Moondrop Isle

It is important to approach Moondrop Isle in the right frame of mind, because if you want to go the distance and complete the game, yours will not be a short visit. Mine must have lasted 20-30 hours, though I wasn't counting.

The island is huge and intricate, with a wide variety of puzzles, some of which are devious. The game is sedately-paced and ideally, you need to be prepared to explore methodically and make a map (there are over 300 locations).

The basic theme is urban exploring, where you are visiting an abandoned holiday resort in the middle of the night. The writing is generally atmospheric without ever feeling like it gets in the way of the game demanding to be played.

If I hadn't made a commitment to play this game I would have probably given up after my first session and found something that offered more immediate satisfaction. I am glad I didn't because I did enjoy the game immensely, though it is some distance from perfect. You will spend your first hour wandering around, looking for items to collect, looking for puzzles to solve, and looking for a story thread to follow, and you will likely come up short on all three counts. All three ARE there, and the first two in abundance. The story comes into its own in the final act, when you get there, and you will be fully invested by that point. It will take at least ten hours to even get to the first hints of a narrative!

There is a huge amount of content, some brilliant puzzles (and a few that aren't so great), loads to discover, mysteries to uncover, and a fair few time sinks - like attempting to play golf or arcade games - with a text interface, naturally! There is an element of guesswork and randomness to these that is frustrating and some may find off-putting. You will also encounter the occasional problem with the parser, such as commands that work in one area of the game, but not another.

After a while, I did start to feel like an urban explorer on a real adventure simply for my own pleasure and curiosity. That's when I really got into it and the game was there in my head, pleasantly in the background as I yearned to make more progress.

There is a difficulty spike in the puzzles around 3/4 of the way through and I recommend taking a few hints, as I did. A number of the tougher puzzles can be skipped, and this can be done by accident, which is not ideal, though it makes this one of the few text adventures with replay value.

I ended up feeling that the whole venture was very ambitious and it is rather wonderful that it was attempted at all. It is essentially nine games stitched into one, which does bring some problems with mechanics and consistency, but in the end raises the whole into something truly interesting, with some bold and unexpected design decisions.