Moon Logic

On first starting this game, I was strongly reminded of Rover's Day Out, due to the split-level reality of the action taking place. However, as play continued my thoughts turned more to the early chapters of Homestuck.

The minimal challenge to be found in Moon Logic comes primarily from dealing with the "helpful" automation that attempts to interpret what the player means to do based purely on the chosen verb and the object context. As one might guess, this is only sometimes what the player actually wants to do. Soon enough, anyone playing this will be learning how the automation thinks and trying to anticipate its foibles to accomplish one's objective.

The main action involves exploring the immediate environs of Zork's classic white house. It's an impressive bit of work, both looking and feeling like you are interacting with a world model engine as complex as would be found in a typical parser game. (There's even nested inventory!) I find myself very curious about the technical underpinnings of this work and hope that author Onno Brouwer will provide some details in a post-mortem after the competition.

The player familiar with the original on which this spoof is based will recognize the NPCs and locations, often modified from their inspiration. Although the setting and emulated display strongly encourage the sense of playing the original, actual gameplay frequently diverges from expectations. Perhaps the greatest feat accomplished by Brouwer in this work is creating something fresh that is also a parody of Infocom's first game.

Along with the main progression of plot action, there is a second progression involving the UI itself. Billed as featuring the latest in "artificial incompetence," the simulated game proceeds to live up to that moniker by imposing visual effects over the basic text window. At first, these are fun and amusing, but by the time it gets to the point where (Spoiler - click to show)the text orientation rotates every few seconds, I was looking for the off button. (Fortunately, Brouwer has provided one.)

At the end, the game delivers a ranking in the old school style -- one based not on points but on turn count. Presumably, fewer moves results in better rankings; if not, then the ranking I received (Spoiler - click to show)("'Me, too' adventurer") is a bit of metacommentary. Achievements are also tracked, pegged to turn count instead of point value, making me wonder whether there may be more to be found than I saw in a single playthrough.

This isn't a deep game, but it is a fun short experience that mixes a bit of potential nostalgia with a demonstration that much more is possible in today's technical environment. It's well worth the time to play.

Someone in my life dislikes cheese, pickles, and mustard.

If I spent a long time making a beautiful cheese-filled pickle dipped in mustard and presented it to him, what would be the desired reaction?

This game is a kind of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of a Zork knock-off. On the left side, it has text resembling a parser game. On the right side, it has running commentary by two people playing the game. The only way to control it is through a bar of commands at the bottom.

The game also seems to have taken a wide slew of complaints about interactive fiction games and put them into a game to make it as irritating as possible. And I do mean intentionally; the author is quite aware of the frustration involved, from the name 'moon logic' to in-game comments.

The game uses timed text, a famously hated IF concept, and uses it in a way that doesn't contribute to the game meaningfully. It has a 'fast' text setting which is still fairly slow. The pseudo-parser text is not scrollable and doesn't have a back button. It later on adds shaky text effects, zooming in and out effects and rotating effects. These can be turned off.

The menu is intentionally obfuscated and basically turns the whole game into a giant tower of hanoi problem, reiterating smaller solutions in the same order over and over to recreate even basic tasks. Only 4 or so commands appear at once but disappear as you use them, so to get to important commands you have to repeat a ritual of examining, looking, and inventory. There is no choice on where to go, only a 'go' option, so you have to limit yourself by closing exits and such to move around. You can only take and drop items in a very specific order.

I felt my left eyelid twitching by the time I was done (I was also playing Violent Delights at the same time, a game that asks you to wait for a long time while playing).

So, this is a game where I recognize the craftmanship and creativity but did not experience joy through play, much like Targhairm. It is clear that great talent and work went into it, and the puzzle logic is quite complex and parts of figuring out what to do next was enjoyable, but the apparent goal of frustrating and bedeviling the player was also achieved.

Edit:
I should mention that it looks like I missed some features in Moon Logic like screen reader support which helps ameliorate some of the more frustrating aspects and lets you pick between the 'frustration' version and a version that lets you focus more on the clever puzzles. I did eventually figure out the UI features at one point but I recommend trying the screen reader support both on and off to see what you prefer.

Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions. A couple of years ago, I reviewed the author’s debut game, One King to Loot Them All, and at the close of a positive writeup I noted in passing that I prefer prose in the sword-and-sorcery genre to be “a little zestier” than what was on offer. So I can’t help but feel that one bit of Moon Logic – a purposefully-painful game originally destined for the Really Bad IF Jam before it broke scope and containment – is singling out me in particular. You see, this is a Zork pastiche one of whose main features is that alongside the main game window, there’s a frame where two voices on the player’s shoulder (Roger and Wilco, natch) comment on the action, crack dumb jokes, and gurn and grin in the most distracting manner as they refuse. to. shut. up. Come back, One King, all is forgiven!

In fairness, while the commentary is often (intentionally) painful, it’s also incredibly helpful, typically spelling out the next steps you need to take. This is perhaps a bit intrusive, but I found it a godsend given the game’s other gimmick: in a parody of intrusive “AI” assistance functions, this by-the-numbers Zork parody doesn’t use a parser interface, but rather a one-click choice-based one where you select the action, and the game infers the appropriate noun based on that. Of course “appropriate” is a lie, as the rules undergirding all this guarantee that the obviously useful action will only happen at the end (if at all). You can’t easily go a particular direction – opening and closing doors will determine where you wind up when you blindly stab the “go” button. Similarly, if you need to drop an item to progress, it’s going to be the last thing to go after you start pounding “drop” (and then you’ll have to press “take” a bunch of times again to retrieve all your junk). Oh, and you don’t get access to all the actions at once; using a verb will usually remove it from the screen, so you need to add some pointless actions in the middle to get it back.

As a result, knowing what you’re supposed to be doing makes sense – the challenge is actually the how. This does mean that you can largely blow past the moon-logic (drink!) that governs many of the puzzles – it doesn’t really matter why eating guano gives you super strength, you’re just told that it does, so good luck wrestling with the sack to try to get it out of its hiding place. And the game does a good job of mixing things up; just as I was feeling like I’d gotten the hang of the interface, some new annoying challenge would be thrown my way, usually with a clever gag (and groaningly-painful commentary from Roger and Wilco) accompanying it. These are all pretty much drawn from Zork, but with fun twists – I especially enjoyed how the joke around taking the giant pile of leaves, as well as how it’s redeployed given its role in many players’ approach to the maze of twisty little passages, all alike (though of course implementing the solution was laborious in the extreme).

Make no mistake, the humor here is very broad – here’s a representative sample:

[Wilco] Yes! We’ve got ourselves a lunch and a… wait, what happened to the clove of garlic?
[Roger] Maybe the vampire bat overcame its aversion to garlic and ate it?
[Wilco] Leaving a bat dropping in return. You may have a point there.

But it wouldn’t fit the brief of making Bad IF to have actually good jokes (albeit in fairness the giant pile of treasure you loot at the end did legitimately make me giggle a few times). Similarly, complaining that the interface is terrible would miss the point: yeah, it’s frustrating, but working out the rules governing its behavior isn’t too complex, and is reasonably satisfying. I can’t exactly recommend Moon Logic, unless you liked when a big kid would make you play the “stop hitting yourself” game on the playground. But if you’re in the mood for such a thing, you could do a lot worse. Just please, no need for zestiness next time.