➤ Moonring, the meaningless review of a free game out of time 🕹

The Moonring review won't try to sell you on the game since it's free, but just tell you how we imagine it was created.

If you ever decide to create and publish a full Ultima-style RPG for free, something must have gone wrong in the last few years, especially if you have titles like the Fable series and the first Dungeon Keeper on your resume. We start the game and are left a little bewildered by what immediately seems like an obsession. Then we reflected on it and agreed that Dene Carter is no fool and that that strange feeling that the passage from dungeon to dungeon leaves us with must be desired in some way. Thus, before delving further into the strange and anachronistic world in which we find ourselves spending hours and hours in the company of the Dreamless, a man without dreams, master of his destiny in a world in which dreaming has become an oppressive tool in the hands. of dark and indomitable forces, also without spending a single postcard (this will be understood by those who are old enough to remember how the freeware and shareware scene worked many years ago), we understand that for the Moon Ring Review we need to step back and get out of the game, getting as far away as possible to get the full picture, giving meaning to what seems meaningless.

A dream game

Moonring, the meaningless review of a free game out of time — Moonring is full of interesting enemies and gameplay systems.

The year was 1985 and brothers Dene and Simon Carter had a dream: to make their own role-playing game. According to many, the culmination of that desire would have been the series. Fable, made with Peter Molyneux. However, it was evident that something was wrong. That dream was not born in 3D. Most likely it came from Richard Garriott's Ultima series, the paper-and-pencil regular Dungeon & Dragons, and Michael Toy and Glenn Wichmano's Rogue. Come on, we cheated, let's be real. It is Dene himself who mentioned these games in his introductory letter for the release of Moonring. At the end of the day, the dream is theirs so we just have to sit there with the notebook taking notes, so to speak.

However, this imagined game had to be a huge job, bigger than the initial models. At that time Dene was not yet of age, his brother was younger than him and it is impossible not to think of them as two ultra-enthusiasts of technology and entertainment who fantasize big time, driven by creativity and hormones. His first games for 8 and 16-bit systems reveal his ambitions, in particular Druid and Enlightenment, despite his limitations and not even getting close to that wonderful world that spins around in his head.

The two grow up, getting to know Molyneux better and learning his skills inside. Sunny day first and Big Blue Box Studios/Lionhead later. The industry, always on the hunt for glorified stories, links them forever to the Fable series, which becomes a prejudice for them and makes them disappear into the mists of time, confining their names to the margins of the scene. , to reproduce them only in case of a celebration. In reality, the design of Fable was actually born from this dream, but could not fully realize it. Also because "The Game", as the first paper sketch of the series later purchased by Xbox was called, initially had no well-defined boundaries. In addition, Ian Lovett and Molyneux also entered the conceptualization phase and gave their input. A huge and significant experience, but probably distant from the Carters' original vision, especially the Dene's.

No market

Sitting for decades, like a primordial rock, we imagine Dene's teenage dream slowly rising to the surface and taking shape. After all, he is an expert programmer, he no longer makes a living from video games in the strict sense and, therefore, he really has nothing to lose and nothing to prove. The perfect human condition to express yourself. So he began to create his own Roleplay, but it doesn't look like Fable or any modern title. Moonring is his adolescent dream imbued with the disillusionment of age, which speaks of a modernity in which dreams have become goods of multinationals, passed on to a sleeping public that is unaware of the mechanism that generates them.

It's framed from above, has stylized graphics, dialogue is done by typing keywords using the keyboard, it's full of text screens, it has procedural dungeons like Rogue, but a strong design like Ultima and some modern non-destroying measures. hopes of younger players to be able to play without going crazy and then having to ask on social media for the god of user experience to drop a meteorite on this insipid planet.

It also has an intricate plot, many characters to meet, a multitude of game systems that encourage interactivity and a crazy desire to express what has not been expressed in almost forty years of career. At some point in development, good old Dene must have looked at the current market and seen projects like Nox Archaist and SKALD: Against the Black Priory, and then convinced himself that he wouldn't make any money selling Moonring. So he decided to give it away, concluding the cycle of his career with a return to his origins due to his desire to feign indifference to the time that had passed.

Sublime antiquation

Moonring is sublimely outdated, although it integrates many modern systems: a torch can burn an entire forest, the progression system It's much more complicated than the average current game; the magic system is hidden and it's up to the player to locate it in the world of Caldera, hand-drawn by Dene; dungeons are procedurally generated and, in case of death, they all have to be redone (with a new structure); The enemies are many and very varied, there are bosses to defeat, secrets to find, etc. You can choose a direct approach to combat, choose to make the most of the simple built-in stealth system, or resort to magic. There really isn't much point in stopping here and describing the game mechanically (we already told you it's a useless review... if you want to read it, that's your problem), given that it's free and also runs on a toaster.

I system requirements They themselves joke about it, explaining that for it to work you need to have some kind of CPU and a video card that supports pixel shaders. At the end of the day, we are faced with a reflection on the present born from the past, almost an awareness that that great role-playing game imagined decades ago could only have a form similar to the video game universes that generated it and served as a model for everything that came after. Moonring's own graphic style, defined as 2D neon, recalls the dreamlike dimension it narrates and from which it comes. After all, dreams don't require pumped hardware to exist...just falling asleep.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Price Free Holygamerz.com 9.0 Readers (18) 8.6 your vote

Moonring is one of those role-playing games that in the year of Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 are believed to have nothing to say and instead manage to carry out their plot in a very effective way, making use of their limitations. He comes from afar, but he speaks of the present and he does so without mincing words. Furthermore, it is free, so it does not impose anything, and at the same time disinterested in any form of judgment. Born from passion, made with heart and craftsmanship, it is grand in its conceptual outdatedness, much more modern than one might think.