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.