Lock up your wallet, hide the credit card bill from your wife. Steamguard your $gaben and run for your life. I'm here to tell you a little bit about a recent release on steam,
Mirrormoon EP.
From the very moment I flipped a switch in the strange mechanisms controlling the spaceship, I knew I was at home. The stylized console swayed ever so slightly, waiting for me to discover what each neon switch would lead to. Some caused beeps, others bwoops, some made things move and other things appear to activate. But there was nary an actual instruction to be found. Through experimentation I hit a thing which sent me to a blinding white screen, moments after I found myself on the surface of an extremely martian planet.
In my hands lay the key to all things. I just hadn't realized it yet. Scattered around the surface of the planet I found addons to this tool. These addons were equally as indecypherable as their spaceship counterparts. What the hell is a triplet of blue circles getting wedged behind the red pyramid going to do in this thing? Sure enough I found out, only I dare not say because I feel like spelling it out for you would only dillute part of what makes Mirrormoon EP such an amazing experience.
You all know me and my love for things like
Proteus. Beyond the gorgeous pastel coloring found in both and the extremely simple styles, they both hold pure exploration at heart. Here there is (or may be, anyways) an actual goal to be met but you're free to explore how you please and land on any of the thousand+ stars in the entire system. Each star is home to some form of puzzle that must be solved using a mixture of elements. If you're the first person to successfully complete the puzzle for that star, you earn the right to name it. Everyone who chooses to opt-in to the online portion will have their star chart updated with the findings of the community. It's an interesting fragmented approach to multiplayer, and supposedly the secret at large will only be discovered by cooperating with fellow explorers.
In my hours with the beta and very improved final product, I've put myself into the shoes of a detective on a mission in the far depths of space (perhaps with
a quirky AI sidekick). Mirrormoon EP manages to comfort me with its aesthetics, propel me by never telling me anything at all and captures the feeling of true isolation. Even though there are hundreds of others visiting stars and trying to help pull together the meaning of the bigger picture, you will never see them or hear from them save for the names of the stars they've left behind in their path. Learning how a star's puzzles operate is a very pleasing aspect that rewards someone like me. I don't know what's going to happen by the end of this "season" but I'm really anticipating progress in a way no other game has really been able to achieve.
When I started typing this, I set it to real-time travel to a very distant star. As I finish, I still have a few minutes left to go with nothing but the green glow of these screens and the low hum of spacenoise. I have no idea what to expect when I land on this star, but I can't wait to find out.
I promise that if we ever will I'll post about it in here!
