With an odd blend of Lovecraftian horror and a Dead Space like sci-fi atmosphere, Moons of Madness seems like an intriguing game to get invested in. The early moments of Moons of Madness set the player up on a Mars that is perfect for exploration. As the game continues though, players will find themselves restrained by the confines of a seemingly small research outpost and a story that has too many moving pieces to make any sense.
Moons of Madness puts the player in the shoes of an engineer for the Orachi Mars Base, Shane Newhart. Throughout the beginning of the game, Shane spends his time doing menial repairs and maintenance tasks throughout the station. This portion Moons of Madness is by far the highlight because of its focus on puzzle oriented gameplay. Most of these tasks are simple environmental puzzles, but some of them take a little more effort like trying to understand how to correctly orient solar panels in an early level.
The developers also spent a considerable amount of time focusing on details in Moons of Madness. There were a lot of details in the first hour of the game, like resetting Shane's wrist device with a pen or filling up a coffee mug, that were simple, but showed off the developer's dedication to Moons of Madness' environment. One of the most unique is the mechanic for refilling Shane's oxygen supply, as it is a very fluid and satisfying animation that changes depending on how much air Shane has left.
If Moons of Madness had just remained a game about exploring Mars while doing maintenance, it could have been an incredibly unique and satisfying experience. Sadly, after the first hour or so Moons of Madness begins trying to mash together worn out horror and sci-fi tropes in an attempt to create a coherent story. Moons of Madness is not scary with its telegraphed jump scares, and the game's storyline becomes confusing and boring.
Most of the game's story is told through communications between Shane and his co-worker Declan as well as logs found on computer terminals. This would be incredibly effective if the story was coherent. Just when players think they have everything figured out, Moons of Madness pulls the rug out from under them and begins lining up a new story beat. By the end of the game the player is unsure who the bad guys where, what they were fighting against, and why Shane made certain decisions.
One of the largest story problems is that sometimes critical information is stored on terminals that players can completely miss. The only issue here is that somehow Shane and the other characters will still know this info despite the player being in the dark. This can cause many situations throughout Moons of Madness where players will be completely confused as to why characters are making certain decisions.
Moons of Madness had great potential based on its opening moments. Mars looks beautiful and characters like Shane actually have quite a bit of depth to them. Ultimately though, the game very quickly becomes a generic horror game that doesn't anything interesting to say. Space is inherently terrifying and wondrous, but Moons of Madness somehow made it boring.
Moons of Madness can be played on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A PS4 code was provided for the purposes of this review.