Moonring is an hidden gem developped by a single developper.
As someone who has almost never played any similar games I didn't expect myself to play it more than 1 hour, in the end I played through the whole game in 4 days and greatly appreciated it.
Nonetheless, while this happened to me, it is definitely not a game for everyone. I think many people will be turned off right away by the graphics or the dungeons themselves, but you have nothing to lose though by trying it out as the game is free. Like myself, players will probably have to make an effort at first to go out of their confort zone to truly appreciate what the game has to offer, which can be divided into three important points.
Moonring's world, its storytelling and exploration, all of these three share something in common : the player's progression through his direct involvement, sometimes through his character but more often as the player itself.
This is not a Baldur's Gate 3 type of game where every choice may result in different endings or events, this would probably be way too much work for a single developper but more akin to Outer Wilds. The game doesn't exactly tell you where to go and how to complete its story, you will have to think for yourself and theorize about the hints the game give you along your adventure.
As you wake up and start your adventure, you'll discover that the world is quite dark, there's literally no sun, a strange mist that has been here for as long as people can remember is all around the continent and make people lose their minds. You'll be often scared of anything you meet outside of a city at first and that's why the first place you'll probably go to is one of them.
Inside of them you'll meet many characters, receive many informations and hints about what's around, notice that the world and its places feel very tied to each other and often come out with more questions than answers.
The reason for that is how you get to learn more about your quest and this world you're a part of. When you talk to a npc, you don't simply ask already made questions and get answers to them like most games, you'll have to directly find the words yourselves and write them to interact with any characters, most of the interesting and important words are hinted heavily by the NPCs themselves but some are hidden and it's your job you, the player, to think about it and try to ask the characters.
I'm sure it's not the first time this has been done but it's the first game I've played with this system and I think it's brillant. It forces the player to actively think about what should he say to his interlocutor and become a real piece of the story, the player and not the character.
As for your quests, unlike most RPGs there are no quests to follow with fixed objectives. You only have your book containing the notes you wrote during your interactions with the world and its characters. You noticed something of interest while talking to a NPC ? You'll write it down, even if it makes no sense to you now, maybe later down the line, you'll understand its meaning :)
Again as I said before, this is great because compared to almost all RPGs, this part of the game includes player's involvement, the answer will never be given to you directly, it is your job to make sense of it and find your way.
Finally as you make your way out of the city you'll have to walk out in the unknown blindly and find caves, dungeons and ruins, you'll explore the world.
This is the meat of the game, you will spend half of your time outside the cities either in the overworld walking, finding places of interest, ruins filled with riddles you don't understand yet, ennemies that may or may not be too strong for you, note it down, comeback later more knowledgable and/or stronger in order to progress through your adventure. This also allows Moonring to be a very different game for each player; for example I personally missed a somewhat important line about the main city being near where I would find a priest able to guide me at the beginning and went the opposite direction. I ended up in a really dangerous place but braved through it and the pieces of the puzzle began to gather from a completely different point another player may have gathered his.
I can't really describe it but it felt very good to have this sort of cycle of :
- Go to a city
- Learn about places and get hints about your quest
- Go out a bit cluelessly most of the time
- Find a place, don't understand what to do yet
- Find other places, begin to gather the pieces of a puzzle
- Understand what you missed at first and get closer to your goal
The second half of the game and by consequence a big part of it is the combat, which most of the time will happen either in the nature on the overworld or inside dungeons, it takes form in oldschool roguelike mystery dungeon-type, you make your way through dungeons filled with ennemies, traps, a dangerous environnement overall and come out with treasures, gear and sometimes important items necessary for progressing your quest.
Frankly speaking it's not what makes the game great but it gets the job done by a long margin, each encounters feel different, with A LOT of factors to take into account : how many ennemies are there, which type of ennemy they are, are there pieces of environment I can take advantage of, where are my means of escape if I can escape ? If you try to bruteforce everything you'll quickly understand that it won't work, and this from the very first dungeon. The game is somewhat turn-based, meaning as long as you don't act, nothing will move or attack, letting you analyze the situation and deal with it adequately, it's nice.
You also have a lot of freedom in the way you decide to play, from being a very tanky guy swinging an heavy weapon able to repel your ennemies into walls or holes, to a sneaky assassin walking quietly to backstab an oblivious ennemy, or an archer taking advantage of the space around to kite his ennemies to a wizard throwing flasks, potions and summoning magic spirits and other playstyles I didn't think about...
I think I went on for long enough about this game and hope you'll like it as much as I did, I didn't talk about anything related to the story itself because I think this game is best discovered blindly on that front.
This game is not without its flaws, I could say that some part need some fixes and QoL here and there but the game is already really enjoyable as it is and its developper still plan to work on it and add new things in the times to come.
TL;DR : Moonring is not a game about getting stronger and beating the demon king at the end, it's a game about making sense of the world, your quest and goal by making you interact directly as the player with all its riddles, places and characters.
