Lunata Rescue is an entertaining Windows Phone game where you play the role of Lunata, a tiny treehopper insect who must rescue his kidnapped babies from the evil Queen Donatella.
The game is designed in the spirit of the classic platform-styled games but adds a slight twist to things. While the classic platform style has you traveling left to right to achieve your goals, Lunata Rescue will send you in all directions.
Graphics are colorful and the platforms are highly creative. Overall, Lunata Rescue is a fun game to pass the time with from your Windows Phone.
Lunata Rescue's main menu greets you with options to jump into gameplay, view your achievement insignias, check out your stash of power-ups, and view your high scores. You can also access the game's settings from the main menu (leaf petal in the upper left corner) where you can mute the sound and music, as well as view the developer credits.
There is a gaming store available from the main menu (the Remove Ads Button) that has options for several in-app purchases that includes lives, coins and in the process remove the ad support.
Gameplay is separated into four modes of play (Campaign, Rush, Nightmare and Hardcore) with two difficulty levels (Easy and Normal) with the gaming levels mapped out on the game's World Map. You also have When you first jump into gameplay, Lunata Rescue will walk you through a brief tutorial covering the basic gaming mechanics and objectives.
The objective of Lunata Rescue is to save your kidnapped babies from the evil grasp of Queen Donatella. Each of your baby treehoppers has been wrapped in a cocoon and hidden throughout the various gaming levels.
The gaming screen has your on-screen controls lining the bottom of the display, which includes a left/right movement button, a fire button (to throw berries) and a jump button. From time to time, when you earn power-ups, an icon will appear above the jump button to activate that power-up.
You will need to rescue all your baby treehoppers as quickly as possible while avoiding all the dangers each platform will throw at you. You will find ants, spiders, grasshoppers, spiky objects and more that will ruin your day if you make contact with them. You can collect berries and throw them at your enemies to stun them, but that is only temporary.
The key difference between the Easy and Normal difficulty is that with the Easy all you need to do is find your babies, shoot the cocoon to bust it and the baby treehopper will find its way home. The Normal difficulty has you escorting the baby, once freed, back to a home base. If you lose a life, you will have to collect your baby again and get it to safety.
Your primary gaming mode is the Campaign with additional and progressively more challenging modes becoming available as you work through the game. In addition to Campaign, you have Rush, Nightmare and Hardcore modes to keep you busy.
Gameplay, regardless of the mode, is full of challenges from avoiding the enemy insects by stunning them, jumping over them or just timing your movement to avoid them all together. You also have decoy cocoons that hold enemy bugs.
If at any point you need to pull back and review the overall gaming level, just tap the pause button in the upper right corner of the gaming screen. This will stop gameplay and let you view the overall level. Cocoons are hidden in all corners of the platform level and the faster your can collect your babies, the higher your score.
Lunata Rescue does afford you five gaming lives that can be regenerated with time. It takes about fifteen minutes to regenerate one life and a regeneration timer can be found on the game's main menu.
Overall, Lunata Rescue is a fun Windows Phone game. The hand-drawn graphics are colorful and full of detail. Gameplay is challenging enough to keep you on your toes, testing your skills of timing and discovering creative paths.
The only knock I can offer against the game is the lack of a help section. The tutorial does a good job of things, but at the very least I'd like a reference section to explain key gaming features — like what can I do with the coins I've collected?
The multiple gaming modes and difficulties help give Lunata Rescue a little depth and staying power. It is a free, ad-supported Windows Phone game with the option to remove the ads through an in-app purchase of at least $0.99.
Download Lunata Rescue for Windows Phone
