izigame.me

tl;dr: Gorgeous game that plays a bit clunky and doesn't seem to have nailed down the tone it is going for.
I first learned of LUNARK through seeing its art posted online, and picked it up primarily on its visual merit. I had heard of and seen the games it is inspired by (Prince of Persia for DOS, Another World, etc.) but never played them before, and so I approached this game without any deep-seated fondness for or intimate understanding of the genre. I can say that the final game is indeed gorgeous to look at, with stylized and fluidly animated environments and characters. However, as the allure of the visuals wore off I found the game beneath to not be that fun. To be clear, I did not finish the game in its entirety. Having made it to a subway segment, I decided I'd had enough and stopped. My reasons for moving on are primarily the controls and what I saw of the story:
Controls:

I found the player character's speed to never be quite what I was hoping for. The walk speed is painfully slow, and so I was frequently running around to get anything done, which predictably led to instances of avoidable deaths. I would understand slow character movement if the focus of the game were puzzles or precision platforming, but with frequent combat against mobile enemies being unable to maneuver my character as I wanted made me feel quite helpless.
Often times gameplay seemed to be sacrificed for the sake of animation. When the player character lands from a jump or drop, a non-negligible (though admittedly visually pleasing) animation of them getting to their feet and readying themselves plays. Pairing this "recovery" with the fast enemy movement due to a low pixel count on screen during levels (meaning the smallest unit an enemy can visibly move is relatively large compared to the size of enemies and characters) and it felt like enemies (particularly the floating orb robots) would be on me immediately. The game is structured, commendably, to typically (though not never) avoid placing enemies directly on level with you as you enter a new screen so that you get a chance to survey what is coming up before starting a fight; this decision also means that this "recovery" is bound to enfeeble you at the start of every fight as you shift to your enemies' level. It happens so often that it began to remind me of Ghouls and Ghosts, where combat is somewhat of a puzzle against stiff controls where predicting when you will be able to move your character again is an important skill alongside reflexes and managing your abilities.
Visual feedback was sometimes unclear. Screens are typically divided into three horizontal levels. Walk and fall one level, you're fine. Walk and fall two, instant and utter death. Hang from a ledge, and maybe it becomes survivable? I don't recall, which is why I would have found it helpful for the game to have explicitly clarified at some point. What I do remember is trying to jump while running towards the edge of a platform and instead just jogging off to fall to my death. Related to the next point.
Other miscellaneous gripes. Button inputs felt as though they were processed unnecessarily slow, leading to getting hit while firing the last shot needed to defeat an enemy since I couldn't fire fast enough. Shooting at the missile turrets also felt bad as a result, since it seemed I could never fire fast enough to send the first missile back, only stop it. Jumping while running felt hit or miss, and the misses usually resulted in instant death. In one on one fights the shield powerup felt unnecessary, since it would immobilize me and at that point I would just be more focused on avoiding shots anyway. In group fights, the shield powerup felt useless since I would be getting attacked from multiple sides anyway and likely to take damage right after it broke. Buttons crucial to progress often blended into the background. The "hold upwards while running to reach faraway ledges" caused me to spend time futilely attempting to reach areas that looked as though they were accessible, when they were not (it took a while for me to realize it wasn't the controls missing my input and the ledge was in fact out of reach). Hidden "shell" currency was occasionally visible and I noticed it (on top of the subway and in a wall of the sewers), but I was unable to conceive of any way to reach it, backtracking and trying to make my way towards it without any success. If some shells are only accessible by taking an alternate path that becomes inaccessible if the main path is taken, making that clear would save time and disappointment. Some of the levels become pretty large, and a map would have been helpful.

These frequent stop, tank-like controls may be an artifact from the "2D cinematic platformer genre of the 90's", but they are one I feel is worth revising.
Story:
From what I saw, the story didn't do a great job of conveying its tone or messages clearly. The store page states that the game is set "in the midst of a rebellion against a totalitarian regime", though in my playtime I saw a single act of oppression by a robot and no rebellion, not counting the destruction my character was causing as they made their way through the city. The player character is apparently some kind of human-adjacent or humanoid species who was repeatedly asked by NPCs if they suffer from "accelerated aging", which seemed to make the player character uncomfortable. The player character was also told by paternal figure Gideon that taking care of one of their kind had been an act of kindness they "collect" on by sending the player to explore the first cave. Yet the player character by most accounts looks and acts identical to everyone else, and any particular motivations, abilities, or stigmas they had weren't explored much in my playtime. If the game wanted to make me take its "rebellion against a totalitarian regime premise" seriously, it may have been advisable to find a better way to explain the function of missile turrets than a conversation with a "Weaponologist" named "Weapon". Maybe have a brief snippet of an actual resistance fighter or fighters getting defeated by a turret, showing the regime's willing use of violence to quell unrest, which could serve to build the world and teach gameplay lessons at the same time. Related to that, most of the subway passengers seemed completely uninterested in the fact that explosions and gunshots were ringing out directly next to them, content to just continue staring at their devices. The fact that the passengers generally didn't care about the conflict happening right in front of them either meant conflicts happened so often that it was not notable (in which case some kind of uninterested but visible response would be more appropriate than no response at all) or that it was overlooked as a way to add to the intensity of combat in public spaces. If passengers are supposed to be scared, have them hastily stumble to a safe area or something similar. Retrieving the "artifact" from the ruins and processing it into a sphere at Gideon's house led to several leaps in logic from dialogue by the player character. How is it clear that it is suddenly a map? Why does the player character assume that Gideon is a member of the resistance? From the way the player character lived in a factory producing robots for the regime, I find it just as likely that Gideon may be allied with the regime and would want this map to turn it over to them, rather than use it to support the resistance as the player character thinks. The music I heard was rather bare and not assertive, didn't seem to be trying to evoke any emotional response from the player. Serviceable, but nothing memorable or standout.