s store page suggests the presence of more characters. And they’ll be pretty important, too, challenging your perspective and the decisions that you make. 

Overall, some environments may be fictional. However, others are based on real science, especially the orbital mechanics of certain rocks and asteroids. Some of the survival elements are also accurate based on the current research about life on the moon. With all of these considered, Lunar Strike seems to be shaping up to be quite a good start into space exploration and discovery.

Development

Cognition is developing and publishing the upcoming Lunar Strike. They place prime focus on preserving hard science, with the goal of developing impactful stories cementing humanity’s legacy across time. 

The studio comprises two developers, who are gamers, as well as developers of experiences they aim to be Hollywood blockbusters. However, their mission is to use these experiences to document “old stuff” and preserve history. “Backing up humanity… just in case,” as they refer to it. 

Trailer

Curious to see how the final Lunar Strike game might look? Here’s the world premiere trailer for the game, unleashed during the Future Games Showcase at the Gamescom event. It’s a pretty stellar depiction of the Moon, potentially exciting to explore and roam around in. Your protagonist is a female archivist with a soothing, calm voice. 

She seems alone, though, throughout her exploration of the South Pole of the Moon, which isn’t surprising, as the developers say exploration will supersede combat. But it begs the question of NPCs and character interaction. Will the world feel alive as you run into colony members scrambling for survival, too? Or are you the last human alive, trying to document and preserve all you can about humanity’s exploits on the moon?

Release Date, Platforms, & Editions

Lunar Strike is coming soon. So, all you can do now is wait until official confirmation of the release date. You can be preparing your PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, or PC platforms for the launch. Hopefully, along with the timely announcement of the release date will also come the announcement of any preorders of editions. 

Evidently, a lot is still unclear to expectant space adventurers looking to galavant on the moon. To keep you subscribed to gaming development or future updates, you can add Lunar Strike to your Steam wishlist or visit the official website. The website doesn’t currently have much to view, except its ominous and immersive soundtrack, perfectly suited to space exploration. By virtue of the website going live, though, I’m certain Cognition will be adding more information soon.