📘📕 Mothmen 1966 Xbox Series X Review 7.5/10 "A pretty punchy pulpy paperback presented in pixels" 📘📕 @lcbgamestudio #GameDev #IndieGame

"Mothmen 1966 is a 'Pixel Pulp' - a visual novel featuring a fusion of exceptional writing and stunning illustration, inspired by mid-20th century pulp fiction and 80s home computer graphics - set amongst the strange occurrences of the Leonid meteor shower of 1966."

Released on July 14th across all major platforms, LCB Game Studios’ Mothmen 1966 is a narrative-driven, bite-sized visual novel (around 1.5-2 hours in length), using 8-bit style visuals to drive home the retro vibe. 

The chapters of the game are told from the POV of three characters consisting of a troubled young couple and a mysterious gas station owner. The game is heavily text-based, with (mostly) simple puzzles breaking up the standard visual novel setup.

What sets this apart, however, are the aesthetics of Mothmen 1966 -  the early ‘80s computer presentation and limited audio samples melds well with the perfect length, pacey storytelling and comic-book vibe of the tale.

Whilst there are only a handful of puzzles in the game, only one of them slowed me down for any real length of time, and the instant death/restart in these sections means that the game never feels tedious as it’s always moving forwards. The moments in which you can make decisions to alter the events of the story also add a degree of control, meaning that you’ll need to replay the game multiple times in order to unlock every dialogue branch and get the full picture.

There are some negatives, however. The pulpiness of Mothmen 1966 is enjoyably trashy, but there were some moments where the characters’ reactions seemed a bit strange, especially in the earlier scenes involving the young couple, where it seems to really hammer home this bubbling tension between them, I didn’t fully buy into their relationship, instead finding Holt (the gas station owner) a much more intriguing, richly drawn, and vulnerable character.

The music was also a mixed bag, I enjoyed the simplicity of it, and how various effects are taken from such a limited palette, but in some scenes, the audio was on short loops and quite grating, I found myself keen to get to the next section just so it would stop.