The Moonstone Equation

As someone who's a fan of information-based games, especially ones where there are hidden languages to discover, this game sounded perfect for me. Unfortunately, not only did the game not live up to those expectations, but it's also a completely unplayable, bug-ridden mess. In terms of the core mechanics, you're exploring the world and solving puzzles. The exploration is fine, but while the world is fairly small, it eventually becomes annoying to traverse due to the lack of fast travel and shortcuts. Some of the puzzles are pretty good, though they can feel a bit repetetive or trial and error-y sometimes. Unfortunately, while I expected from the game's pitch which mentioned the scientific method to have to do a lot of experimentation to figure out the game's rules, they were simpler than I expected, and so there was not as much discovery as I hoped for. The game sort of has a story, which you mostly just figure out by reading character's various notes in computer terminals (well, at least if they're not entirely broken). But unfortunately from what I've gathered at least, the story isn't all too interesting, and the writing is TERRIBLE. Lots of grammatical errors, things that just sound awkward or overly simplified and so on. Characters you speak to have very limited dialogue, and even worse, they are for some reason tied to the real life day/night cycle? I have no idea why this is the case, as it only serves to remove this mechanic at night without a real benefit (at least that I've found so far). And due to the computer terminals being completely broken (every other line just doesn't render... how do you ♥♥♥♥ this up?) I had to create an external program which hacks into the game's memory and reads the raw bytes to even interact with this part of the game at all. In terms of the game's language, while I haven't done much with it, the game just... gives you the translation for nearly every word at a certain point. Which is super strange, because if you wanted this to be an interesting puzzle, it just... isn't. It seems that all you're intended to do is manually find every word in the chart of words you're given, which is boring and tedious due to the small interface in the computer terminal (which you need to hack the game to even view, anyway). I'm going to try and purposefully restrict my viewing of the words the game gives you to only the Moonstone Equation itself and a few other things and see if the rest is deducable from context, if so, then you can at least turn this into a neat puzzle by purposefully playing it in this way. We'll see. Overall, I think I know how to beat the game now and am just slowly going through the various puzzles, with mixed feelings about them. But overall, the game has been nothing but a dissapointment, with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ writing, constant bugs, and an overall lack of focus with regard to the game's mechanics put together. I'll probably still end up finishing the game and will update this review if there seems to be any interesting endgame content.

Thanks r/Fez. Proof that solo-devved games can still be amazing. Pros: AMAZING Atmosphere and Story Difficult Puzzles Nice Music Cons: oh my god these puzzles are hard

It's an adventure/puzzle/2D platforming voyage of discovery that sees you attempt to figure out the mysterious Moonstone Equation. The pixel art graphics are great, the music is truly great, the puzzles range from simple to tricky to quite fiendish in places and just when you think you've figured it all out, there's something more. After the initial helping hand, you're left alone to get on with it. You do have a journal with notes to look at for some small hints here and there but the game doesn't hand-walk you through, you have to figure it out yourself and it's all the better for it. Highly recommended!

This game is not well known enough; it is a must have for people who love both logic and language puzzles. This game offers an amazing puzzle solving experience. It is not easy to figure out what you are supposed to be doing, and the game can be frustrating until you find your first [spoiler] red doors and gold doors [/spoiler]. Furthermore, the platforming controls can be clunky, with several frustratingly difficult jumps. Also, there are occasional bugs and crashes (the game is mostly a one-man labor of love). However, if you can get past these downsides, the offers amazing logical puzzles, a whole fictional language which you do NOT need to decode yourself, together with puzzles based around understanding the writings in surprising ways, and even a very clever hacking game. It took me three tries to get into this game. The first two times, I got super lost, both in a "I don't know where to go" sense, because the world can get very dark and confusing, and in a "I don't know what to do sense," because I had not discovered the thing to do that opens up the main part of the game. After both failed starts, I put down the game for several months. Only after I saw a streamer (Jonathon Blow) play the game, and see him figure out the thing I was stuck on, did I start the game for the third time, and play it to completion with zeal. Once you get into it, however, the game is very impressive in its puzzle design. You will find yourself thinking in this ancient alien language, writing down symbols on pages of scratch work and then hunting for them in the world, and pondering the secrets of the universe. The "ah-ha!" moments in this game are spectacular, and by the end of the game you will see these abstract blocks in a new light. There are a lot of obvious comparisons to Fez, but the Moonstone Equation is much better. Fez did have cool history and lore, but it was not fun to decode Fez's codes, just a lot of work. Also, Fez's basic puzzles were way to easy. The Moonstone Equation has a little less lore, but much higher quality logical puzzles, and the language meta-puzzle in Moonstone is actually accessible and hinted at well. My advice is to buy this game right now. If you find yourself getting super stuck and frustrated, leave a comment on this review and I will personally give you a hint.

