Mooncrash!

This game categorically defies expectations. It starts out giving every sign of being a hack job by a first-time author desperately fighting a losing battle against Inform 7's seemingly infinite layers of complexity, and I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it is. The remarkable thing is that, in the end, author Laura (no surname given) won that battle.

Countless new authors come to the world of interactive fiction with grand visions of making a sprawling epic of a game that does everything. Grand worldbuilding! Sorting hats! Combat! Conversations! Multiple endings! Crafting! Nailbiting tension! Reversals! Philosophical beats! Timeloops! The meta! This is impossible. It can't be done, especially by a newbie... unless, apparently, they are stripped down to their absolute core and all concerns about polish are tossed aside.

A large number of player actions in Mooncrash! take the form of a >CHOOSE verb (i.e. the affordance that is the heart of the choice-based paradigm), which seems to have been simply bludgeoned into place, crushing all built-in conversational verbs in the process. That verb -- plus >EXAMINE, basic movement, >TAKE, >PUT and a handful of specialized attack verbs -- are the only commands that will do anything for the player. Other verbs remain but are irrelevant since they do nothing useful.

Many works in recent decades have proven that this is enough. Superluminal Vagrant Twin, The Little Match Girl 3: The Escalus Manifold, practically the whole catalog of Arthur DiBianca... all of these feature essentials-only command prompt interaction that keeps the action moving by limiting the player's choices to the handful of options that are relevant at that point in the unfolding story. The author's execution at this game design level is very adroit; each scenelet has one easily-apprehensible mechanic, and the spaces in between are handled with quick-to-read prose decorated by hefty sprinkles of narrative glitter fashioned from RPG tropes (both tabletop and computerized).

The prose is absolutely essential to this game's success. As noted author Amanda Walker says in her intfiction.org review of the game, it "needs to be purple and is suitably lilac". Given how rough-hewn the program side is, one might expect the writing to be similarly crude, and the opening paragraph certainly does little to challenge that expectation. As one progresses through the story, however, low expectations are challenged with bits of imagery and beats of action that suggest a raw talent for the craft of IF, one that grew significantly even over the course of creating this game.

There is hinting about a deeper story, one that perhaps justifies certain hard-to-explain aspects of the situation presented. (Spoiler - click to show)(The main villain and the Four Winds are originally a group of friends from a universe more like our own? Or maybe they're all avatars of a group of players in a computer game, just like the protagonist?) Are these hints even consistent? Does that question even matter? If you're only in it for the fun, then the answer is no. The story provided is a half-finished sketch that lets one fill in the blanks with the ideas that seem right according to fit and preference.

This is one of those games whose main strength is that it continues to surprise on the upside all the way through, even when taking the completionist route and trying to see every ending. It really does delight, and intrigue, and satisfy. If the author considers refining this game into a post-competition release, my own advice (of quite dubious value) would be to go in the direction of "less is more" by learning to remove unneeded default actions entirely, and also to take some cues from authors of "limited parser" games such as the ones listed above about how to better set player expectations in accordance with that style. There is some danger that doing this would dispel the air of earnest sincerity that is a substantial part of the game's charm.

Although the quality of the initial segment will vary somewhat depending on the results of the factional alignment at the start of the game, anyone spending two hours with this game is certain to get past the initial poor impression, so it will be interesting to see how it fares in the competition. Even if it places low in the rankings, I would strongly encourage the author to spend some time genuinely studying the available tools (and to seek help and advice on the forum) so that the next attempt can better fulfill such a sweeping vision.

This game had quite a few rough edges where it was clear the author was relatively unfamiliar with Inform and with parser games in general. Many key mechanics were implemented in decidedly nonstandard ways (ignoring features of Inform that might have made them smoother, and default commands that might conflict).

