Crimson Moon Wiki
2026-09-01

Community Sentiment at Launch — Steam Reviews and Press Reception

What players and press are saying about Crimson Moon on launch day — Steam review totals, IGN hands-on, and the issues dev is already addressing.

Community Sentiment at Launch — Steam Reviews and Press Reception - official Crimson Moon screenshot
Official screenshot from Crimson Moon

Community Sentiment at Launch

What players and press are saying about Crimson Moon. Intentionally opinionated — your mileage may vary.

Steam reviews at launch

352 reviews at launch, with about 23% positive. (Now 2,180 reviews / 60.4% positive as of September 4 — see the update below.) The negative reviews cluster around a small number of recurring issues that the developers appear to be working on.

What players are complaining about

The most-cited issues in negative reviews:

  1. No keybinding rebinding. Players get 5–6 preset keyboard layouts but cannot remap individual keys. Mouse sensitivity is also locked. This is the dominant complaint, with 17+ reviews calling it out.
  2. No FoV slider. Players want a basic field-of-view control. Not in the launch build.
  3. No ultrawide support. When playing at 21:9 or wider, the game applies a vertical-only crop and the camera also angles down slightly on enemy lock-on, which makes the perspective feel cramped.
  4. Optimization issues including stuttering and crashes on some hardware configurations.

A representative negative review:

"You launched in this state, you asked for these reviews. No keybinds. No mouse sensitivity options. No FoV slider. No proper Ultrawide Support. We get vertical-view for ultrawide support, making for an absolutely terrible point of view."

What's working well

The positive reviews (and the constructive negative reviews) consistently praise:

  • Combat feel — fast, satisfying, weighty
  • Art direction — gothic, colorful, distinctive
  • Music — heavy metal + choir blend (covered in detail by the Behind the Score dev post)
  • Co-op — most positive reviews mention co-op as the highlight
  • Pricing — $19.99 standard / $29.99 deluxe is widely seen as fair

A representative positive review:

"i feel like everyone is trying to get this game to negative — the gameplay is fun, it's an indie game that's cheap and runs better than most AAA games. Sure it has a few rough edges, but what game doesn't? At least this is playable. For people moaning about keybindings, just play with a controller until the issue is resolved."

What the developer is doing about it

Multiple positive reviewers and community managers (notably a Steam user review in French) confirm the developers are actively communicating on Discord about a post-launch patch. The community manager Alex Noon has been visible in Discord threads acknowledging the keybinding issue and saying a fix is in preparation.

Update: Team Metal's response

Less than 24 hours after launch, ProbablyMonsters responded directly via a Steam dev post titled An Update on PC Keybinding. Team Metal confirmed they're working on a first implementation of keybinding support, targeting release the same week as launch (week of September 1, 2026), with the caveat that the first version may have some bugs.

This was acknowledged by the community as a direct response to the dominant negative review theme.

Update: keybinding shipped September 3

It shipped. Patch 1.0.0.1 (build 162350, September 3) added an Alpha keybinding system: rebind all available actions, revert to defaults, and adjust mouse sensitivity, under Settings → Keyboard → custom keyboard profile. Not yet included: multiple bindings per action, double-tap inputs, hold inputs.

Mouse sensitivity is now in. FoV slider and proper ultrawide support are still missing. The developer's stated next-patch priorities are camera improvements, progression loss, UI scaling, crashes, and additional controller layouts — ultrawide and FoV are not on that named list.

Any review dated before September 3 that complains about key remapping is describing a build that no longer exists.

Update: review totals

Steam review counts have moved fast, and the sentiment has improved sharply as the broader audience arrived. As of September 4, 2026 (all languages):

  • 2,180 total reviews — up from 352 on launch day
  • 1,317 positive (60.4%) — up from ~23% on launch day
  • Steam rating: Mixed

English-only subset: 1,571 reviews, 959 positive (61%).

The trajectory — 23% → 51% → 60% positive over three days — is the clearest signal in this dataset. The launch-day figure reflected a concentrated wave of reviews about missing PC settings; as more players arrived and the developer patched, the ratio roughly tripled.

For a topic-by-topic breakdown of what those 2,180 reviewers actually say, see What Players Are Saying — Steam Review Themes, which clusters 499 recent English reviews by theme.

Press reception

IGN Hands-On Preview — the definitive third-party piece

The IGN preview by the time of writing was the only major third-party coverage. Title: "Crimson Moon Marries Diablo and Dark Souls for a Bloody, Breezy Good Time." (Full article ↗)

Key points:

  • The combat is "Gothic architecture meets heavy metal album cover" — bright and colorful, with a lot of blood, not grimdark
  • Crimson Moon's combat has walk speed as its distinguishing trait — different from the slow, dodge-roll-dependent combat of most Soulslikes
  • The author is high on combat and character action, more skeptical of roguelike variety
  • The preview notes that special attacks have both a resource cost (Angel mode) and a cooldown

Verdict from the preview: "lazy summer afternoon game" if the roguelike side catches up to the combat. "Crimson Moon probably isn't going to wow you with something new, but maybe it doesn't have to."

Seasoned Gaming hands-on

Confirmed via 30-minute demo:

  • Angel mode is a toggle (R3/L3 together) — grants super strength and regenerates health
  • Difficulty modes exist (despite Souls inspiration)
  • Each hunt = 4 enemy zones + 1 boss zone (5 total)
  • Gameplay structure is closer to Warhammer: Vermintide than Dark Souls

TechPowerUp launch-day press release

Carries the official quote from David Lesperance, the Game Director. Doesn't include review scores — just the launch announcement and pricing.

Summary

  • The bones are good. Combat, art, music, co-op — these are landing well.
  • The settings page is missing things. Keybindings, sensitivity, FoV, ultrawide — these are real gaps that the dev is publicly addressing.
  • The roguelike side may be thinner than the marketing suggests. IGN called it out as the weak link.
  • Co-op is the safest path to enjoyment if you're unsure. Most positive reviews come from co-op players.

If you're deciding whether to buy: the game is playable and fun at its core, but expect the typical "indie launch with a fix-it roadmap" experience. The dev is talking publicly about patches. Wait a week if you're sensitive to keybind issues; jump in if you have a controller and a friend.

Source

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