As someone who has almost never played any similar games I didn't expect myself to play it more than 1 hour, in the end I played through the whole game in 4 days and greatly appreciated it.
Nonetheless, while this happened to me, it is definitely not a game for everyone. I think many people will be turned off right away by the graphics or the dungeons themselves, but you have nothing to lose though by trying it out as the game is free. Like myself, players will probably have to make an effort at first to go out of their confort zone to truly appreciate what the game has to offer, which can be divided into three important points.
Moonring's world, its storytelling and exploration, all of these three share something in common : the player's progression through his direct involvement, sometimes through his character but more often as the player itself.
This is not a Baldur's Gate 3 type of game where every choice may result in different endings or events, this would probably be way too much work for a single developper but more akin to Outer Wilds. The game doesn't exactly tell you where to go and how to complete its story, you will have to think for yourself and theorize about the hints the game give you along your adventure.
As you wake up and start your adventure, you'll discover that the world is quite dark, there's literally no sun, a strange mist that has been here for as long as people can remember is all around the continent and make people lose their minds. You'll be often scared of anything you meet outside of a city at first and that's why the first place you'll probably go to is one of them.
Inside of them you'll meet many characters, receive many informations and hints about what's around, notice that the world and its places feel very tied to each other and often come out with more questions than answers.
The reason for that is how you get to learn more about your quest and this world you're a part of. When you talk to a npc, you don't simply ask already made questions and get answers to them like most games, you'll have to directly find the words yourselves and write them to interact with any characters, most of the interesting and important words are hinted heavily by the NPCs themselves but some are hidden and it's your job you, the player, to think about it and try to ask the characters.
I'm sure it's not the first time this has been done but it's the first game I've played with this system and I think it's brillant. It forces the player to actively think about what should he say to his interlocutor and become a real piece of the story, the player and not the character.
As for your quests, unlike most RPGs there are no quests to follow with fixed objectives. You only have your book containing the notes you wrote during your interactions with the world and its characters. You noticed something of interest while talking to a NPC ? You'll write it down, even if it makes no sense to you now, maybe later down the line, you'll understand its meaning :)
Again as I said before, this is great because compared to almost all RPGs, this part of the game includes player's involvement, the answer will never be given to you directly, it is your job to make sense of it and find your way.
Finally as you make your way out of the city you'll have to walk out in the unknown blindly and find caves, dungeons and ruins, you'll explore the world.
This is the meat of the game, you will spend half of your time outside the cities either in the overworld walking, finding places of interest, ruins filled with riddles you don't understand yet, ennemies that may or may not be too strong for you, note it down, comeback later more knowledgable and/or stronger in order to progress through your adventure. This also allows Moonring to be a very different game for each player; for example I personally missed a somewhat important line about the main city being near where I would find a priest able to guide me at the beginning and went the opposite direction. I ended up in a really dangerous place but braved through it and the pieces of the puzzle began to gather from a completely different point another player may have gathered his.
I can't really describe it but it felt very good to have this sort of cycle of :
- Go to a city
- Learn about places and get hints about your quest
- Go out a bit cluelessly most of the time
- Find a place, don't understand what to do yet
- Find other places, begin to gather the pieces of a puzzle
- Understand what you missed at first and get closer to your goal
The second half of the game and by consequence a big part of it is the combat, which most of the time will happen either in the nature on the overworld or inside dungeons, it takes form in oldschool roguelike mystery dungeon-type, you make your way through dungeons filled with ennemies, traps, a dangerous environnement overall and come out with treasures, gear and sometimes important items necessary for progressing your quest.
Frankly speaking it's not what makes the game great but it gets the job done by a long margin, each encounters feel different, with A LOT of factors to take into account : how many ennemies are there, which type of ennemy they are, are there pieces of environment I can take advantage of, where are my means of escape if I can escape ? If you try to bruteforce everything you'll quickly understand that it won't work, and this from the very first dungeon. The game is somewhat turn-based, meaning as long as you don't act, nothing will move or attack, letting you analyze the situation and deal with it adequately, it's nice.
You also have a lot of freedom in the way you decide to play, from being a very tanky guy swinging an heavy weapon able to repel your ennemies into walls or holes, to a sneaky assassin walking quietly to backstab an oblivious ennemy, or an archer taking advantage of the space around to kite his ennemies to a wizard throwing flasks, potions and summoning magic spirits and other playstyles I didn't think about...
I think I went on for long enough about this game and hope you'll like it as much as I did, I didn't talk about anything related to the story itself because I think this game is best discovered blindly on that front.
This game is not without its flaws, I could say that some part need some fixes and QoL here and there but the game is already really enjoyable as it is and its developper still plan to work on it and add new things in the times to come.
TL;DR : Moonring is not a game about getting stronger and beating the demon king at the end, it's a game about making sense of the world, your quest and goal by making you interact directly as the player with all its riddles, places and characters.
Aicon
6 months ago