Moons of Madness

~ DIFFICULTY ~
🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it
🔲 Easy
✅ Normal
🔲 Hard
🔲 Dark Souls
~ GRAPHICS ~
🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Graphics don't matter for this game
✅ Good (nothing special)
🔲 An original artistic direction
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece
~ STORY ~
🔲 This game has no story
🔲 Only small fragments
🔲 It's there for people who want it
🔲 Well written
✅ Leading to more in-depth thoughts
🔲 Epic story
~ LENGTH ~
🔲 Very Short (0 - 2 hours)
✅ Short (2 - 15 hours)
🔲 Average (15-50 hours)
🔲 Long (50-90 hours)
🔲 Extremely long (90-110 hours)
🔲 No ending
~ MUSIC ~
🔲 Just filling noises/No music
🔲 Trivial and uneventful
✅ Good and/or fitting the game's artistic dispositions
🔲 Memorable
🔲 Transcending whispers of a forgotten world
~ FUN ~
🔲 I'd rather watch paint dry
🔲 Hard to enjoy
🔲 Repetitive
🔲 Actually pretty amusing
✅ The kind of fun you'll remember
🔲 Ride of your life
~ REPLAYABILITY ~
✅ A one-time experience
🔲 Only for achievements
🔲 If you wait a few months/years (or with mods)
🔲 Definitely
🔲 Infinitely replayable (or almost)
~ BUGS ~
✅ Never heard of
🔲 Minor bugs
🔲 Can get annoying
🔲 Impacts the player's experience
🔲 The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
~ PRICE ~
🔲 Free
🔲 Underpriced
🔲 Perfect Price
✅ Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
🔲 Complete waste of money
~ WORTH BUYING ~
🔲 No
🔲 If you have nothing else to play
✅ Wait for sale
🔲 Yes

Foreword
You might want to check if completing Cyrano Story still results in a free key for Moons of Madness as this is how I obtained mine. The two are connected but completing the former is not required to understand the latter. It was a great opportunity to get my hands on this walking sim gem for free which is priced slightly higher than the average in its genre.
Madness on Mars
You know space is a really good setting for horror especially if you are alone. Just because you can communicate with your colleagues via radio you are still alone. The prologue already sees us exploring dark corridors only to realise not long after that this was just a dream. We play as Shane and our first buddy to talk to will be Declan. Instructions are given by him at the beginning and - as you guessed it - our job will be to solve some of the malfunctions present in this Martian facility.
Three things I liked, a lot: a small device called biogage that Shane needs to find first. It goes on our wrist and shows us all the important objectives, inventory items, journal entries etc. Scanning our immediate surroundings allows us to connect to various systems wirelessly (necessary to proceed) and this also serves as a hint since this shows us where to go or what items can be interacted with.
Second: the rover. Often we have to go to another building and commuting between two locations requires this little vehicle. You put on your suit, (re)fill your oxygen level, go outside, enter in the back, undress (remember to change the atmosphere!), drive, rinse and repeat. These short voyages also help us transition from one chapter to another.
The third and most important thing is: coffee. I am an addict and I loved the fact that brewing and drinking coffee is an option here. Need extra caffeine? Refill your cup in the kitchen as you'll have no more opportunities to do so later on! And this is also a thing where the game shines: the animation is very detailed. This includes everything Shane interacts with. Doors don't just slide open but Shane bends a little and uses their lever. Pieces of paper he holds close enough so that you can read them. Computer displays are also wide enough so that you can go through all e-mails. Attention to details is just superb in this game!
Cthulhu et al.
This is a Lovecraftian horror for sure. You very early on realise it. Fans of him will rejoice, definitely! As we make progress we face more complicated problems that require more complex solutions. The game has some very interesting puzzles and it wouldn't be horror without some chasing sequences. As calm as Shane's journey begins you'll be suprised to see how crazy it turns out to be by the very end.
Graphically, MoM looks great but perhaps it's a bit heavy on the effects. You can set some of these lower which also gives you some extra, well-deserved FPS (without you noticing anything). Back to the puzzles: some are a bit difficult but the game always gives you hints as to where to look for the solution.
In 8 hours you fulfill Shane's destiny and as an added surprise you get to experience two endings. Veni, vidi, vici as they say: MoM won me over from the very first minute I set foot on Mars!