That being said, the game structure was interesting, and while the game uses a lot of elements from older, crueler games like mapping, limited moves, etc. (I presume many of these elements were topics of study in the class mentioned in the credits), none of them outstay their welcome. In fact, my favorite part of the game was the move-limited conversation tree in one of the paths. To my memory, it's the only conversation implementation I've ever seen that has actually managed to make me feel like I had to choose what topics to bring up carefully and really consider how they might specifically further my goals, without ever feeling betrayed if an option didn't quite go where I thought it would. The move limits curbed my natural impulse to lawnmower, while still leaving as many choices open to the player as possible, and being flexible enough to allow a couple tangents before returning to the main topic, which felt like a very natural way to hold a conversation. I was also very impressed that I was able to correctly figure out which conversation topics would lead to the correct outcome on my first try, without feeling like my hand was being held or they were being pointed out in any special way; the conversation felt logical and intuitive, which in my experience is extremely difficult to achieve and very uncommon to find.

I did find the plot and lore a little hard to follow in places. I think some of this was a pacing issue, especially going between combat and the lore/exposition paragraphs after combat. (A couple well-utilized "press space to continue" bits might have worked well there.) But overall I enjoyed the game and found the mechanics fun and interesting.

i don't play a lot of parser games but i was drawn to this game by the fun title and implications of a detailed fantasy setting, which is something i always love.

it turned out to be very friendly to someone like me. if you have to use a verb the game will pretty much tell you what it is. there are large sections that are basically cyoa except that you have to type "choose (whatever)" instead of clicking. so while i am a little scared of parser games, this felt not very parser game like and didn't intimidate me. there are four different sections with four different gameplay mechanics and they were all easy to pick up.

otherwise i admit i did not really vibe with this game. im all about worldbuilding and interesting characters really, and i guess this kind of thing was not the point. there were a lot of intriguing details of the world, but they were not explored in depth, and i had some trouble figuring out what kind of setting it was even supposed to be. it felt like high fantasy mostly, but sometimes the tech level seemed modern or even futuristic, like in the part where you have to crawl thru vents to get to a "hazmat room". this is a combo that can work but there just wasn't enough detail for me to figure out how it all fit together.

for characters, i liked the fateweaver (i think that was her name? the tower lady). you get a whole section where you do nothing but talk to her so you really get to know her unusual/inhuman(?) point of view and that was fascinating to me. but with the other three former heroes i didn't really feel like i knew who they were.

and then there's the ending. (Spoiler - click to show)where it turns out it's all for nothing and the world ends anyway. this is the philosophical part, i guess, and i don't know anything about philosophy. but when so many of my peers are like "why do anything, we'll all be dead soon", i don't really like to see this kind of message in fiction. i guess the games perspective is "you should try anyway but just be aware you're probably f*cked"? but i do think that people are not gonna try unless they really believe success is possible, so i don't think the nihilism (?) is helpful.

the "gotcha" of it feels especially weird bc at the beginning there's like a personality quiz that sorts you into one of four segments (though you do all four eventually), and one of the questions is about what you would do if you know the world is ending. and only one of the answers is "try to save it anyway", but regardless of what you say, that is what you spend the game doing. you don't actually have the option to accept your fate and focus on spending your remaining time with your loved ones or whatever. so even if you accept the nihilism you can't make the "good" nihilist choice, you have to act like you have hope anyway and then the game is like "lmao you thought..." maybe the real winning strat is to close the tab and go hang out with your friends before we all die to climate change or world war 3.

but also maybe i am badly misunderstanding everything because i am just a humble idiot. i don't know if i am even understanding nihilism right.

anyway on a more petty note i might mind this less if i hadn't grinded for a million years to beat the final boss. according to the walkthrough (which i looked at after i finished the game) i guess i didn't have to but my dumb a** could not get through that conversation 💀 so i thought the fight was mandatory and i loaded my save to grind until i could beat the boss which was very tedious. and then it was all pointless anyway.

the game seems like it has a lot of work and love put into it so probably it is me that is failing here. probably this would be a great game for someone who likes philosophy and wants to try a parser game that's easy to get into. but it is not really for a silly fantasy girlie like me, and im sorry for not getting it.