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Moons of Madness - Lovecraftian sci-fi horror on Mars

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,069
Location
Azores Islands


Publisher: Rock Pocket Games
Developer: Rock Pocket Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

http://www.moonsofmadness.com/
Moons of Madness is a Lovecraft-inspired, first person, psychological horror game that explores the internal struggles of astronaut Shane Newehart and the supernatural events that occur on research station Trailblazer Alpha, the first scientific outpost on the planet Mars. The game aims to provide an intense, narrative-driven, psychological horror experience. Players will explore a realistic interpretation of the red planet as they uncover the mystery surrounding Shane’s past and learn the secrets behind the sinister moons of madness. Moons of Madness puts a unique spin on the madness theme with the zone-out mechanic. A zone-out is a hallucination comprised of combined events from Shane’s past, things that will happen in the future, and information about things that should be impossible for him to know. These events bend the player’s perception of reality by making them question what was a hallucination and what was real. Through this innovative mechanic, players can explore Shane’s subconscious and discover background details of the characters and game world. These events serve both as foreshadowing and to display the condition of Shane’s faltering mental state.
 
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Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
Patron
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
18,641
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I didn't know the moon is "of" anything, least of all madness.

I will inform the squad at once!
 

agentorange

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2012
Messages
5,256
Location
rpghq (cant read codex pms cuz of fag 2fa)
Codex 2012
6NRJPsC.jpg
 

EruDaan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Messages
1,539
"Lovecraftian"... a word as dull and overused as "freedom" or "Democracy"... or "RPG". If I want some FPS jump-scare game I'd play Doom 3. Or FEAR. Or *yawn* Deadspace. Lovecraft's horror is not coming from jumpscares, by blood covered flesh-monsters or figures that suddenly turn and start screaming but from the growing feeling that as time goes by something is getting more and more... wrong. Strange artefacts, strange runes, strange symbols, strange murals, strange architecture. Visions of beings, visions of... places. Music and sounds that clearly does not only do not belong here but sound... wrong. Conversations with co-workers getting stranger from day to day.

But in our modern day and age the average teenager, tween, middle aged gamer has seen everything and I mean everything. Horror movies, fantasy games and movies has dulled our capability of being awed. The average victorian citizen / Lovecraft day and age man/woman would faint or even get traumatized watching an modern average jump-scare horror movie.

Putting real Lovecraftian horror in a visual medium like a computer game is hard. Not impossible, but hard.
 

gurugeorge

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,393
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
"Lovecraftian"... a word as dull and overused as "freedom" or "Democracy"... or "RPG". If I want some FPS jump-scare game I'd play Doom 3. Or FEAR. Or *yawn* Deadspace. Lovecraft's horror is not coming from jumpscares, by blood covered flesh-monsters or figures that suddenly turn and start screaming but from the growing feeling that as time goes by something is getting more and more... wrong. Strange artefacts, strange runes, strange symbols, strange murals, strange architecture. Visions of beings, visions of... places. Music and sounds that clearly does not only do not belong here but sound... wrong. Conversations with co-workers getting stranger from day to day.

But in our modern day and age the average teenager, tween, middle aged gamer has seen everything and I mean everything. Horror movies, fantasy games and movies has dulled our capability of being awed. The average victorian citizen / Lovecraft day and age man/woman would faint or even get traumatized watching an modern average jump-scare horror movie.

Putting real Lovecraftian horror in a visual medium like a computer game is hard. Not impossible, but hard.

I think the most properly Lovecraftian game yet made, in terms of the kind of "feel" you're talking about, is Realms of the Haunting. It has exactly the feeling of vast, ominous, mysterious things happening outside your ken that you're just touching the fringes of.
 

EruDaan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Messages
1,539
Crotch Tentacles... yeah, well. Dunno, but to me it feels to much like Doom 3. I sincerely hope that one might later visit mysterious cyclopian cities carved in ancient martian rock. Hounting sounds breaking absolute silence. Murals that depict strange scenes millenia old, giving the player the feeling that he might walk in a giant graveyard... where things start awakening again.
 

GreyViper

Prophet
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Messages
1,523
Location
Estonia
Sooo moral of the story, don't go to Mars?
I liked the story it was a bit different from the usual, but the end was somewhat predictable. Few things that came to my mind after finishing the game. The events would have happened anyway, with or without a protagonist. I felt like the game started at the ending chapter and most of the events have already happened before the game begins and your witnessing final moments.
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Played through it the other day. It is practically impossible to die in this game unless you’re incredibly incompetent. I was drunk as shit playing it and you have to really go out of your to die. There’s a section where you have to avoid security cameras to avoid alerting enemies and I sprinted through the entire section without issue.

I’m not sure who this game is for because it just felt like a game where I pressed forward on the keyboard the entire game and was very rarely bothered by puzzles which seem to just be there to pad the game, not because of how difficult they are but like grab red tube from blue pipe and insert it into red pipe doesn’t feel like a puzzle...

The story doesn’t really make sense even if you read all the logs and name dropping Lovecraftian things because at the time it sounds cool is essentially the premise of this game.

They had a really solid idea and then idk where they went with it, clearly not to retail...

2/10

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/dow35x/moons_of_madness_review_thread/
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,154
Mars is a very scary place. Don't joke with Cthulhu, It's real, it's coming for us.
 

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