Moon Dancer

Moon Dancer is a vertical-scrolling shooter game developed and published by Terarin Games. It was released on January 14, 2022 for Microsoft Windows and is available worldwide on Steam in English, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. A Switch version was published by Regista and released on the Japanese E-Shop in July and in other regions later on September 29th, 2022. The Switch version features more detailed graphics and minor enemy and powerup location differences in both Arcade and Caravan modes.

The game features full controller support and in-game settings for vertical monitors (tate), supporting both 90 and 270 degree rotations.

Your ship features a lock on laser. According to the developer, the game focuses on attacking the enemy rather than avoiding bullets.

Game Modes
Arcade mode consists of eight stages and has three levels of difficulty.

Caravan mode is a 3-minute high score mode and plays on a special stage dedicated to this mode. This mode is available in the demo.

Unlockable Secrets
As is the case with several other of Terarin’s games, a stage select menu is accessible in Moon Dancer. To use it, input ( ← → ← → ← → ) during the opening cutscene of Arcade Mode.

Mid-Stage Scoring
Each enemy type from fodder to boss has a base points value awarded when destroyed. Additional points are earned upon destroying every enemy in the same grouping.

Destroyed enemies drop crystals that can be picked up for an end of stage bonus (100 points each). Destroying an enemy causes all of their bullets remaining onscreen to be canceled and converted into crystals. Held crystals are lost on death.

There are invisible areas throughout each stage that, when a player targets and destroys them, create a pickup worth 50,000 points.

Certain missiles, such as those found in Stage 2-2, award the player 10,000 when destroyed. Any Shot Powerups a player picks up when at max level is worth 10,000.

Making Chains
Chains in Moon Dancer are created by hitting anything targetable with one of your lock-on laser projectiles. It increases by one per laser that connects and does not go up if the target is destroyed before the laser hits it. The time window for increasing your chain is quite short: it is impossible to go up to max number of lock-ons without losing it, and it appears to be impossible to chain entire stages on account of lulls during level transitions. A considerable amount of score in Moon Dancer can be gained or lost through maintaining long chains.

Points through Chaining
When a chain of 5 or more ends, the player receives points of the chain amount x300. In addition, every non-boss enemy has an assigned bonus point value that is multiplied by the current chain and added to their base destruction value. The bonus for fodder enemies can be as low as 40 points per chain, but rarer enemies such as the caravan miniboss and the self-assembling drones found in caravan and 3-3 have values of 225 and 300 respectively.

Bosses do not grant a chain bonus on defeat, making them generally impossible to milk. However, the Stage 2 boss occasionally spawns small tanks, creating small payouts for the chain you can build on it.

Arcade Stage Clear
Stage Points- 100,000

Time Points - Currently Unknown

Destroyed - number of enemies destroyed x100

Crystal - number of crystals held x100

Caravan Stage Clear
Stage Points - 100,000

Destroyed - number of enemies destroyed x100

Crystal - number of crystals held x100

Lives - number of remaining lives x10,000