Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Moondrop Isle

by Ryan Veeder profile, Nils Fagerburg profile, Joey Jones profile, Zach Hodgens profile, Jason Love profile, Mark Marino profile, Carl Muckenhoupt profile, Sarah Willson profile, and Caleb Wilson profile

2024
Multiple

(based on 8 ratings)
Estimated play time: 15 hours (based on 2 votes)
Members voted for the following times for this game:
4 reviews10 members have played this game. It's on 16 wishlists.

About the Story

The Third Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction invites you to visit Moondrop Isle.

Ratings and Reviews

5 star:
(2)
4 star:
(5)
3 star:
(1)
2 star:
(0)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating: based on 8 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 4

3 Most Helpful Member Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Deeply complex game of exploration on a moonlit isle with mixed media formats, February 18, 2025*
Related reviews: more than 10 hours

I'm going to structure this review in three parts.

-A brief description
-Something for authors (players don't need to read)
-Something for prospective players (not intended for authors)

First, a description. This is a game that uses Vorple to combine nine other games. It was built around a code scheme that autosaves information from Inform and shares it with other games. Clicking links in one game autosaves your info and opens the other seamlessly, with a color-based transition. Two of the games are special: one is completely choice-based and the other is a hybrid parser like Gruescript (I believe it's in the author's custom language though).

The idea is that you are exploring an abandoned resort just for fun. As you explore further you realize that there is a rich group of other explorers and former workers that have both left clues and still explore to this day.

Okay, first for the authors:
(Spoiler - click to show)Congratulations! You all did something remarkable. Each area seemed like it was made with love. The writing was all good, all contributing to a feeling of decay and exploration and wonder and feeling. Something I loved about each area:
-Shore: I love language puzzles so this was fantastic. Favorite part of the game.
-Fortune teller: really clever meta puzzle, and the change of pace was relaxing and fun. Really adds to the piece.
-Tunnels: creepy. I love your work in general and the one easter egg reminded me of the chumba wumba earworm in your Cragne Manor piece. Best atmosphere imo.
-Gardens: I was so shocked during the big change in this area, great effect, and love how the area is initially so surprising in its change in interface.
-Moonlight Meadow: I felt like I was really there. I could smell the rotting, sodden tent in the pool, feel the plywood on the slide, feel the damp concrete under my feet, hear the creaking of old equipment in the wind, see the color of the sky. Great writing.
-Shopping Center: This had the most variety and reminded me of my favorite old parser games, especially Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina.
-Lunarcade: This had the most interactive content (imo) and felt like a really substantial complete game on its own. Most well-rounded area I think.
-Sanctuary hotel: the emotional centerpiece of the game, great character work and lovely feeling. Gross tangle of sheets in that one room.
-Monorail system: Loved the mechanical feeling. Reminded me of Fitter Happier from radiohead. The extra dials were neat.


For prospective players:
(Spoiler - click to show)This game has a lot of great content but it's spread out and mixed with red herrings and unnecessary or empty parts. Think of it like the best drink you've ever had that fills a glass, poured into a pitcher and filled with water to reach the top.

The beginning is just a vast empty void where you do little besides find room after room where you can do nothing. Objects in one area are used far away in areas you might not even conceive of.

Room descriptions are vital. Important exits can lurk in the middle of dense paragraphs. Over and over again key items and objects are named in inconspicuous places. Sometimes you just have to hit every room over and over to see if new things you have are useful.

This game is best enjoyed by those who enjoy detailed maps and careful lists of inventory and unsolved puzzles. Running through recklessly is futile, especially with tons of non-intuitive map connections and diagonal or vertical directions.

Is it worth it in the end? The journey is the real goal, here; the ending is neat but not substantially more than the rest of the game, so I'd take your time and enjoy the roses.

