Part interactive art, part experimental narrative, and part digital therapy, the lunar-themed Ritual of the Moon is ultimately a weightless experience.
Ritual of the Moon, which poetically was released on a full moon, is a non-traditional narrative game that puts you in the spacesuit of a misunderstood witch who has been forever banished to the moon, betrayed by the very people she loved the most. Through meditative sayings and creative self-exploration, her backstory is slowly revealed, one day at a time, over the course of 28 real world days. This may sound appealing on its cratered surface, but the actual game mechanics are frustratingly limited and repetitive. The game raises the possibility of addressing some serious issues, but goes about it so obliquely that by the end I’m left unsure of exactly what I’m supposed to take from the experience. My conclusion is that the game is just a mirror: it only offers you what you bring to it in the first place. And I think that’s the point.
At first glance, I don’t appear to be the target market for this game. I’m not a practitioner of fine art, I’m not a poet, nor am I a philosopher, I don’t belong to any important causes, and I haven’t attempted to make the world a better place for anyone but myself. I’m just a person, an ordinary person, flawed and probably broken, but just an unexceptionally ordinary person. And yet, I felt drawn to this title because I very much wanted to better understand myself, and at the same time, better understand the lives of others.
Perhaps like many people, I struggle with negative thoughts, and when this negativity turns on myself, there is no outlet, and pessimism can quickly become suffocating. So, partly, I was curious to explore Ritual of the Moon as sort of a “mood tracker,” a way to perhaps better understand my own emotions and find a more positive outlet towards which to channel them.
28 days later, and the game has left me with more questions than answers. But, as a way to spark an internal dialogue, perhaps this constant stream of questioning is good. After having finished it, what have I learned about myself? It seems I’d rather destroy the world than accept its rejection of me. Is this revelation anything that I didn’t already know? Not really, but it’s somehow comforting to see these inner struggles externalized, and perhaps, just a tiny bit of a release as well.
Ritual of the Moon is a great idea. But a great idea is just that: an idea. It takes execution to make it real, and the game is so awkwardly executed, that trying to fall in love with it can be an agonizing experience.
That’s not to say there aren’t things in it that successfully capture my heart and imagination. The music is original, haunting and beautiful. The soundtrack is available on its own, and is highly recommended, both as accompaniment to the game, and to be enjoyed outside of it as well.
The overall stylistic direction and handmade artwork are exceptional and immediately make the game stand out among the cosmos of other narrative titles. The use of texture, of unexpected objects layered into a multimedia collage, along with the decision to restrict the palette to black and white, evoke an ethereal mood that is equal parts foreboding and enchanting.
Frequently, though, the user experience gets in the way and impedes any sense of unity with the game, its narrative, or main character. This clouds an otherwise beautiful game, making me feel as if I was being kept on the outside, instead of being invited onto a personal journey.
The game’s official description mentions that playtime each day is about five minutes, which I find overly optimistic. I averaged half that, sometimes less. Even then, Ritual of the Moon is the longest shortest game I’ve ever played.
The moon can be a hypnotizing object upon which to gaze, but myriad technical and design limitations keep Ritual of the Moon from being as mesmerizing as its namesake.
As dead-simple as it is, controlling the comet wasn’t immediately clear, leading me to accidentally hit the earth when it was not my intent. Also temporarily puzzling, is that when the day is done, there’s no button or visual cue to indicate how to leave the game, instead you’re supposed to intuitively know to hit the escape key. Ultimately these things are forgivable because it’s not hard to figure them out after playing the game for a bit. However, what it does do is break the spell; when I’m suddenly faced with such unnecessary UI obstacles it immediately takes me out of the game, and whatever hypnotic effect that was cast over me suddenly vanishes.
A game that you can only play once every 24 hours does not lend itself well to trial-and-error or experimentation, and even one bug can ruin an entire precious day. Unfortunately this happened to me almost immediately, as early on I was locked out for a day due to a time glitch. Achievements were spotty as well; and after completing the game, I attempted a second playthrough which resulted in a bug locking me out again.
Most irritatingly, though, the drawing shapes continually repeated themselves, sometimes several days in a row. In complex games I’m willing to be forgiving, but in a game this minimal, how did these issues get overlooked? Or worse, if they were intentional design decisions what was the goal?
Although I love the overall text that accompanies the meditative exercises (the little sayings after completing the drawings), I was crushed to discover that these too repeat themselves. With such finite play time (only 28 chances), it felt like an entire day was wasted on something I had already drawn and read. I can’t help but wonder, is all of this intentional, and am I just too thick to grasp the introspective musings that repetition is supposed to convey?
The tasks in the game strike me as too arbitrary. Why is the player asked to draw? How does that connect to the struggle of the protagonist? How does that tie in with the lunar theme? It would be one thing if the drawings were saved to form a gallery of my doodles; that alone would be interesting to reflect back upon after 28 days; but no, after each one is completed, they vanish into the vacuum of space. Perhaps the intent is to force me to slow down, to breathe deeply, and really stop for a moment and think about what I’m doing and why. This would be most welcome as a meditative exercise, but again, the repetition of patterns is spell-breaking, and the drawing experience is over so quickly that I didn’t get a chance to really get into the spirit of it.
If this game succeeded at anything, though, it’s in getting me to speak honestly about my own struggles with extreme self-negativity. So whatever I conclude from this experience, and however I end up rating this game/art/thing called Ritual of the Moon, what better praise is there than to say that it forced me to think, and to share these thoughts with others?
As for the moon itself, that lifeless rock that is so far out of our reach, it’s humbling that it has the power to bring us all just a little bit closer together. Throughout history there has never been a more universal symbol than the moon. Some see a face in the it, others a rabbit; but for better or worse, I now see a reflection of myself.
[i]For the full deep-dive review, click [url= saveorquit.com/2019/05/31/review-ritual-of-the-moon/] here [/url].[/i]
