Crimson Moon Review
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release Date: September 1, 2026
Main Story Length: 12 hours
Developer: ProbablyMonsters
Reviewed on PC
Gameplay screenshots captured by NextUpDaily
Not Every Moon Has to Shine for Everyone
Let’s get this out of the way early: Crimson Moon won’t be for everyone.
There are things here I loved, moments where the combat clicked, and enough style and personality to keep pulling me back in. But this is also a tough roguelike that doesn’t always do what you want it to do—and sometimes seems perfectly happy watching you suffer because of it.
The basic structure sends you through a series of districts, typically completing three gates before reaching the district boss. Sounds simple enough. It isn’t.
Those runs get brutal, particularly once you reach the third and fourth mission. Crimson Moon wants you to learn its systems, improve your build, and slowly become strong enough to push farther each time. That’s the roguelike deal. The problem is that when the core combat isn’t consistently addictive enough to make failure feel exciting, restarting an entire district can turn from “one more run” into “you’ve got to be kidding me.”
And I had both reactions plenty of times.
Smooth Swordplay, Until You Try to Get Out of the Way
Combat is where Crimson Moon becomes complicated for me.
On the surface, everything feels responsive. Using a controller on PC was smooth, attacks landed with some satisfying weight, and chaining together abilities with your standard light and heavy attacks can absolutely create some entertaining encounters.
But I’ve always been a roller.
Give me a third-person Soulslike with a sword and I’m probably trying to roll through, around, and occasionally directly into every problem the game throws at me. I’d rather dodge an attack than stand there waiting for the perfect parry.
Crimson Moon did not appreciate my lifestyle choices.
Rolling frequently feels less effective than it should. Enemies can remain aggressively locked onto your character through the dodge, meaning what looks like a perfectly reasonable escape can still end with a sword buried somewhere you’d rather it wasn’t.
That wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if parrying felt fantastic.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
The shield animation feels slow, making the timing difficult to read and, more importantly, not especially rewarding when you finally get it right. There’s certainly a learning curve here, and players who love mastering parry windows may have a better relationship with the system than I did. But for my playstyle, neither defensive option ever became something I completely trusted.
That’s a rough problem to have in a game that gets this difficult.
Then You Become a God—and Everything Makes Sense
Ironically, my favorite part of Crimson Moon’s combat is when the game lets you temporarily stop playing by its normal rules.
Triggering God Mode by clicking both analog sticks transforms you into an absolute force, and it rules.
For those moments, the combat gets faster, more aggressive, and dramatically more satisfying. You aren’t cautiously poking at enemies or waiting for another defensive opportunity—you’re tearing through them.
Every time I activated it, I found myself wishing more of Crimson Moon’s normal combat carried that same energy.
You also have two rechargeable powers alongside your light and heavy attacks, so there are tools to experiment with. But over longer sessions, the basic combat rotation started feeling a little thin. With how many roguelikes, Soulslikes, and games blending the two genres continue to release, combat needs something that makes you immediately want another run.
Crimson Moon occasionally gave me that feeling.
It just didn’t give it to me enough.
Misery Loves Company
One of Crimson Moon’s most enticing features is also one that could completely change how some players experience it: two-player online co-op with cross-platform support.
You don’t have to suffer through Gildenarch alone.
Being able to jump into these runs with another player is a legitimately strong selling point for a game built around difficult encounters, repeated attempts, and learning how to survive increasingly nasty districts. Co-op isn’t just someone running beside you either. Players share lives, can resurrect one another, and the game adjusts its difficulty and enemy composition around having another player in the fight.
More importantly, this feels like the type of game that naturally benefits from having a friend involved.
A frustrating death when you’re alone can make you stare at the screen wondering whether you really want to do those three gates again. A frustrating death with a friend usually turns into blaming each other, laughing about it, and immediately jumping back in.
That matters in a roguelike.
Cross-platform multiplayer makes the feature even more appealing because it removes one of the biggest barriers that normally gets in the way of co-op games: figuring out who bought it on what platform. For players specifically looking for something challenging to grind through with a friend, co-op might actually be the strongest reason to give Crimson Moon a shot. Xbox’s listing explicitly advertises cross-platform multiplayer and cross-platform co-op, while the game is available with two-player online play across its supported platforms.
Five Lives Later, Death Still Hurts
The progression system does eventually make things more manageable.