* This review was last edited on February 24, 2025
You can log in to rate this review, mute this user, or add a comment.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Sprawling exploration-heavy puzzlefest, July 7, 2024
by wisprabbit (Sheffield, UK)

Moondrop Isle is nine games stitched into one. Ryan Veeder, hosting The Third Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition in his official capacity as Ryan Veeder, has invited eight collaborators to contribute to a huge puzzle game set in an abandoned holiday resort, each author writing their own area. Each area is its own game file; some technical wrangling by Nils Fagerburg tracks information such as your inventory and what doors you've unlocked so that your game state carries over from one area-game to the next. This allows you to walk from an Inform project to a TADS project to a Twine file. It's genuinely very exciting.

The isle itself is gigantic. I make it about 330 distinct rooms, but can't confirm because it's so big my Trizbort map refuses to bring up the map statistics. Exploration is unfocused at first - room descriptions draw your attention to the isle's central Hotel within the first few moves, but it can take a long time before you discover a way to get there, never mind getting inside. But the process of exploration and mapping itself is fun, because each author brings their own voice, style and experiments to their own areas. Carl Muckenhoupt's Shore is sprawling but peaceful, easing you into the game but hiding more than a few secrets; Joey Jones' Lunarcade and Jason Love's Moonlight Meadow recreation centre are complicated puzzle boxes with plenty of verticality; Caleb Wilson's Tunnels are twisty and atmospheric and eerie. Even the gameplay can change from author to author; most areas are parser-based but Fagerburg's Endymion Gardens limits the parser and Mark Marino's Fortune Teller area is something completely different (and one of the great technical achievements of Moondrop Isle in its own right).

It risks feeling chaotic, but the wider geography of the isle feels right. The areas are unified by the inventory shared between them all - every major puzzle-solving item will have uses all over the isle. There are also a few ongoing plot threads scattered across areas, usually not vital but fun to spot, which help Moondrop Isle feel more like a place where people played and worked.

The puzzle quality is impressively high between all the authors. Standout puzzles include the devious kiosks that appear in Muckenhoupt's Shore in the mid-game ((Spoiler - click to show)which struck fear in my heart when I realised those puzzles from The Fool's Errand were back to haunt me), Sarah Willson's Obra-Dinn-in-miniature storage locker logic puzzle in the Hotel, the scavenger hunts spread across Zach Hodgens' Gibbous Grove mall (which is a delight to explore, by the way), and the absurd overload of information in the centrepiece puzzle of Veeder's own contribution. The difficulty is generally genial with a few toughies, but those toughies often have easier alternative solutions - Love has been especially kind about this with the intricate puzzles in Moonlight Meadow, which are worth a go but which can be mercifully simplified. That said, it can trip you up if you spend ages trying to figure out a puzzle which turns out to let you into an area which you already accessed via a back door.

Implementation can be a little spotty in the most complex areas, but the technical structure of the game means that bugfixes can be pushed without breaking saves (theoretically), so those aren't too worrying. However, I would have liked more consistency in how verbs are handled between the different games. This is most obvious with the meta-verbs - commands like "help" or "exits" give hints in some areas and do nothing at all in others, which can be a nasty surprise if you're using these to get your bearings in a new area. This is a bigger problem with important objects where certain verb constructions are necessary in some areas but unimplemented in others, which could be very unfair to players who try the correct phrasing in the wrong area and think it won't work. (I'm especially thinking of a late-game object, the decoder scope - the full command LOOK AT SOMETHING THROUGH SCOPE is required sometimes, but only sometimes, so that if you get used to the more common LOOK THROUGH SCOPE, you might be tricked into thinking it doesn't have a use in certain places.)

Did I mention the guinea pigs? There's like 20 guinea pigs roaming the island, and they can walk between game files which is unbelievable in itself, and you can name them and the different games remember what you named them. Should I have led with that? That might be the #1 reason to play Moondrop Isle.

You can log in to rate this review, mute this user, or add a comment.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Poorly-paced puzzly metroidvania, May 31, 2024

This is a big sprawling puzzly game built with a web interface that stitches together nine separately-written games to share inventory between them. It's an interesting idea, but as with many first takes on a new idea, it's more notable for the technical gimmick than being a stellar-quality game.

