Moons of Madness

Best thing about Moons Of Madness is the way atmospheric horror is gradually built up during the first two hours. Sadly, this dread slowly dissipates in the latter stages, when less ambiguous enemy encounters feel a little out of place and forced. Overall, though, this is an excellent sci-fi horror game with an engaging story and an extremely eerie setting. [Issue #175, p.70]

Moons of Madness debuts on PlayStation 4: a great first-person horror videogame, with an excellent conversion.

Moons of Madness tries to fit in a genre of experience games like Everybody’s Gone to Rapture or What happened to Edith Finch. The potential is there because of the sci-fi setting and the Lovecraftian tale. Unfortunately, Rock Pocket Games did not have the courage to let go of your hand and leave you to explore and discover the world for yourself. They wanted to control the narrative too tightly and also felt the need to introduce some superfluous gameplay elements. As a result Moons of Madness feels like it’s trying too hard and trips itself.

Moons of Madness plays more like a cinematic experience than an actual game. Its immersion visually is sublime, and though objects are intuitively interactive, the story lacks the emotional pull needed to match the tone and mood set forth. You will undoubtedly feel as if you are on an alien planet, but that’s it. The imbalance of story, gameplay, and interactivity with the enemy becomes apparent the more you play. And with much of the story being told through accessing terminals and listening to banter dialogue, I often felt as if I was no longer interested in what was occurring around me.

Truth be told, Moons of Madness got out of the blocks slowly, for me. The initial exploration struggled to hold my attention and the usual Lovecraftian story beats had started to wear me down. Thankfully, there is an execution on hand here to deliver more than just the usual blueprint of science leading to unknown consequences. The cast deliver great performances and the visuals look polished and flourish in spots. Once the pace picks up, it accelerates well to a satisfying conclusion. It's a good effort with some smart writing and puzzles that won't halt your progress too much.

An unsettling and beautiful experience, with a pace that's just too slow. If you can get past the walls of text and all too familiar puzzles though, Moons of Madness is good for a few scares.

Moons of Madness is an okay horror game couched within a super science fiction game. While this identity crisis may be a bit off-putting (and there are a few sections of the game that make you wish it would just get on with it), there is some fun to be had with the nice visuals, great writing, and solid puzzles. If there weren’t so much Cthulhu, this would have been an even better game.

Given how nice it looks, I suspect that if you were to strip out most of Moons of Madness’ gameplay — such as it is — you would’ve been left with a very solid (if somewhat short) horror walking simulator. Instead, all you have here a somewhat scary horror game that manages to drown itself in a whole lot of pointless busywork.

Moons of Madness is a game whose parts do not end up integrating. The proposal is not bad and it has interesting moments that will provoke the worst of fears, however, its failures and limitations end up acting against it.

Moons of Madness is a narrative horror adventure too guided that fails to truly terrify players. Although it offers an interesting mixture of science fiction and the most classic cosmic horror.

Moons of Madness promised a fictitious version of Mars from the comfort of home, with all of the suspense and jump-scares a girl could want, but unfortunately fails to deliver. As much as I wanted this horror fantasy, I can’t bring myself to go back to Mars. My patience has worn thin. Every time I hover over the graphic on my PS4 I audibly groan. Perhaps I’ll find the energy to return to it at some point, but much like the game itself, I’m not in a rush.

Visually impressive horror on Mars, which takes inspiration from Lovecraft, but unfortunately never manages to create panic for the player.

Moons of Madness suffers from itself in many ways. The story is a unique one that I really enjoy and like. It had me curious from the moment that I saw/read anything about it. Once in the world though, the game gets in front of itself and hurts the overall product. I found myself losing interest and intention with it. It suffers from this feeling of being too much like a puzzle game, and not enough like an adventure. I love a good story and the end of the day. Something that can keep me wrapped up is wonderful. With Moons of Madness, it just painted itself into a corner of putting too much in. It’s a great concept, just the execution and overall final product hinder the experience and make it lackluster and at times frustrating experience.

Quotation forthcoming.

Moons of Madness tries to offer a Lovecraft-style experience, and although it shows potential here and there, it doesn't feel like a complete package. The future seems brighter for the Norwegian studio Rock Pocket Games, and Moons of Madness, despite its shortcomings, is still a good game that can entertain the fans of the genre for a few hours.

It’s just too bad that, for what Moons promises, it so rarely delivers. I wanted to be swept up in the Lovecraftian madness, but too often I found myself frustrated from lack of direction or rote fetch quests. Some of the creatures you meet promise intrigue and terror, but some of them too are oddly conceived. And while you can’t fight the monsters here, you can run like SOMA, but where SOMA was thoughtful and left an impression on me to this day, Moons of Madness gets in its own way, hoping visuals can carry it through. It doesn’t quite hit the mark.

It's not that Moons of Madness is without merit, but it does come across as a game where the development team never quite reached creative cohesion and weren't able to quite work out what they wanted to achieve with this game. From the butchering of Lovecraft's vision, to a scenic structure that feels too disjointed for its own good, to the over-reliance on cheap horror tricks like jump scares in the absence of true narrative and thematic depth, Moons of Madness is just a little too confused for its own good. It's an inoffensive way for sci-fi and horror fans to while away a few hours, but by no means a masterpiece.

The visuals are far and away the most impressive part of this boring journey around Mars, as multiple camera angles and well-crafted Lovecraftian tentacle monsters give the game a cinematic aesthetic that draws to mind the first Alien film. There is something engaging here, but it’s marred by weak scares and, less forgivably, dull as dishwater gameplay.

Moons of Madness had great potential based on its opening moments. Mars looks beautiful and characters like Shane actually have quite a bit of depth to them. Ultimately though, the game very quickly becomes a generic horror game that doesn't anything interesting to say. Space is inherently terrifying and wondrous, but Moons of Madness somehow made it boring.