IFComp08 Review: Red Moon
This is a game that, at first glance, looks a lot cooler than it actually turns out to be. There's a plot hook, an apparently hopeless situation, and a few hints regarding where to start. It's pretty clear what the intended interaction with this game was: first players would try the obvious, and then they would fail mysteriously. Then they would investigate more deeply, work out what was going on, react appropriately, and then reach an ending that would cast a new light on your actual role in the story.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really succeed at any of these things. Too many obvious pieces of the scenery (especially the unnatural light) aren't implemented at all. When incongruous or unusual failures occur, the narrtor appends a "Wha?!" to the end of the statement---and it keeps doing this after it is no longer a surprise. Narratorial interjections like this in an otherwise neutral second person game are really jarring. Unless you're playing games with the narrator/PC/player relationship, this stuff is out of bounds. Actually, "?!" in general is by default out of bounds. Compounding this, the discoveries to be made donot actually let you trigger the endgame: the endgame is reached by repeating one of four actions eight times. Worse, for each of the four commands, the first few times you do it you get what look like standard "that won't do anything, try something else" replies. This game direly needs to take how much the PC has discovered into account, and shift ahead to the 'are you sure?' kinds of messages, or even just accept the command outright.
As for the ending, it really only works if you reach one of the alternate, non-optimal endings - otherwise there's no connection whatsoever between the start and the end. In all other cases, it's just incoherent.
I'm giving this game a lower score than, perhaps, it deserves. But really, an incoherent one-room game with an 8-move walkthrough, seven of which are "AGAIN"? There's not a good game in here. There could be one, and a cunningly played session of it could look like one, but that's not enough. I expect enough people will get the intended experience that the resulting score will be higher, though.