Aside from the likes of Pong or Breakout, titles in the vein of Lunar Lander are among the earliest video games I remember playing. At the time, I found the challenge of properly positioning and then carefully landing a spacecraft on a lunar surface to be quite difficult. But then again, at the time everything was new, and having an understanding of how to properly control descent on a variety of planets that each have their own gravity was pretty ambitious. What Lunar Lander Beyond is attempting to do is take that base mechanic, which at this point is quite a bit more commonly understood, and give it some additional flavor to create a sort of adventure out of it… and it has mixed results.

In the game you’re a part of the Pegasus Corporation, a company committed to tackling the dangerous task of delivering goods and completing missions across the galaxy. Working with a growing roster of pilots and spacecraft you’ll need to, pretty early on, begin looking at each mission and which crew and ship will be best suited to the task. Since each of your pilots have their own experience levels and attributes they’ll get randomly assigned as they progress, as well as loads of different ship upgrades you can enable, you’ll have quite a lot to consider. An added factor to take into account is that as you struggle or push specific crew too far their stress levels will rise. This can potentially lead to a vicious sort of spiral as they’ll even begin hallucinating, significantly raising the obstacles in the way of you completing your missions successfully.

Each of these features and attempts to add some depth to the gameplay and flavor to the experience through some narrative beats are appreciated. All the same, while you can alter some of the details and objectives concerning gameplay, at the end of the day the core experience still never feels like more than a beefed up version of the original. If you’re a fan of that style and challenge that probably sounds great, but whether or not it would change hearts and minds for those who it doesn’t connect with would be a fair question. Even if you are a fan, while over the course of the game details and difficulties get tweaked for the sake of variety, you’re still making careful use of thrust and momentum to navigate through trouble… and perhaps that could get a bit stale at some point.

Taking all of this into consideration, Lunar Lander Beyond feels both fresh in some regards but also trapped by its legacy. Yes, this is a much more complete experience that is obviously trying to get every ounce of value out of the original core mechanics. The variability of your crewmembers, and the need to spread work out to keep from trapping yourself by relying on too few folks the further you go, also adds some flavor to the overall experience, as do some of the characters you’ll encounter and the overall story beats. Still, if you don’t buy into the core mechanics, or won’t be able to stick with them throughout the game, that likely won’t help it feel worthwhile.