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Review
Making a satisfying piece of IF in under 500 words is hard. Though I’m a vocal short-fiction aficionado, I find a lot of Neo-Twiny Jam works miss the mark for me; they often tackle concepts that are too big for the word count to handle in a way that feels complete, especially if there’s branching.
The Moon’s Knight deals with this by zooming in on a single moment in a toxic relationship, a moment when one lover chooses whether to trust the other or not. It lets poetic language and a sort of allegorical approach (the fickle beloved is literally the Moon) carry the emotional weight instead of trying to establish two realistic, well-rounded characters and sell the player on caring about them in so short a time, which I think is a good move. The language is rhythmic and alliteration-focused, which, in combination with the subject matter of knights riding into battle, is strongly reminiscent of Old English/Middle English poetry. I mention this because I enjoy that kind of thing, but also because it suggests we’re also drawing on the medieval framework of courtly love here, with its treatment of a knight longing for an unattainable lady and laying down their life for her as an ideal to be aspired to. (The Moon’s Knight takes a darker view of this, of course.)
My only criticism is that I feel the import of the game’s one choice isn’t particularly clear before you make it, depriving me as the player of the ability to feel a faint echo of the player character’s agony at deciding whether to risk her life to trust a lover who has been known to be inconstant, or whether to blatantly demonstrate her distrust. Instead my feeling on the first go-round was “I guess I’ll just pick something and see what happens?” which seems like perhaps not what the piece is aiming for. Making it clearer ahead of the choice that the Moon has promised the knight her protection (probably when first mentioning/describing the ampoule?) would have given the choice more impact the first time for me.
But other than that, it’s a striking piece that does a good job of making its emotional point in an economical number of words.
