There Was the Moon is a walking sim/puzzle game. You play as a human, that’s as far as I know about the character. You don’t see their body, they don’t make noise, I wouldn’t know they were human if the game didn’t say so. You wake up in uhhh, ummm, somewhere. It could be heaven, hell, some mythical place, inside your own schizophrenic mind, I’ll be damned if I know.
Basically, you just figure out how to get from one room to the next. the game is solely about moving forward, just figuring out how to get through the next doorway. The puzzles range through various types of combination puzzles, anywhere from here are four items, arrange them the right way to here’s a lock, figure out the combination of movements to unlock it. That’s really all there is gameplay wise. You can talk with three different characters, not much but some, they simply give you a few lines each and that’s it.
The art design is both really interesting and bland at the same time. The levels have interesting architecture sometimes, and the way the developer used light makes everything look fairly cool, even if also fairly seizure inducing, but there’s not actually anything in… well, anywhere. There are no people, the rooms are all bare so there’s just nothing there. I’m conflicted because of that. If you have seizures you might not want to get this game either, there are a number of triggers from light changes, to lines moving quickly, etc. It could potentially be dangerous.
It’s also a moderately quick game to beat, it took me four or five hours. I think there are two endings, but I’m not sure. The reason for that is there’s an optional thing you can do for one of the characters you talk to, you have to find blocks for her. I couldn’t find one of the blocks, I assume if you find them all you get a different ending.
Overall, the game is bland but not bad. This is one you’ll play and forget. Granted, from me that’s not saying much since I play like 30-50 games a year for review so I forget most of them, but that’s secondary. What’s here is fun if you like puzzles, but there’s not much here. This is the fast food Happy Meal of games for a half-starved sumo wrestler. It might be okay, but it’s just not much. Thankfully, this reflects in it’s price at a cost of only ten dollars.
There Was the Moon was developed by a single dev, Ben Lapid.
Point of Sale: Steam, itch.io.
$10 everywhere.
A review copy of the game was provided by the dev.
darkmikasonfire gives There Was the Moon the Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval.
Indie Gamer Team 