LOG ONE: MANY BEGINNINGS

Published 8 September 2025

Moonwell started as a late-night inspiration of the variety of the thirteen or so previous failed blooms. Originally, when casually picking up Godot ~2 years ago, I had been interested in making Interactive Fiction games and wanted to use a few small-scale projects to get familiar with how Godot and gdscript work. The first few projects used command parsers and were the sort of parser driven adventure game of the Zork variety.

Each project got a little bit cleaner, and eventually I had the full picture of how a game like this should work- from handling dialogues to mapping and parsing inputs. Unfortunately, around this time, while doing some research and playing the old adventures I realized that this wasn't the sort of game I wanted to make. Sure the old adventure games still have their charm, but using a command parser to navigate an adventure inevitably becomes the textual equivalent of pixel bitching. Saying every verb/noun combination possible to try and brute force a way forward was sort of the default mode of these games when you hit a roadblock.

I've had Emily Short's post series on Conversation bookmarked for at least two years now (Which is a phenomenal series that goes in depth on dialogue writing, player agency, etc.), and while stewing on the sort of game I wanted to make I came to the conclusion that it was time to move on from a command parser. Moving slightly forward in the Historical Evolution of adventure games, what I settled on was a simple choice based system where choices would be listed based upon what node of a scene you were in, and the choices would be informed by an in-depth tag system detailing what could and couldn't be done at various times. This moved the actual interaction with the narrative from an open ended parser poking around at the set dressing to a guided pathway of defined interactions.

The concept for Moonwell hit me late at night and I ran with it enough to have figured most of the idea of what I wanted the general experience to be like. At first, the game was going to use a stat check system completely derived from Disco Elysium, down to the talking skill checks forming a party of your own and everything.

It began with a small lifepath generator that showed off some other systems that I was proud of having figured out, like the dynamic glossary and the inventory system. There were some... UI choices made early on that I wasn't too happy with- but seeing as it's all relatively new for me I was satisfied enough to keep it in for the time being.

After writing the first chunk of scenes, however, I started to realize more about the sort of story I wanted to put out there. Or, better, the way in which it was interacted with. Looking at a classical command parser driven game, for example, the narrative is interacted with through the correct application of verbs and nouns. Most of the time, your commands had guaranteed outcomes (see Troll or Thief in Zork I for the early examples of non-deterministic forces) which a savvy player could reliably string together to achieve the desired outcome. Scores were involved, sometimes a characterization of how many "moves" were made in the adventure or was instead point values assigned to certain actions or items. All in all, the results were usually based on deterministic outcomes- things will always happen in X way if done in Y order.

Reexaming my thoughts after playing a game like Disco Elysium, however, I came to the conclusion that that narrative thrives on non-deterministic outcomes. With a game like Disco the mode of play was the sort that really thrived on accepting failures and seeing what direction that might take your character. With the Final Cut version of the game massively fleshing out your options, there was enough writing and thought (over 1.2 million words!) put into failures that it became interesting no matter what happened.

Ultimately, I wanted to write a narrative with a different direction, less driven by percentile chances and instead one where choices are what drives the events and narrative fractures. So, boiling things back down to base principles I ripped out all of the skills and skill check handling, and came into the idea of the Gridscape, where unique experiences, philosophies, tragedies and comedies are engraved into a shifting landscape. Events and discoveries throughout the game will grant Vistas, each of which has a block shape similar to a tetris block, and these Vistas are placed onto the grid. Each Vista is tied to the original five attributes: Kairos, Logos, Ethos, Pathos, and Soma. When Vistas of differing attribute border one another, you unlock the corresponding Mask, e.g. Kairos-Logos makes the Mask of Perfection. Depending on which Masks you have active then your narrative options will be different.

The Gridscape needs to be carved before it can be used, however. It starts out at a 7x7 grid and for each Vista has a cost associated with it in tiles. Before being able to place any tiles, you need to burn off parts of the grid to be able to pay that cost. On top of that some Vistas may have unique requirements before they become active, some Vistas enable certain narrative options of their own, etc. After certain events, you'll also be able to regrow a handful of burnt tiles on the Gridscape- and there will be certain times that you can remove Vistas and swap them out/clear the scape if you need to.

With the Gridscape in place, there were a handful of other systems that needed some natural adaptation to the new style. I entirely gutted the inventory system for one, and added in a Dialler (name wip) to better improve interactivity with the almighty Pulse that dominates the top third of the screen- but I'll chat about those other systems later. For now, finishing up Moonwell is the priority- as it was just supposed to be a side project from Aegis but has turned into a bit more. Writing-wise, this will take a good chunk of time- but the initial goal is to get something demo-suitable in the next few months. Maybe I'll add a writing tracker to keep count of just how much has been written so far...