The biggest issue for me is the pacing: you know how in a metroidvania there's that early/mid-game rush of finding new abilities that unlock new areas and secrets ...and then they always peter out with that tedious end-game hunting around for those last lousy points and do you even care enough to scour the map for every last thing that you missed, and did you take good enough notes the first time around?

This game starts with that. There is a big multi-part map, there are a lot of items, and it feels like the progression gating is relatively stingy so you have to find the right one (or right few ones) first. So it took several hours of wandering around mapping before I felt like I was getting anywhere, and even then... I don't know if I care. A lot of the ideas are creative ((Spoiler - click to show)there's a metal detector; a pair of waders; I haven't found it yet, but it's strongly suggested that there's a viewing device for autostereogram posters) but a lot of the time it feels like they were invented as an excuse to link the various parts of the game or limit progression rather than because they were necessary for any story purposes or were a cool mechanic in themselves?

I don't know. The overall design feels very slapdash and "(slaps roof) look how many wacky ideas we can fit in this bad boy" rather than a thoughtful design process of "how will this feel to the player? Does adding this really improve the feel?"

And there's not a lot of story. Again, it's wacky bits and pieces and the narrative is super-spotty here. I'm four or five hours in and I still have no idea who I am or why I'm here or what I'm trying to do, other than wander around looking at silly stuff and solving puzzles because they're here. What's so important that I was reckless enough to take a kayak across the ocean at night to explore this island? Why am I such a feckless idiot that I didn't bring any supplies or even a light source? (that's one that really REALLY feels like "nobody thought about this AT ALL; they just needed a way to gate off some areas until you found an item. And it's super inconsistent and nonsensical; sometimes you can read things by the light of (Spoiler - click to show)the jellyfish in an inlet and sometimes you can apparently see fine in some (Spoiler - click to show)underground tunnels with no explanation. I don't get it. Don't ask questions, just play along).

So if you're looking for a sprawling world with lots of puzzles connecting the bits, if you like making maps and taking notes so you can find that one weird spot again later, if you like realizing that "oh, now I can make progress over here," this is probably right up your alley.

If you need a reason for solving puzzles other than "they exist: of course you want to solve them" or a story motivating the thing (that's not just shallow facile "what wacky random things can we shove in here?") or something where you always have a puzzle to make progress on instead of mostly wandering the map looking for one of the few places where you can make progress... don't waste your time. I've poked around 7 of 9 of the regions and I wouldn't say this is any of those authors' best work.

You can log in to rate this review, mute this user, or add a comment.


News

Moondrop Isle is open for visitorsMay 29, 2024
Tonight, the Third Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction invites you to visit Moondrop Isle.
Reported by Ryan Veeder | History | Edit | Delete | Direct link
Expand all | Add a news item

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Edit Tags
Search all tags on IFDB | View all tags on IFDB

Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Delete Tags

Game Details

Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: May 29, 2024
Current Version: 1
License: Freeware
Development System: Multiple
IFID: CDE37AA8-A05B-42ED-9FA4-AD3C7C3B1695
TUID: ql6rj3dsygnjn422

Moondrop Isle on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Moondrop Isle appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Opus Ignored: Big games that didn't take off by MathBrush
It happens over and over: an author spends hundreds of hours on a game, often setting up a commercial company, and then releases it to almost total silence. This list contains such games, as well as other big games where the author was...

Polls

The following polls include votes for Moondrop Isle:

Language puzzles by baf
I'm interested in games where the player must learn an unfamiliar language. I'm particularly interested in ones that have done it in unique ways, and ones where the language is dissimilar to English.

Outstanding Underappreciated Game of 2024 by MathBrush
This poll is part of the 2024 IFDB Awards. The rules for the competition can be found here, and a list of all categories can be found here. This award is for the most underappreciated game of 2024. Voting is open to all IFDB members....

Trailblazer Award of 2024 by MathBrush
This poll is part of the 2024 IFDB Awards. The rules for the competition can be found here, and a list of all categories can be found here. This award is for a game of 2024 that you saw as a trailblazer. Voting is open to all IFDB...

See all polls with votes for this game

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page


This is version 5 of this page, edited by Ryan Veeder on 29 May 2024 at 2:16pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page