I wanted Moons of Madness when it first launched but I had to buy a new PC so sadly, I had to miss out on on. Recently, I'm sure, it was part of a Humble Bundle and I picked it up instantly.

I am a huge fan of HP Lovecraft's work, anything supernatural and in general SPACE. So I was really excited to finally be able to sit down and just relax on a game that didn't need you to be "MLG PRO LEAGUE" worthy.

Below I will mention what I liked or disliked with a little opinion at the bottom but before I get into that, a small disclaimer!!

This review is MY opinion, MY own personal experience and MY thoughts. I am brutally honest when it comes to reviewing games. If you do not like my opinion, my time or respect my personal experience, please move on.

+First of all, the game's Psychological Horror aspect was spot on. They don't use "cheap" jumpscares to get their kicks out of you and I thought it was true to a Lovecraftian type horror based game (specially if you think CULTIST like)
+The story and writing was very well done also. It kept me interested from start to finish.
+ I had no issues running the game at all. No FPS drops, freezing, stuttering e.t.c. So What I am saying is - it is well optimised (for me anyway on a high end PC)
+ Fantastic soundtrack. Especially at the end! (not gonna spoil anything)

- The game, IMO, needed more puzzles. More things to interact with in general. For the most part it was just your tasks you interacted with.
- The part with the "robots" could have been done better. More interactions with them or something more with them as it felt like I just rushed through this area.
- The runtime of the game does NOT justify the price of Moons of Madness. I completed it in 4 hours flat. For £21 I would have expected about a 10 hour game but not 4 hours. I quit at the credits and pressed resume to get the other ending.
- Puzzles seemed way to simple to solve as the game GUIDED you to everything.
- Lack of exploration of any type.
- Way to much "WALKING SIMULATOR" and not enough actual game, for me anyway.

After finally playing it to 100% after almost 5 years, I have to say - I enjoyed it. Really, I did. Despite it's short runtime (for me as puzzles were to easy) the price of £21 is WAY to steep to attract customers but as of right now - 16/09/24 the game is on sale for £8.39 which is an absolute STEAL and if you wait for Humble Bundle or another websites bundles to be released you could even get it for £1 - like me!! (if you think about the games included in HB)

I would recommend the game on sale but not when it is full price sadly. Overall experience - I wanted more when it was finished.

Disappointing game, tbh. The story didn't make much sense, and the horror element was poor as well. Navigation felt like I'm being held back. Interaction with menu options are bad. Press B to back-out sometime works, sometime doesn't. Some items require double-press and the ux is not good. For example, when you die and want to press "restart from checkpoint", you have to press it twice and even then there's no indication that it worked. Subsequent loading animation is also fake. It's a line bar, which fill from 0 to 100 and then restarts..!!

Then there are absolute horrible monster interactions. There's a QTE sequence and I couldn't figure out what the rules are. Another sequence has robot security that magnetically snaps to you from a distance. Another sequence has sand-worms, but they apparently can attack you from behind / off-screen, without any cue.

There's a missable achievement that's tied to you playing the game badly. And there are no chapter-select.

The graphics are nice and the story is meh...
I did not really grasp the concept but that was not my greatest issue.
Man the character moved slow as hell....This game would be half the length if the character moved faster.

Otherwise it is a fine game, puzzles are pretty straight forward.