Moondrop Isle
June 12, 2024 8:36 AM Subscribe
Moondrop Isle – a big text adventure you can play in your browse, written by a crew of nine authors. Features:
Urban exploration! - Environmental storytelling! - Puzzles! - Secrets! - Feral guinea pigs!
Click on the dock by the shore to start.
It's pretty new so you will find some some unpolished or even buggy things if you spend much time with it, but it's fun to explore.
Your progress in the game will be saved in your browser but you can also type
If you've never played this type of game before, A Beginner's Guide to Interactive Fiction has some tips for you.
Click on the dock by the shore to start.
It's pretty new so you will find some some unpolished or even buggy things if you spend much time with it, but it's fun to explore.
Your progress in the game will be saved in your browser but you can also type
>saveto download an interesting form of save file.
If you've never played this type of game before, A Beginner's Guide to Interactive Fiction has some tips for you.
I'm so spoiled by modern games that make a map for you as you go, this feels like it requires more commitment than I can muster right now. I'd love to sit down and dig into this at some point though!
posted by rivenwanderer at 9:32 AM on June 12
posted by rivenwanderer at 9:32 AM on June 12
I am trying to deep clean today but oh my … maybe this can be my treat at the end of the day. Thank you for posting!
posted by bunderful at 10:08 AM on June 12
posted by bunderful at 10:08 AM on June 12
This is a wonderful picking up and naming guinea pigs simulator, thank you!
posted by birthday cake at 12:07 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]
posted by birthday cake at 12:07 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]
I couldn't put the guinea pig into my backpack to ride shotgun, though.
posted by ursus_comiter at 12:09 PM on June 12
posted by ursus_comiter at 12:09 PM on June 12
My wife and I soon had guinea pigs named "Tortellini" and "Stan" circulating busily around us.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:15 PM on June 12 [1 favorite]
posted by Wolfdog at 12:15 PM on June 12 [1 favorite]
Yesssss new Ryan Veeder exhibition! He does this every four years; if you want to get a sense for what it’s like, take a gander at the 2020 exhibition. It’s guaranteed to give you the most text based parser games set in a zoo that don’t end than any other quadrennial event you’ll ever encounter.
posted by sgranade at 12:36 PM on June 12 [3 favorites]
posted by sgranade at 12:36 PM on June 12 [3 favorites]
This was a short distraction but I got annoyed by the fact that at one point there were fanciful buildings to the northeast, then to the southwest, then to the northeast again - always the OTHER direction to the one I was walking. And I couldn't pick up anything other than guinea pigs!
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 1:47 PM on June 12
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 1:47 PM on June 12
Having kissed a Guinea pig (and thereby confused it), I feel I have won the exhibition.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:07 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:07 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]
I adore this kind of game, having been weaned on proto-bootleg versions of Dungeon/Adventure/Zork. Love the setting of this one !
posted by Miko at 8:15 PM on June 12
posted by Miko at 8:15 PM on June 12
Something kind of cool about Moondrop Isle specifically is that Ryan and Nils have developed a unique method of saving your progression data such that we can continue to update the network of games without causing you to lose progress or be forced to restart.
As such, if you find bugs, please let us know. Speaking for myself, I felt like I became very familiar with the pre-release versions of each area, so I sometimes overlook issues introduced late in development or during bug-fixing updates.
(Huge thanks to our existing testers and players who have sent us transcripts, of course, but it's a process that never ends.)
I'd love to hear what y'all are naming your guinea pigs. I mostly named mine after my cats (Isabel, Frank, John Doe, Grey Goose, Orange Juice, etc.), but one of my testers named a guinea pig "Frogwife", which I will now remember forever.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 4:06 PM on June 13 [5 favorites]
As such, if you find bugs, please let us know. Speaking for myself, I felt like I became very familiar with the pre-release versions of each area, so I sometimes overlook issues introduced late in development or during bug-fixing updates.
(Huge thanks to our existing testers and players who have sent us transcripts, of course, but it's a process that never ends.)
I'd love to hear what y'all are naming your guinea pigs. I mostly named mine after my cats (Isabel, Frank, John Doe, Grey Goose, Orange Juice, etc.), but one of my testers named a guinea pig "Frogwife", which I will now remember forever.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 4:06 PM on June 13 [5 favorites]
I just spent several minutes trying to a) climb or jump over the railing into the lagoon and b) climb the stairs from the beach to the platform, with no success either way. Excuse me, this is a text based adventure, I should be able to plunge to a gruesome death at any moment! Health and safety run amok!
jsnilndrlv it looks like the meta commands "help" and "exit" don't work in the Lunarcade.
posted by radiogreentea at 10:43 AM on June 14
jsnilndrlv it looks like the meta commands "help" and "exit" don't work in the Lunarcade.
posted by radiogreentea at 10:43 AM on June 14
CLIMB STAIRS not working at the monorail platform is a bug. It'll be fixed in the next update. In the meantime, you can climb the stairs with various other phrasings, such as ENTER STAIRS and GO STAIRS and GO UP.
Not being able to jump over the railing at the lagoon is absolutely deliberate, although it could definitely be improved with a custom refusal message.
posted by baf at 6:49 PM on June 14
Not being able to jump over the railing at the lagoon is absolutely deliberate, although it could definitely be improved with a custom refusal message.
posted by baf at 6:49 PM on June 14
Minor bug: if you examine the chains on the gates to the water park, it describes them in a way that indicates you've interacted with them, even if you haven't.
Finally found a flashlight so now I gotta go back to the many, many places that are described as dim or dark!
posted by solotoro at 9:32 PM on June 14 [1 favorite]
Finally found a flashlight so now I gotta go back to the many, many places that are described as dim or dark!
posted by solotoro at 9:32 PM on June 14 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the notification, solotoro. That correction should also be in our next update.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 11:12 PM on June 14
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 11:12 PM on June 14
Is there an actual end to this game? I got the power on, collected all the game tickets, interacted with the strange kiosks (4 of them?), and am trying to collect letters to climb the Lunarcade? It seems like there are still places I'm missing. I got the monorail running but can't seem to catch the train, and I haven't been able to enter the hotel yet. Hmmm
posted by Literaryhero at 8:21 PM on June 21
posted by Literaryhero at 8:21 PM on June 21
I got a new perspective!
posted by Literaryhero at 7:27 PM on July 2
posted by Literaryhero at 7:27 PM on July 2
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posted by epj at 8:53 AM on June 12