5.9 hours played
Written 6 years ago
This game is a masterpiece, and the negative reviews on here honestly make me sad because the majority of them are due to false expectations. Despite what users have tagged, and despite the store page’s description, THIS IS IN NO WAY A HIDDEN OBJECT GAME. If you are anticipating a Big Fish or Artifex Mundi style hand-holding casual experience with clear linear progression, hints, maps, sparkles, and hidden object screens, you are not going to find ANY of that here. Move on now because that’s simply not what this is at all.
This is an item-driven puzzle adventure game where is it up to the player to discover the clues that progress the story, and to figure out how to use everything that isn’t nailed down to overcome challenges. It relies on you bringing your intuition and your sense of exploration to the table, and being willing to faff around until you finally have another satisfying “Aha!” moment. Along the way there are a few action mini-games to play, but the main focus is always on utilizing and curating your inventory as you unlock new portals and wander freely through time and space.
It is beyond frustrating to me how poorly the game is being marketed on here, and how the videos and stills do not reflect the actual core gameplay. People should know what type of product they are buying, and the true target audience this game should be connecting with is old school point-and-click adventure players, as well as anyone who played text parsers and abused the “take” command.
Marketing the game to the general HOG demographic did it an additional disservice by inaccurately inflating the data for difficulty and length. The store page’s claim of 50 hours only makes sense if it includes excessive built-in estimates for getting stuck and lost. While the game is indeed a decent challenge, there is no way on god’s green moon anyone, aside from maybe young children, would even approach 15 hours of gameplay let alone 50. I finished the whole thing in less than 6; almost every puzzle solution is intuitive if you remember what materials you have at your disposal and where they are located.
I personally fell in love with the world and mechanics of Green Moon. As someone in my 30’s, it resonates deeply with the types of games I played in my youth, and captures that same sense of joy, wonder, and personal accomplishment that comes with real authentic puzzle solving.
Perhaps that is why I had no problems with the graphics and sound quality - the aesthetics match the feel of classic early aughts adventure games, so the styling comes across as both nostalgic and entirely appropriate to the gameplay.
The only problem I had with the game itself was a minor glitch where the very last animation in the ending didn’t load properly, but I had no trouble whatsoever with the functionality of the rest of the game.
Honestly, if you are a fan of point-and-click exploration freed from rails and corralling, if you appreciate the challenge of needing to take stock of every single object around you and suss out what will be useful when, if you enjoy figuring out puzzles for yourself with minimal guidance, and if you like quirky and surreal locations and plotlines, then you absolutely owe it to yourself to check out this title and give it a fair chance. At $7 it is well worth the investment.
