The Moon Watch

I happened across this game while doing some research on the history of the XYZZY Awards; this work received the 2008 XYZZY Award for Best Use of Medium.

This work is a rare example of a game that significantly leverages the multimedia capabilities of Glulx, featuring a splash screen, graphics, music and sound effects. There are some interesting innovations, such as the use of a background image depicting elements of the single room of the game -- a background that blurs when the PC dons a spacesuit. The soundtrack is thematically appropriate to the game world of the 1960s, sounding a bit like experimental music of the era, but it is unfortunately short and repetitive enough to irritate unless turned down in volume. (But don't turn it off or you'll miss the music at the end.)

The plot is part humorous and part serious. An average citizen of the Soviet Union is drafted to oversee a Soviet moon base housing nuclear missiles, intended as a failsafe against nuclear attack. When the Motherland is attacked, the PC sets in motion the counterstrike but soon has second thoughts. The rest of the plot concerns how you choose to resolve the situation, complicated somewhat by the unexpected presence of other interested parties.

Three significant NPCs allow conversation, and this is done via freeform input that seems to use some sort of keyword matching. I've run into this kind of experimental conversation engine a few times, and even games of the 1980s made attempts along this line. As with most experiments of this type, it does not seem like a huge improvement over the ASK/TELL model other than the reduction in required typing, and falls afoul of the usual inability to interpret the context of natural language. There is no disambiguation, and in at least one place there is a requirement to use a two-word phrase that the responses for the individual words don't suggest. Some replaying shows that the game is willing to work with the player somewhat here, guiding one forward if the input includes something relatively close, but it's still pretty finicky overall. The included walkthrough spells out the necessary keywords if one is stuck.

As described in Kake's review, the puzzles seem almost universally unfair by modern standards, mostly by virtue of the game not bothering to inform the player of its expectations. I don't think that I've ever encountered a game that has a smell-based puzzle before, for example, and although there is a single conversation response that offers an indirect clue here, the response to >SMELL doesn't help the player along much.

The game oscillates unexpectedly between the two poles of serious and goofy at several points, but overall it leans toward the goofy side. There was much to like about it, but for the most part those elements (Spoiler - click to show)(such as a robot that looks like a toy duck, or alien mice) are gated by a very old school aesthetic for puzzles which is grounded more in riddles than commonly-accessible logic. A more modern sensibility to puzzle design and interaction would improve this work tremendously.

I would still recommend this work as an interesting example as part of a study of the evolution of the form, or to anyone who craves the input-as-riddle aesthetic. For everyone else, you're probably best served by keeping the walkthrough handy and making liberal use of it.