MSRP: $6.99
Platforms: Win, Mac*
Release: 5/15/15
Mac version available here – the Steam version does not indicate Mac compatibility.
There are, quite literally, hundreds of hidden object games out there. Some are pretty excellent, some are downright awful, and some are mediocre. But I don’t know that I’ve ever run into one that was quite so disappointing as Green Moon. Since I spent less than a dollar on it, it’s not worth the effort of refunding, but I wish that the developers had put half as much effort into the game as they did into their description of it.
Let’s start with the basics – Green Moon is not a hidden object game – it’s a point-n-click adventure game with a heavy emphasis on inventory. There’s plenty of items to look at and pick up. Some of it, like keys, will have a fairly obvious use, but much of it may or may not have some use later on. Which would be mildly annoying, but there appears to be an inventory cap, and since the game generously allows you to drop things anywhere, well, you might not be able to find something again once you figure out what it’s for.
The visuals aren’t terribly impressive, and you’re locked at a fairly low default resolution, and in fact, it looked downright awful until I turned off full screen mode. However, the trade off is that, since there’s a lot of pixel hunting going on, a small window isn’t really an ideal way to play this sort of game. If there’s an introductory story, I must have inadvertently skipped it – twice – and couldn’t find a whole lot of enthusiasm to explore a decrepit house with no idea where I was or what I was doing there.
As for the claim of 50 hours of gameplay, well, I certainly can’t imagine slogging through 50 hours of this. However, at least one Steam reviewer shows a play time less than 9 hours, and states that he has beaten the game (as well as having to do a fresh install for a game-breaking bug, and also idled the game for a couple of hours for the trading cards), which leads me to believe that this claim is also, quite frankly, crap.
In my mind, Green Moon is so much worse than just unimpressive. It’s the product of developers who, for whatever reason, felt the need to outright lie about their game, and I don’t know how a game designer expects to have any business at all if consumers can’t trust them. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities here.
366 Days of Gaming 