Moonring

Same affect on autists as crack being introduced into black communities by the CIA during the 1980s

Goated game. Once you get the hang of the mechanics, it becomes surprisingly immersive. Having played through most of the game's content, I’d like to share a few tips: 1. Since the game isn't very well documented, many "guides" and "opinions" out there are misleading. That said, the game often rewards experimentation, so have fun doing that. 2. While armor and weapons do most of the heavy lifting, stats do matter. A character with maxed-out Finesse and Endurance will dodge attacks very frequently, even when wearing the heaviest armor set (the 'Gods' screen has an concise explanation for each stat). 3. Hunger is a rather annoying mechanic. Food spoils very quickly, making it impossible to maintain a reliable stockpile. However, if random wild animals aren't available, you can always 'Gash' an enemy to obtain a phial of blood, which restores 50 hunger points. This causes poisoning if you aren't a follower of the Lady, but health is much easier to recover and doesn't slowly drain away constantly. 4. The game isn't inherently hard. If an area seems unfair, you're probably 'underleved', so try exploring somewhere else. If you explore the entire map, your character will likely deliver a massive thrashing even to the toughest boss. That holds true as long as you play smartly and make the most of opportunities. Fortunately, switching off your brain can still get you killed. 5. Permadeath is a bit stupid. I don't recommend trying it out before having finished the game at least once. 6. The dungeon bell meter doesn't kill you instantly when it fills up (at least, that didn't happen to me). The effects are always negative, but not absolutely insurmountable. Still, it is not advisable to ignore it.

So much potential and worldbuilding lost from having some of the most boring, tedious gameplay imaginable. Obviously, I'd recommend trying it because it's free. But did I have fun? Not at all. It's all style and nothing else. The style of this game is quite spectacular and unique. From its UI, to its graphics, music, sound, and atmosphere, it really could've shaped up to being something worth playing. Perhaps even worth buying, if it costed money. Obviously, in this regard, it is a ridiculously impressive feat for a singular developer. I liked the interesting use of typing in the dialogue box to forward conversations, even if it did feel static. I also liked the city layouts. So much love went into the attention-to-detail of the world itself. It runs decently, too. But, and this is a huge but, the GAME just isn't fun to get into whatsoever. The combat is atrocious. Truly a snoozer way of implementing combat into a game like this. It's slow, not very methodical, and messy. Most of the time it's spent just waiting for poise to regenerate, or running away because there's no traditional leveling system, or running way because it's a waste of resources, or running away because combat is boring enough already. There's no real reason, purpose, or goal to the combat in this game. It just exists, and it exists in an awkward fashion. A real time killer with nothing to show for it. You don't get cool loot, you don't level, you don't do anything really. You just lose out on time, resources, and fun factor. Exploring would've been awesome if not for everything on the map wanting to make exploring unfun. It's not even difficult, it's just status-effect spam through a useless fog-of-war-covered map. Like, if you're gonna have this interesting, captivating worldbuilding then GIVE me a REASON to want to explore it. Instead, the gameplay subtracts from the initial interest. The gathering of resources like herbs and kindles is done in such a boring way. It makes you not want to explore. The exploration, enemies, combat, and overall gameplay try its absolute hardest to make you not want to engage in anything. And if you don't want to explore in a game with good worldbuilding, you become irritated. And if you're irritated, there's no point in playing the game. If there's no point in playing the game, I don't recommend it. SO MUCH POTENTIAL. This is the Potential-Man of RPG games (even more so than Dwarf Fortress). But it's just ruined by terrible pacing and game design decisions. Everything is dedicated to the 0.01% of players that want to watch tutorials and read wiki pages. Negative 2.5/5, try it because it's free but don't say I didn't warn you.

It looks more fun than it is. Combat is repetitive and sometimes frustrating, with few little strategy options. Worldbuilding is quite deep so if you are into discovering secrets you might have more fun than me, but that part is slugged down by the combat that feels like a chore. I wish there was an easy mode.

A beautiful, well made pixel RPG, should be a paid game. The game is much more complex than it appears. The world and dungeon are detailed, fun to explore and rewarding. The dialogue system is interesting, you click on new words in previous lines to uncover more details. I particularly enjoyed the village and city builders. The architectures are interesting to simply look at. Combat is a large part of the game, you need to be careful because battles are challenging, even after hiring a companion I still found many encounters difficult, I had not finished the game after failing too many times, which is unfortunate, because I’m aware that there are more interesting areas I haven’t discovered yet. I hope the Devs consider adding difficulty options. [u] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43342176-Why-Not-Games/#browse] My curator page[/url][/u]

