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Red Moon
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Contents
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1. General Hints
2. Outright Answers
3. FAQ
4. Credits





1. General Hints

#1 What do you think is the objective of this game? Could it perhaps not be what it seems to be?

#2 Examine everything closely. Do you notice anything weird in the room?

#3 If I told you that there was no "magic" of any kind involved, what other possible explanations could there be for all the weird stuff?

#4 Sometimes, people rely on their sense of sight too much. Try... certain other senses instead.

#5 Sheer brute force may not be the best way out. You have to *ahem* critically analyse the reality of your situation *ahem* and make one big leap of logic *ahem*.

#6 You may want to hit me after you realise the solution. (I'm sorry!)

#7 If all that fails, just go ahead and opt for brute force.

#8 Examine everything closely. Multiple times if needed.

#9 If you examine everything thoroughly enough, you should be able to reach a (perhaps "non-ideal") ending.

#10 Once you reach one ending, you should know how to reach the "true" ending.

Good luck. That's all. =)





2. Outright Answers

This is not the scenic route. These are the minimum requirements to reach an ending.

Alternate Ending #1: open door. g. g. g. g. g. g. g. g.
Alternate Ending #2: break mirror. g. g. g. g.
Alternate Ending #3: x ceiling. g. g. g. g. g.
Alternate Ending #4: x wall. g. g. g. g. g. g.
"True" ending: wake. g. g. g. g. g. g.





3. FAQ

Q: Wait, you mean someone's already asked you questions about the game?
A: Apart from a friend who beta-tested this game, no. I just made this list to answer any questions I thought people might ask. So it's not really "Frequently Asked" Questions, more like "Foreseeably-will-be Asked" Questions. Many are not even questions.



Q: I don't understand the story.
A: The protagonist is a member of an alien species currently invading the Earth. The protagonist aspires to be a part of the fleet sent to invade the Earth. To fulfil that wish, he trains really hard. One night after an intense training session, he goes to sleep as usual and has a nightmare. He dreams he is a human, currently experiencing the invasion from his kind. He experiences the fears, frustrations, and other feelings of the human, before he either realises he is dreaming or gets "killed" by one of his kind. He wakes up and, like any of us would, brushes the nightmare away without much thought.



Q: Your "puzzle" is not even logical.
A: I did not intend there to be any "puzzle" in the traditional sense of the word. I intended for players to explore, poke around, and feel creeped out or "weirded" out. I also intended for them to eventually realise that certain things changed upon examining them or doing them multiple times, and that would lead them to try certain things multiple times, which would eventually end the game.

I know (or at least, felt after seeing my friend play this) that a rather great leap of logic would be needed to actually reach the true ending for the first time. However, I tried to put in my experiences of how things would be like in a dream, and I hoped certain people would play this and think, "Hey, that's very familiar, it happens all the time when I dream!" Even if they didn't, I at least hoped they would be able to understand everything upon reading one of the alternate endings.

I am aware that this deviates greatly from the traditional norm of many IF works. I tried to deliver this the best I could with my limited programming and storytelling skills. I hope you enjoyed it.



Q: It makes no sense that an alien would attack only when I was examining the ceiling/wall.
A: In real life, that was how I coded it; in the game, however, the aliens were "supposed" to attack "randomly". I just wanted to create that experience that the scary stuff happened just right when you were examining it closely. I mean, if something crashes through the wall behind you, that's not as scary as when it crashes through the wall right in front of you when you are looking at it closely, right?



Q: Your game lacks ambition.
A: I'm sorry, I had only three days free to do this (including The Great Disaster I Had[1] which took off half a day), and am writing for the first time. I don't think I could have done twenty rooms, five solid puzzles, and a couple of good npcs to boot under those circumstances. But those are just lame excuses. If I ever write IF again, the one thing I can promise is that I will definitely have more experience under my belt by then. If you guys write constructive reviews that help me learn from my mistakes, all the better.



Q: Why did you even enter this into the competition then?
A: Firstly, I wanted more people to play it. Secondly, I wanted people to play it in conjunction with other games, and then rank/rate/review it relative to other games. I wanted to see what people liked about this game, and what they hated about it, and if there were other games to benchmark it with, that would be much better for me to learn from.



Q: Reptiles don't sweat!
A: They're just reptillian-looking.



Q: I have some constructive criticism/comments/suggestions/questions regarding certain language aspects/ideas/the way you coded things/bugs/typoes.
I greatly welcome anything to help me improve! I will try and read any reviews that may be written, either on ifwiki, ifdb, or any other sources.





4. Credits

I made this with Inform 7. It was mostly great, gave me some grief at times[1], but overall was a fun learning experience!

Thanks to my friend and beta-tester, Koh Zi Han, who helped me find quite a few bugs and gave me many suggestions!



[1] (Ever tried loading the project, then IMMEDIATELY compiling without waiting a few seconds for your source code to appear? That, as I found the hard way, will UTTERLY erase everything you've done. Beware!)