I got Moons of Madness for free when I won it for completing the Alice and Smith ARG, Cyrano Story, like 17 times in a row. So I did get it for free but I also worked for it.
I'd class this as a horror walking sim with some puzzle elements. Puzzles vary in difficulty and the game is very linear but has a strong Lovecraftian storyline. It is a bit steep for me considering the playtime if I was to have bought this. So I definitely would suggest getting this on sale. With all that out the way lets unravel the slippery tentacles of the game and explore the infundibulum.
_____________
PROS
+ slow burn horror without (too many) jumpscares. Yes there are a couple of jumpscares but the game doesn't rely on these cheap shots. The base on Mars that you and your crew are on is creeptastic in places and the ambient sounds and dripping of ichor is plenty to keep a coward like me on edge.
+ humdrum. I love it when a game balances tedium and can keep it just fun enough. I really felt like The Martian and did not mind at all filling up my suit with oxygen, opening and closing airlocks, autopiloting a Mars rover, adjusting solar panels, switching out power cells. Sure it was a bit mundane but it was being mundane on Mars, which is awesome.
+ puzzles. You are not hand held at all when it comes to puzzles and I appreciate that. I really enjoyed figuring out through a bit of trial and error at what all the flashing lights did. You are after all pretty much the janitor with the lowest possible security clearance on this mission when compared with the other scientists.
+ Cthulhu feel. The slow decent into madness was well played in this one. You get flashes of mental pain as you witness the insanity going on in the base. You blur the lines of fantasy and reality. There are things you should not even look at.
+ and the award for best Production Logo goes to......Funcom. Seriously. That's a great one. The whole animation is a treat to watch.
_______________
CONS
- weird decisions. Shane, the character you control, makes some pretty weird decisions at some points which you don't really have any say in.
- hollow characters. I never got into or felt much for any of the other characters. Sure by the end I understood them and got their motivations and all but they just weren't important to me and for a game all about story, this is quite an important thing to be lacking.
___________________
So a fair 8 out of 10 tentacles for Moons of Madness. Gets the job done but it isn't for anyone who wants to run and gun their way out of a situation. You are weak you are mostly powerless and outnumbered.....just the way I like it.

You'll probably like this title if you liked Alien Isolation as the scares in this game share a lot of similarities. (Sorta spoilers from now on) there are a few chases, similar to being chased by the xenomorph and also navigating vents. There are also androids like the androids in Alien Isolation later on in the game which can be woken up and some are patrolling areas.
Overall it's a nice game and fans of sci fi horror will enjoy this, but maybe get it on sale as it isn't super long.

*** PLAYED ENTIRELY ON LINUX VIA PROTON ***
■■■■■■■□□□ 7 / 10
TL;DR: short (8 hours gameplay, no replay value), linear horror walking simulator in Mars with some chase scenes and death. Mixes Alien: Isolation, child puzzles which seem out of place, free-form Lovecraftian horror, the black Ooze from X-Files, Tremors (yes, that movie where you have to avoid the sand and stay on the rocks), cloning, walking plant monsters and annoying defense robots.
Longer description at the end.
---{Graphics}---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
---{Gameplay}---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Linear. No interactivity, no branches, no exploration.
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t
---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good and climactic.
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape
---{Voice Acting}---
☐ Masterful acting for all characters and scenes
☑ Good/average acting for all characters and scenes
☐ Good acting but not all characters and scenes have it
☐ Just a few parts of the game have voice acting
☐ No voice acting at all
---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Human
---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☑ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{Grind}---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding
---{Story}---
☐ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovley
☐ It‘ll replace your life
---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ Buy when it's on sale
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{Bugs}---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
...First, to start off, let me say that the graphics of this game are GORGEOUS! Really spectacular, clear, with almost palpable realism, and combined with the sound they have created an extraordinary sense of dread and it just falls short of being immersive because the whole game is so obviously in-your-face linear, and nothing except the very few elements related to the story and the oxygen pumps are interactive. The comparison with Alien: Isolation is absurd: A:I had crafting to distract you and give some relief to the more tense moments, had freedom of movement, had many scripted pieces but gave you a sense of freedom, a sense of you choosing your own way. The only thing in common is that in both games you don't have a jump button and can become stuck in ankle-high obstacles. In this game you are on a rail, and you feel it, paths get constantly blocked with debris to direct you to the right way and having this yellow dot pointing you in the right direction completely removes every chance of tension or stress because you know once you reach some checkpoint you just need to try, rinse and repeat until you pass the section. Even the QTEs in this game are braindead, like, in Alien: Isolation, to open some doors you would have to insert the tool, turn it some way by using the stick, then twist it the other way, and if you did it wrong you would need to restart, it felt mechanical. You have the same kind of operations in Moons of Madness but you just press the right button. Then after the first animation finishes, you press it again. And again. And again.
The puzzles are childish, almost to the point of stupid, and make you wonder why the f a cosmological entity or civilization or whatever waste time devising complex bright-colored devices which work a little like rube goldberg machines to just open some doors or clear some way. Seriously, the last puzzle of the game offers you a plethora of buttons and switches with a red/yellow light on them, and the instruction is to make all lights turn green before you can press the big red button that will launch a rocket. You just have to flip the switches with red lights so they turn green and turn the dial until it gets green! How is that even a puzzle?
The story is... Meh. It starts interesting and the work they put on it is to be praised, but the result falls short nevertheless: your mother is a celebrity professor who studies alternate dimensions and reality-altering physics like this is the most common and scientifically accepted thing ever. And in Mars you have mutant plants which black ooze which spawn some monster which occasionally chases you. Also, the chief scientist/botanist of the Mars Colony goes mad. And the owner of the company exploring that facility with secret underground floors somehow was there too. And there is cloning. And then your mother which disappeared in the past is a ghost in service of Cthulhu (I guess?) which wants to make Phobos and Deimos (potato-shaped moons of Mars) collide with some enchantments, a "Gaia Device" and your help. And you have a scar on your hand that brightens up and makes some magic ball activate stuff. WTF? Yes, they try to mix every scifi and horror reference they could find, it seems, to an incomprehensible mess, At the least the ending is on par with most lovecraftian horror stories out there, although it somehow still felt lackluster.
I regret having bought that game even though I like the genre and was flabbergasted with the visuals (I specially liked the bathrooms). I paid (almost) full price, but felt empty at the end. Why do I still recommend it? Well, I recommend it if it's on sale. And it is not the worst horror-survival game out there, and there are some people who can't play hard horror games (they get paralysed or scared or something) so maybe a less tense horror like the one on this game may appeal to them.