Moonring could have been a gem, but in the end it's just a damn pain to play. The dev prides themselves on leaving the player to figure stuff out, but there are so many hidden mechanics and details, with so much punishing as a "reward", that the principle just loses its meaning (I think fishing is one of the simplest examples of it, but I won't go in depth because it would take longer to explain than what it's worth... just see for yourself, try fishing, if you made the bad decision of starting this game like me). One thing is giving you at least some basics, another is to just toss you there without a remotely clear short term goal and little to none mechanic explanation (mostly none). So you find yourself running around in circles, just struggling to survive random encounters with basic enemies in the hope of building up some loot and money (both VERY poor, and the is no leveling up or such), trying to buy some equipment in towns; there are six main towns, and they mostly sell the same stuff, which won't make you feel stronger or more protected in the slightest. Even going from one city to another is an ordeal, you are constantly swarmed by enemies that you mostly have to avoid (not just because you're weak *now*, you'll mostly have to avoid them through the whole game, unless you're actively "grinding" near a safe zone), while being subject to multiple negative status effects from enemies and environment, and while also having to sate your hunger to avoid a debuff (the hunger mechanic is merely an annoiance that doesn't add anything to gameplay... rather the opposite, it just makes you waste time killing animals or waste money -and again, time- buying food, which also rots over time, so you can't just keep a stock). All this with the addition of amber fog, clouds of fog that makes you see nothing and adds the mad status. It has the positive effect of making enemies go mad too and sometimes attack each other, but don't count on that too much, because mostly it'll be just a pain for you. Especially when "madness monsters" start spawning in the middle of it, while your vision is very limited. At the start you have no idea what you should do or where you should go, so, apart from "grinding", you take a route to another city and you probably end up dead before getting there. You try another route to another city: same result. You go to some ruins or dungeon trying to see if there's anything to gain from it: same result. In the end, you learn to plan carefully every single move (I mean every single tile or attack), but it's a real pain to play and every victory seems empty, rewarding you with no growth nor an item that you'll find good (the rewards will either be weak stuff that barely helps you survive specific situations or key items, never expect a good weapon, armor, or whatever that will give you some kind of even small actual edge). There would be more to talk about, like the deity system, which is interesting and horrible at the same time, but I don't feel like blabbering more. In short, the lore and atmosphere are intriguing, but the gameplay is terrible, annoying, unrewarding, and pointlessly frustrating. Could have been a fantastic game. Doesn't come remotely close.

this just blew my mind, absolutely beautiful, everything is perfect, the UI is simple and well made. incredible, and it's FREE.

Weird, retro, and deeply satisfying. Not really any comparable game, mechanically, made in decades. Who still remembers Ultima? For such a stripped down RPG system, the powers are all quite interesting and varied. Biggest gripe is that the difficulty curve is kinda busted--you spend 70% of the game struggling to eek through filler dungeons and hoping for manageable enemy spawns, until eventually you cross a threshold on power level and start steamrolling everything. Like, the game has 5 core dungeons but you'll likely do them all back-to-back in the final third of the game.

Given that Moonring is free, it's hard not to recommend it. Moonring truly excels in several areas: its overworld exploration, its worldbuilding, its atmosphere, and its thematic cohesion. The world of Moonring is layered with mysteries and weird intriguing lore, and this coupled with the dialogue system and the freeform exploration creates an experience where it really feels like you're pulling apart the secrets of this world. In contrast, other RPGs often can feel like you're just progressing through a list of planned activities and narrative beats. [b]Lore[/b] The world of Moonring is extremely cool and very fleshed-out. I appreciate how much thought has been put into the five gods: what the values and taboos of their followers are, which groups of people their followers do and do not get along with, how their powers change with the phases of the moon, which stats they interact with, etc. The five gods and their moons work very well as a thematic though-line that ties the setting and the gameplay together into a solid cohesive package. [b]Story[/b] Unfortunately, even though the lore and worldbuilding are excellent, the actual story (i.e. the plot that transpires during the game) is pretty bland. The non-player characters in Moonring don't have a lot of personality. Even though the world of Moonring is extremely interesting, it's just hard to care about any of the people who live in it. The result of this is a plot where stuff kinda just happens because the player feels like it rather than because the world is populated with complex, interesting people who have their own agency and motivations. [b]Atmosphere[/b] Every time I boot up this game I have to stare at the title screen for a full minute. The sound design is insanely good and the dynamic use of color is just genius. There's no way I can properly convey this with words, just play the game in a dark room and see for yourself. [b]Exploration[/b] By far, the most fun I have had in Moonring is just walking around the overworld and seeing what's out there. The zoom mechanic allows the world to be vast without being tedious to traverse. I think Moonring hits a really good balance between its static elements (points of interest) and its dynamic elements (random encounters, roaming enemies, herb/kindling drops), and it packs secrets with high enough density that you'll want to come back and turn over areas once or twice, which I enjoyed. Moonring also does a good job of opening up fast travel right when traversing the world on foot starts to get old. [b]Combat[/b] The combat is okay. It's pretty tedious at first, but after you visit a few of the towns and devote yourself to a god (I chose Our Lady of the Sanguine Moon), it gets better. There's not much tactical depth: in most encounters there's not a lot of thinking you have to do on the fly. As a result, most encounters are pretty dull, but at least they're over quickly. On the other hand, the boss encounters are pretty good! The bosses hit the right level of gimmicky for a game like this: their mechanics are unique enough to make you think about your strategy without being so out of left field as to feel disconnected from the rest of the game. Also, there is some fun to be had thinking about builds, as there's a good variety of viable playstyles you can go for. It's a shame because there's clearly been a lot of thought and smart design choices that went into the combat, but unfortunately the fun just isn't there in the majority of the moment-to-moment gameplay.