Moon Castle

Positive: - Puzzles are very good in the last third of the game. Developer definitely knows how to design nice challenges and integrate them into the gameworld through interesting mechanical devices. Rotating bridges, giant telescopes, lasers.. etc. Nothing too original, but it is well executed. - Pacing and overall flow is well done. Once the game picked up around its midway point, I couldn't turn it off and finished it in a single 7 hour session. Negative: - Control scheme is bizarre.. I have no idea why this game does not have standard first person controls. - Early puzzles are a bit over-clued and does not offer the same satisfaction level as the later ones. It is obvious that the developer matured his design skills as he was completing the game. - Music doesn't really fit the atmosphere. - Point systems is not a bad idea, but since you end up gathering all points as you finish the game (there are no extra/secret puzzles that makes you earn additional points), it doesn't really add anything and works more like a progress bar for finishing the game. - I think the game would have been more interesting if it was nonlinear. Current design has three major areas that should be compl…

This thing was fun for awhile and then it fell into the trap of being seriously overcomplicated. I was ok until i stumbled into that underground lab with no real motivation to solve it. Games jump the shark when puzzles seem pointless. I can handle difficult in context (Riven) but can't handle tedious grinds for filler.(Myst 4) This started out promising but became a chore. When the fun is gone and it feels like work, I'm done. Sorry.

I had low expectations about this game. The trailer did not look so good. But this game advertises itself as a Myst style game and I have a hunger for anything that is like Myst. I am so glad I played it because this game turned out to be a very good puzzle game that offers plenty of hours of fun gameplay. After playing it I can confirm that this game is 100% a Myst style game. The game has a room with rotating walls, a rotating temple, moving platforms, a cleverly hidden room, laser beams, strange devices to operate and a rollercoaster ride. The game has plenty of puzzles that are very good. An extra thing I liked about this game is that there is text to read in this game, but it is not a lot of text. The text is short and to the point. I welcome that because I don’t like lots of reading as it is sometimes the case with Myst style games. What I did not like was that the game contains two mini-games that involve quick timing. One of them is the famous three-cups-and-a-ball game. Luckily both games can be won easily by using the film-camera on a mobile phone. Another negative part of Moon Castle is that the shadows are 100% black, this makes parts of the environments non-visible…

Generally I love this type of game, having played Myst and Riven. However, this one will not function with my Rift system. It works fine up to the point where you ride the car from the castle, then the whole point of view goes out of whack. from that point on, you are looking at the ground and to see horizontally, you have to look straight up (very uncomfortable). I tried different settings to no avail. It might work on other systems, but if you have a Rift, forget it.

it's virtually impossible to count the flashes of light to start the 3 button generator! flashes way to fast, 2 + flashes per second, stuck there for 4 hours, it sucks !

What looked promising at the beginning turned out to be a let down. The game is somewhat reminiscent of the Cyan games, and I was hopeful. My sense of exploration has taken a beating. After 36 hours playing (no, “working” is a better word…) this game, this is a thumbs down. The game is fraught with mistakes, instabilities, quirks you name it. For example, there are flashes everywhere (e.g., blue sky) when you move and turn, Things (puzzles) simply did not work; I tested these as I had nine games going at the same time. They worked in some and not in others. What was consistent is that it was never the same thing that did not work in the different games; so, I got to about ¾ of the game in total, with nine games going! Frustrating… Puzzles were not necessarily hard but more like based on pure luck and highly improbable. For example, take the opening word puzzle. I had 3 crossword programs going and I could at best get 1-2 perhaps 3 words figured out. In the dictionary, these were often obscure, never used words before. Probability-wise, it was very low that you would find these even if you knew from the programs all of the combinations possible. So, this was a red-her…