There Was the Moon appears on the horizon
Serving penance for one's sins, and especially for the sins of one's entire race, usually isn't something to look forward to, but it is when the path to redemption leads through a host of puzzles, as it does in indie developer Ben Lapid's upcoming adventure, There Was the Moon.
While story details are intentionally vague, players are dropped unceremoniously at the entrance of a towering "divine monument" of unknown origin. This place represents a gateway that "no one has passed through in a very long time." Here you are tasked with first cleansing yourself of impurity and then "completing a ritual prescribed by an interspecies pact formed eons ago." Only by doing do will you be able to rectify a "horrific act" perpetrated by humans long ago and be truly "reborn."
Set entirely within a "minimal (almost brutalist) temple that beckons the player to explore its halls," There Was the Moon is a first-person 3D puzzle-adventure in the vein of Myst. The sparse environments and "luminous atmosphere paired with a surreal soundscape," however, share more in common with the 2012 puzzler Kairo, which the developer also cites as an influence. Expect no hand-holding here, only cryptic clues to abstract obstacles you must overcome along the way. Designed to be a "short, satisfying experience that can be completed in one sitting," the game does have a degree of replayability to uncover the various hidden secrets and multiple possible endings.
There is currently no target release date, but There Was the Moon is on track to be launched on Steam sometime this summer for Windows and Mac. For a taste of what's in store, while you wait you can try out the Windows-only playable demo available now on itch.io.
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