The Moonstone Equation

Basically you're plopped down in the world that has a bunch of: "Hanging plot threads", "some platforming", "a bunch of investigation", and "puzzles". Where you then go about doing whatever you want, in what seems to be any order you want (as you discover it). It's nice and relaxing to play. Haven't ran into any enemies, and haven't ran into anything that forces a panic/rush. Will probably want to keep your cellphone camera around, and a notepad since there are hints scattered all about the world and in conversation since investigation does matter.

The Moonstone Equation is a puzzle/collect-a-thon platformer along the lines of Fez, but about the spirit of research. There are quite a lot of puzzle rooms, but the overall design of the game makes no point aggravating. At any given point in time there are always many different puzzles to go between, in an open map that has few linear restrictions. The puzzles themselves are pleasantly refreshing because none require you to hunt for the most complex series of moves that need to mentally be laid out beforehand. Instead, everything is meant to require a basic idea for the solution to be clear and fast. There is not much of a story, but rather a series of world and theme-building elements that run separate to the puzzles. That said, there are quite a few puzzle-like revelations that arise from them to keep things interesting enough. The world itself is designed to be iconic enough to never get lost, which is special for how big it all is. My favorite aspect of The Moonstone ...

The Moonstone Equation is one of my favorite game of 2018. It's an awesome puzzle-platformer with a cute cast of caracters, and great puzzles. It can be a bit daunting at first, because the world is quite large, and there's nothing to hold your hand (which is actually why I wrote a guide :)). What's really great is that the more you play; the more you uncover the lore; the more you get to know the caracters; the more you enjoy the game. There's a LOT of content that can easily be missed if you only focus on the puzzles, but what makes this game awesome is precisely the fact that you can take a break from the puzzles, and just enjoy chatting with everybody (or reading their emails). I strongly recommend this game. It's beautifully crafted, the music is relaxing, it's challenging but in a good way. So let's see if you can unravel the mystery of the moonstone equation!

This game has a lot of depth but gives you freedom to play it as you wish. You can focus only on solving puzzles and get to the end without exploring the story or solving any mystery. But you can explore the story by reading notes and interacting with NPCs; you can hack the computer system to learn other peoples secrets; you can find and play minigames; and finally you can study and decode the moonstone equation. But the main part are the puzzles and they are designed well. They vary in difficulty and most of them forces you to learn a new concept or trick. And I haven't notices any copy-paste puzzles, each one is unique. Also the game doesn't tell you what to do and finding out what is your goal is part of the game. I have to mention the music. It's so good I wish to have full soundtrack just to listen while reading or working. It's a perfect relaxation/concentration type of music. For now I leave the game in the background - just for songs. This is not game for everyone. There ...

...man. I don't like writing negative reviews for one-man dev indie projects, especially ones that aren't even, like... bad, just... I don't quite -get- this game I guess. The basic puzzles themselves are very generic block pushing puzzles with not really any unique twists on the mechanics - the first block puzzle looks no different from the last. There's also pathfinding puzzles to unlock a few doors but they are so quick and there are so few they're almost not worth mentioning. Past that, there's a (fairly small) game world to explore that has a decent amount tucked away in it but never feels too expansive... except there's no map to navigate it, and the map is basically two halves connected by one area each way (and there's a spot in the "loop" that's one-way and forces you go to all the way back through the entire loop, without fast travel...) But it's not really satisfying to explore, or all that interesting. The game is populated with a dozen or so characters, none of which have ...

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this game yet! The Moonstone Equation is a pretty incredible game and honestly should be far better-known than it is. It has a feeling of the world having an incredible amount of depth and lots of secrets to find and lore to uncover. It also has some really nice puzzles based mostly on simple block-pushing mechanics that you can do surprisingly much with. These puzzles are pretty much the perfect difficulty IMO, not too easy but not too frustratingly difficult. But if you solve all of these and want more to do there's another layer of much more obscure puzzles to solve as well. My one gripe with the game are a couple of minor bugs (such as a lagging camera at times) that don't nearly ruin the experince, and a lot of backtracking at times, but the world is interconnected enough to not make this too tedious. I very much recommend this game for fans of any puzzle/exploration games.

I like it so far... seems a bit different from games I've been playing lately. The graphics are excellent and absolutely love the music. Controls seem fine and no real gameplay issues other than it crashing a few times when I'd try to quit (but it still saved in those cases). Seems to be a game where you solve various puzzles at your own pace while trying to uncover the bigger story, but i'm still not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be doing (which seems like all part of the fun) so can't really say much for sure yet.

This game looks like it has a lot going for it and a lot of potential. But the developer has basically abandoned it even though there are game-breaking bugs stopping people making any progress. He has admitted on Twitter that he is done with it and it sounds like he has no plans to fix anything. Such a shame.

I really wanted to recommend this game. A ton of work has gone into it, and it plays really well... Until you get about halfway or more through, at which point you realize that you need to wander around the map aimlessly, hoping to stumble upon the spots that you need to be in. And because there's no map and no fast travel, and the connections between areas seem almost random, finding things is quite painful. Reading the forums, I realize there's something I haven't done, but since I don't know how to get back there, or if I *did* go there that it'd actually start happening, I've not a lot of interest in trying. The only other thing I know to do involves wandering around, looking for the right areas to collect something, and hoping I recognize them for what they are. I've not a lot of interest in that, either.

Thanks r/Fez. Proof that solo-devved games can still be amazing. Pros: AMAZING Atmosphere and Story Difficult Puzzles Nice Music Cons: oh my god these puzzles are hard