Singularly, these ideas are great and make for scary games but together it makes for a game that’s cluttered, confusing and unsatisfying. MOONS OF MADNESS combines the madness of eldritch horrors with that of alien life and I just don’t think it works. I love alien themes in games and games like Prey and Alien: Isolation proves that it really works to scare players. After playing through the 3-4 hour game, I wish they just picked a singular theme. Add in the idea of doing it in space and you really have a lot of material to work with. Whether it be the monsters, the memories of the hallucinations, the idea of reality not being what it seems is one of the easiest ways to offer some “out there” creativity. The idea of “is it real or is it just in my head” is the most common trope and leaves a lot of space for creativity. Losing your marbles is a common theme in all Lovecraftian games. Has something infiltrated the base or are you just losing your mind on the red sands of Mars? People are acting strange and you are beginning to see things that aren’t there. The greenhouse inexplicably floods and as you maneuver to fix it, you find weird things are growing through the facility. Finally, more supplies are headed in and your family doesn’t even know you’re off the planet when all of a sudden everything starts to get really bizarre. You play as Shane Newehart, a technician stationed on the Invictus One Mars. MOONS OF MADNESS was developed by Rock Pocket Games and published by Funcom. I couldn’t wait to explore the far reaches of the solar system and the mind with this game. Such is the case with MOONS OF MADNESS, which just finally hit consoles after being on PC since the end of 2019. Even though I do love those games, I like it when developers use the themes of Lovecraft but take them to new places…like Mars. Games like Call of Cthulhu and The Sinking City are a more literal representation of the stories of the Old Ones. There have been a lot of Lovecraftian-themed games in the last few years.
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