This is not a game for people looking for true scares. There are a few tense moments a couple jump scares (which is fine, I think jump scares are lazy), but mostly this game relies on a foreboding atmosphere and increasingly bizarre cult enigmata to pull you in.
The graphics were high quality, if not exactly the most sublime type I've seen, and served the story and gameplay well. The puzzles were mostly straightforward, though I never felt particularly challenged by them, and only rarely frustrated.
It's a game I'd give a recommendation to playing, as I finished the entire thing in one, long session, which is a testament to its mostly excellent pacing, variety of gameplay and locations, and story.
Lovecraftian media seem to all suffer from the same problem though, which is you can kind of see where the story is headed before it arrives there. While the game kept me engaged, even sometimes riveted, throughout its length, I could anticipate many of the beats of the story awaiting me, though arriving there wasn't so much a disappointment as an expected resolution.
Like, you know that a Marvel film is gonna end with the heroes triumphing over the evil eventually, but the journey to get there was the point. While not a superhero film, Moons of Madness similarly pulls the common threads of the Lovecraft universe, but doesn't do anything particularly novel with them.
A worthwhile journey, probably best purchased on sale.
7.5/10

In my opinion this game is hard to rate, but overall i enjoyed the experience, even though i read some negative reviews and can totally understand their viewpoint. Pls take note that i dont know anything about The Secret World, so it is highly possible that i missed some clues/features/eastereggs or whatever.
You can tell that this title is based on lovecraftian myths, entities and places, but if you know other sci fi horror games/films, you will also realize, that its not only lovecraft. Just take anything horror related which takes place on mars and you will get the idea while playing it.
My problem is that the horror or scary stuff is pretty much in your face in this game. There is rarely any buildup to the "monsters" or whatever might scare you. You hear a sound, turn around and there he/she/it/whatever is. In my opinion the game could be much better, if the horrors you encounter later arent as obvious. Hey, there are so many terminals and security camera, why not introduce some enemies via watching recordings, where some of your crewmembers are attacked or spooked by something in the dark or a noise which they couldnt figure out and are out of your line of sight?
At some part of the game you go back to an area where you were hunted by a monster - which was totally visible the first time yo saw it -, and guess what, the monster is still there. Kinda boring if you ask me. The player isnt the only thing which is able to learn and adapt, for example, let the monster use the light shafts for example, let it mutate, whatever, give me something new, where i need to adjust my playstile without needing to press shift and make a run for it.
Apart from that the visuals and sounds are very well made, the people involved knew what they were doing. Gameplaywhise its pretty basic, read this, solve this puzzle etc. Nothing groundbreaking, sadly. The hacking ability could have been so much more, like hacking security "stuff" to get rid of a monster in your path.
But after all this game is (way) too good for a negative review. I might have spend too much time talking about the negatives, but like i said, it's a really good game. Considering the price this is a title worth getting. When i directly compare this title to the Blair Witch game here on Steam, this title here is clearly my favourite.
I will definitely keep an eye out for future realeases.