I WALK ON THE LIP OF THE WELL: I HAVE TWO MOONS
ONE IN THE SKY, THE OTHER SWIMMING IN THE WATER.
I HAVE TWO MOONS.
-Mahmoud Darwish
Moonwell is an interactive fiction game set in a far future landscape somewhere far away. The player will explore their environment through choice prompts that will dramatically affect their world.
GRIDSCAPE
One of the central features of Moonwell is a character progression system called the Gridscape. As you progress through the game you will collect Vistas, singular moments and core identity pieces, that can be slotted into a grid like tetris pieces. Some of these Vistas will have unique requirements to activate, and all of them will require you to carve usable chunks off the grid. By placing Vistas of different types next to each other, you embody Masks that unlock unique dialogue options. Some choices and opportunities will allow you to regrow the pieces of the grid that you carve off. Once your playthrough is complete, each character should have a totally unique grid configuration that reflects how they played the game.
PULSE
Another core feature is the Pulse. Constantly running across the top of the screen are strange lines of text- ambient noise of your environment and psyche. It acts as both an additional descriptive layer as well as a premonition, echoing nearby locations, events, the future and the past, as well as sometimes containing advertisements, codes, and contact numbers that can be used- if spotted and input correctly- to access locations and meet people that would be otherwise difficult to reach. There is a lot going on with the Pulse.
Moonwell is a big experiment for me, and is the culmination of a dozen or so other text-based games I've tinkered with and learned how to handle their structures and codes. At the moment, it is feature complete and just needs some visual polish in areas as well as... 95% of the writing.