Mooncrash!
Laura
Well, then!
I really didn’t think I was going to like this game. The beginning had a LONG questionnaire, somehow requiring that you type “>CHOOSE X” instead of just menu options or something, then it shifted me off to another >CHOOSE X scenario where I wandered through a conversation tree while a timer counted down in the background. I managed to get one away from a ‘winning’ branch in the tree when the timer hit zero, but fortunately I could UNDO a couple turns and take a faster route. “OK, fine,” I thought, “That was kind of weird. The worldbuilding seemed a bit lax, and I’m not sure why it was parser-based, and… wait. What is this ending screen talking about?”
Limbo
Between lives, let us review your achievements…
MAIN STORY PROGRESS
The Watcher toils in The White Tower… (You have not beaten Guide the Generations)
The Wildfire’s battle still rages… (You have not beaten Rain Holy Fire on the Endbringers)
The Shroud’s whereabouts are unknown… (You have not beaten To Cheat Destiny)
The Fateweaver will aid you in the defense of your world. Or so they claim. (You have beaten By The Fateweaver’s Hand)OTHER EVENTS
You were a bit nosy. (You asked about The Fateweaver’s lover at least once)
You saw the Design for what it truly is. (You ascended The Fateweaver’s frozen spire at least once)
You stood your ground when presented with a facsimile of a world. (You confronted The Fateweaver about the flaws in their Design at least once)THE NEXT LIFE
Would you like to RETAKE the personality test, or choose a PATH for yourself? Type “Choose RETAKE” to retake the personality test and discover your path, or “Choose PATH” to decide on a path for yourself. (Or, if you have unlocked the final chapter, see above…)
At that point I realized that the opening questionnaire was essentially a minigame that led you to one of four other minigames, but now that you finished one, you could go back and just pick the others instead. So I did… and it wasn’t a >CHOOSE X scenario! There were, like, directions I could go and stuff I could pick up! It was super strange to be introduced to an actual parser after I had thought I was done with the game, but OK! Let’s wander around!
This minigame turned out to be light puzzle-solving, and included a touch of the worldbuilding I had missed in the first. Then the next turned out to be a ‘pick your approach’ obstacle. And the last was ‘OK, now just fight’, with a whole new system invented just to fight things, where your fighting skills persisted across trips to Limbo and minigame resets, so you’d fail a few lives and then start winning. And finally the foretold ‘final chapter’ did indeed unlock, and the stakes change, and there’s a final couple ‘pick your approach’ challenges, and a handful of denouements.
Reader, I was charmed. In the end, the sheer ferocious chutzpah of the game with its deep dives into choice-only scenes, coded by hand, deep dives into overly complicated fighting systems, utter embrace of death as a simple backstage waiting area, wholehearted commitment to melodrama… it all combined to create one of those ‘I probably liked this more than other people’ games. It was not itself buggy, but it reminded me of other buggy games with a lot of heart, if that makes any sense? Like if the game could keep pulling you down new paths, you wouldn’t mind if each path was a little off-kilter. I even forgave it for going a little breaking-the-fourth-wall at times, which I usually roll my eyes at. Not that I didn’t roll my eyes here; it’s just that the game then would then come at me with something new, making me forget again.
Did the author have anything to say? Yes! All sorts of things to show off, including both ideas and one-off systems.
Did I have anything to do? On balance, I feel like this was mostly an ‘explore’ game, though there were technically puzzles here and there. It really did lean into the ‘choice’ motif for a lot of it, and the overall impression I got definitely had more ‘choice’ flavor than ‘parser’.
[Also: Here’s my Transcript of the game.]