First impressions: I love it! Even more than I was expecting, so much to poke at and stories beginning to unfold. So much to like, the art, the atmospheric feel, the little people, the computer terminals, the invaders mini game! But obviously most of all, a bit of a mystery is going on and I'm looking forward to uncovering more of it!

Where do I start... You play as a scientist named Alice, who just arrives to the hilltop research facility. The intro was very short and straight to the point, giving you only curiosity (and a 4th wall breaking to the media lol). After you run into a mysterious character called Cyrus, you're left alone to discover what to do next, and there is a lot. From block puzzles, an evolving story, "decipherable" language, and... well... I don't want to spoil anything... so I'll just go with curiosity. This game is a masterpiece in its art, sound, puzzles, dialog, and its own language. Even though I 99.9~% "completed" it, I'm left wondering what I can do next, and there is still a lot. Happy digging :)

It's a bare bones block pusher..? The block puzzles aren't very good, and they reset themselves regularly. There's no undo either? Lots of wasted time. You're 'rewarded' for solving them thoroughly, but you can't check which ones you've solved (or if they are solvable at all). The environment itself... exists. You simply run around expansive areas wondering what you're supposed to be doing. The characters also exist, they say words... Everything looks nice, though! The music is... drone? I think that's the genre. It's very loud and clips like crazy. That might be part of the aesthetic, but it feels really out of place. It's buggy, too. Some areas have really messed up collision, especially the boxes, which the entire game is made of. I got soft-locked once when interacting with a door. The arcade games don't obey in-game volume settings. Dunno, there's clearly a lot of effort put into it, but it comes up short pretty much everywhere besides the art.

Beautiful game, amazing achievement.

I am very glad that I picked up this game and played through most of it. However, It has some major game design flaws and oversights that results in very unfortunate outcomes. [h1]The Good[/h1] [h3]Exploration[/h3] The game has nice pixel art landscapes and vistas. Environmental storytelling is great. Locations are interesting and puzzles and points of interest are adequately hidden. The ancient language present on walls is a great curiosity driver. [h3]Music[/h3] Great tunes that create great atmosphere, and each location has its own fitting vibe. [h3]Puzzles[/h3] Enjoyable mechanics that are satisfying to complete [b]for the first time[/b]. [h3]Ancient Language[/h3] There is an ancient language throughout the game that is very well thought out. [h1]The Bad[/h1] [h3]Backtracking and Repetition[/h3] The game requires you to walk a lot through already explored locations. In addition, you will have to solve the same puzzle multiple times (more that 2), as a result of oversight in progression system. Progression - [spoiler]You have to collect 12 trigger stones, combine 12 data cubes and place them both in 12 locations accordingly. [/spoiler] The problem is that almost each location has a puzzle that needs to be repeated each time you access it when bringing in other stuff. Nobody wants to solve the same puzzle twice or more. [h3]The translation system[/h3] While the language itself its very nice and well thought out, the implementation and lack of auto-translator has a big negative impact on game-play. Your translator can show only three words at a time from a list of hundreds. Look at how big and unused the screen is! I don't want to rewrite hours of translations into my notebook just because the display in-game is so small. If the translator would pick up words that it has and show the translations automatically, the small screen would not be an issue. The second issue is the endgame itself. As I understand it, you are at least [spoiler]partially required to understand the language[/spoiler] to complete the game, and from this stems the biggest game design flaw of the game: No [spoiler]language translation[/spoiler] knowledge checks along the way. If you would build your understanding gradually, and would be required to solve few artifacts or challenges this way, then the ending would not be this insurmountable wall that leads to quitting the game or very time consuming backtracking combined with [spoiler]tons of hand translations[/spoiler]. [h1]Final thoughts[/h1] Overall I have enjoyed my playthrough. I liked where the game lead me but was very disappointed on how it did so, a I arrived very lacking in knowledge at the end.

I haven't completed the game, and have mixed feelings about the game so far. * I like the puzzles which is the main focus of the game, and from what Ive seen so far very Sokoban like with other mechanics keep it fresh and exciting to solve. Love it! * The real time correlation to night / day in game is very interesting! * Navigating the labs / town - it's fun to explore the unknown, but not having a built in map in this metroidvania style game makes it unnecessarily difficult. And making my own map as I go makes it mildly easier, and have found certain areas are not so easy to map out manually. * The terminals - both cool and annoying - everything in the game has a purpose right? the journal entries while short I don't see the purpose that they serve so far. * Game Progression - this is a player comfort more than anything; I have multiple objectives that I have found and written down on a notepad, but not seeing a tracker in game which would be nice to have. * Collectibles - The game does track quantity of collectibles and items that you need, but doesn't track what specific combination that you have acquired so far which I understand to be relevant for parts of the late game. Overall I recommend The Moonstone Equation for the vibe and puzzles, it's a delight to play for that! There are a couple game features that it's missing that would make for a even better play experience.