As you gain additional lives, upgrade your character, and expand your resources, runs become noticeably easier. Reaching a point where I had five lives and three healing jugs that refilled after each gate gave me significantly more breathing room than I had early on.
There’s also plenty to work toward.
Weapons, equipment, upgrades, different builds, bounties and other progression systems give Crimson Moon a respectable amount of content for players who enjoy tweaking their setup between runs.
My issue is that the amount of customization sometimes feels deeper than the gameplay supporting it.
There are plenty of things I can change, but I didn’t always feel compelled to obsess over them because the actual fighting started becoming repetitive before the progression systems ran out of ideas.
And losing a run can sting.
Working through three gates only to finally reach a boss, get destroyed, and realize you’re heading all the way back to the beginning is textbook roguelike design. I understand the assignment.
That doesn’t mean I have to enjoy turning the paper in.
When the combat is clicking, another attempt is easy to justify. When it isn’t, replaying those same sections can feel more exhausting than enticing.
Movement Might Secretly Be the Best Part
Here’s something I didn’t expect: simply moving around Crimson Moon can be fantastic.
Traversal feels fluid, jumping around the environments is satisfying, and launching yourself from one position to another before landing directly on an enemy with a vicious downward strike produced some of my favorite moments in the entire game.
There’s a looseness to movement that I wish carried even further into the defensive combat.
Even sprinting comes with an interesting design choice. Sprint and roll share the same button rather than placing sprint on the left-stick click like so many modern games do. I was playing with a DualSense Edge, so changing controls wouldn’t exactly have been a problem, but I never felt strongly enough about the default setup to bother.
It’s unconventional.
It also works.
It Certainly Knows How to Look Good While Killing You
Visually, Crimson Moon makes a strong first impression.
The graphics are crisp, the overall art direction is well executed, and several environments have enough visual personality that entering a new area still feels exciting even when the underlying enemy encounters begin becoming familiar.
Enemy variety is respectable early on but starts wearing thinner as the game progresses. The bosses fare better visually. Some of their designs are genuinely cool—even while they’re repeatedly introducing your face to the floor.
I also really liked the main hub area.
It has a beautiful design, and even something as straightforward as selecting your next mission comes with a slick animation that gives the location some personality. These little presentation touches help Crimson Moon feel more polished than you might expect from its scale.
Performance on PC was also generally solid during my experience. I encountered some occasional minor stuttering, but nothing severe enough to meaningfully damage the experience.
Indie Ambition With a Few Sharp Edges
It’s important to judge Crimson Moon for what it actually is.
This isn’t a massive AAA production, and expecting it to compete dollar-for-dollar with games backed by enormous studios would be unfair. Within its scope, there’s an admirable amount happening here.
There are builds to experiment with, gear to chase, upgrades to unlock, bosses to conquer, districts to push through and plenty of opportunities to gradually make your character stronger.
The foundation is good.
I just don’t think every piece built on top of that foundation is equally strong.
The combat can be fun without being exceptional. Enemy variety starts strong before becoming familiar. The roguelike structure provides plenty of replayability, but occasionally asks you to replay sections that you may not actually be dying to experience again.
That distinction matters.
A great roguelike makes failure feel like permission to immediately start another run.
Crimson Moon occasionally made failure feel like paperwork.
Verdict — There’s Fun Under the Frustration
Crimson Moon frustrated me.
It also entertained me.
Sometimes those two things happened within about thirty seconds of each other.
There’s a solid game underneath the rougher edges, particularly for players who already enjoy the intersection between Soulslike combat and roguelike progression. The movement feels good, God Mode is an absolute blast, the presentation punches above its weight, and there’s enough progression here for players who enjoy experimenting with builds.
But the defensive combat never completely won me over, repeated runs eventually lose some of their spark, and the fundamental combat loop could use more variety to support everything surrounding it.
I don’t think Crimson Moon is going to become the game we’re all still discussing years from now.
It doesn’t need to be.
For its price point and indie scale, there’s enough here to make it a worthwhile experience for the right player. I had a good time with Crimson Moon—even if the game occasionally made me question whether it wanted me to.
If tough roguelikes are your thing, you’re comfortable dying, rebuilding, and trying again, and you don’t mind a little frustration mixed into your fun, there’s definitely something here worth sinking your teeth into.
Disclosure: A review code for Crimson Moon was provided for review purposes. Receiving a review code had no influence on the opinions expressed in this review or its final score.
