Lunar Lander: Beyond will reimagine the Atari arcade classic with a “deep narrative” in 2024
A tricky touchdown?
Seventies arcade hit Lunar Lander is touching back down from the abyss of forgotten classic video games with a modern reimagining. The still-kicking corpse of Atari is behind the incoming addition to the influential series, with Cris Tales studio Dreams Uncorporated leading development on a new game that will apparently add what Lunar Lander - a game about landing a lunar module on a bumpy moon - has been missing all these decades: a rich story.
Lunar Lander: Beyond has exactly the sort of name you’d probably expect from a game that promises to update a decades-old video game for a modern audience. The game’s announcement makes it sound like the thing you’d also expect from a Lunar Lander game - that is, the challenge of landing a module by carefully using your thrusters and adjusting for velocity - will be here in what’s described as “precision gravity flier mechanics” with an element of “simulation”.
So far, so Lunar Lander. What is a little more unexpected is the promise of “a deep narrative” that follows the player’s character as a recently appointed captain for an intergalactic company called the Pegasus Corporation. You’ll be working with a crew of explorers and advisors, both extracting resources and delivering them to various places, as well as getting involved in “daring rescues” on various planets and moons. As your crew undertake each mission, they may end up stressed by bad flying or exhaustion, risking seeing hallucinations.
If that wasn't enough to be dealing with, the seemingly rich story will be complicated by the appearance of strange portals and “sinister truths” of the universe, which I guess will add emotional gravity to the literal gravity you’ll already be dealing with. Ha, ha.
Lunar Lander: Beyond will be broken into 30 missions, with the chance to swap endless procedurally-generated pilots between four ships, plus a dozen upgrades to customise your vessel. There'll be four difficulty levels, with the toughest 'Insane' difficulty adding the risk of permadeath.
The announcement trailer reveals little more, forgoing actual gameplay in favour of some admittedly lovely-looking backgrounds and hand-drawn artwork. While it’s easy to be a bit dismissive of whatever Atari is up to these days, Dreams Uncorporated have a glowing track record thanks to their stellar debut in Cris Tales - we called it “a beautiful JRPG that's full of heart” on its release back in 2021 - so this new Lunar Lander game may be well worth paying attention to.
We’ll be able to know for ourselves next year, with Lunar Lander: Beyond set to touchdown on both Steam and the Epic Games Store in 2024.