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Game Details
Language: English (en)
Current Version: 1 License: Freeware Development System: Inform 6 Baf's Guide ID: 1925 IFID: ZCODE-1-020927-18FC TUID: 10387w68qlwehbyq |
Awards
Winner, Best Writing; Nominee, Best Story; Nominee, Best Setting - 2002 XYZZY Awards
4th Place - 8th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2002)
Editorial Reviews
Baf's Guide

-- Emily Short
SPAG
This is a game of phantom scent and overheard whispers; it all takes place in averted vision, full of longing and grace. It is like haiku, or that poem of Ezra Pound's with the jeweled stairs and the dew on the stockings, where all the sense lies in the interstices of what is said.
-- Emily Short
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>VERBOSE -- Paul O'Brian's Interactive Fiction Page
The Moonlit Tower is a rich and gorgeous piece of work, and a very strong debut from an excellent new author. Easily the most striking thing about this game is its writing, burnished and evocative prose that sets a very elevated tone.
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Member Reviews
| Average Rating: ![]() Number of Reviews: 10 Write a review |
Most Helpful Member Reviews

My one complaint is that such a stunning story, more than capable of carrying itself entirely on the strength of its surreal and deeply implemented setting, is at heart a puzzle game. The mid-part, where you must figure out how to use the sundry gorgeously described items you find, was for me the weakest, the flow of the prose being constantly interrupted by the need to wonder what on Earth (or elsewhere) I actually had to do to make the story continue, or by trips to the terse and occasionally frustrating hint menu.
But even if you are, like me, puzzle-averse, this is some of the most affecting writing I can call to mind, and the chance to explore this exquisite world should not be turned down.

The writing, as other reviews have said, is stunning. Even the error messages ("you can't go that way", etc.) are beautifully in-world and you have to examine every element of the setting to piece together the back story. I really wish this had been the final chapter of a longer game -- it felt like getting a glimpse into a wonderful elaborate world that I desperately wanted to see more of.
The puzzles are where this game breaks down a little. It's possible to win without solving one of the central challenges, yet the end-text assumes the puzzle was completed, making me wonder if I did something in an order that the game hadn't expected. The puzzles themselves vary from interesting but not at all challenging to combining elements in ways that I never would have figured out without the hint system. This would have been a more effective game in my opinion if the writer had played more to her strength in writing and left the more complicated puzzles for a second run.

Related reviews: yoon ha lee, fantasy, atmospheric, mid-length
Don't play it if: you prefer something more like a literal story or intellectual challenge.
This is a very striking first publication. I think most of us would give an arm and a leg to put out something this good on the first try, and Yoon Ha Lee is to be commended on the thought and imagination she's put into this work.
In the basic technical respects, it's not all that remarkable. A short-to-mid-length game which isn't very puzzle-dense. Not much is going on here that's particularly revolutionary to the medium.
What makes it special is the setting and atmosphere. Here, the work comes alive in the imagination, and not just in the vivid, spellbinding language of description.
The Moonlit Tower reminds me the most of Emily Short's Metamorphoses; although the latter is a more puzzle-heavy exercise, the general feel of the two works is rather similar. Yes, there's a distinctive Eastern aesthetic influence (Korean and Mongolian, apparently), but the more overt impression to me is a pervading sense of toying with abstractions.
In Metamorphoses, it's the essence of things: their shapes, their sizes, their substances. In The Moonlit Tower, it's more about symbols: masks, lanterns, seasons. A sense of symmetry pervades the piece, with asymmetry being a puzzle to solve. A porcelain half-mask. A feast of bones just barely out of place. A compass dividing the four seasons. A symphony with a missing player. These otherwise disparate elements congregate to give an inescapable feeling of some greater whole.
The "story" itself is limited mainly to flashback and suggestion. In a way, it's almost a nudge - a small device intended to clarify one or two things, to quietly lay the framework for the final sequence. It's a testament to this story's belief in letting the player's imagination blossom that you can experience a profound sense of completion upon finishing The Moonlit Tower, even if you feel you never really knew the protagonist.
It's difficult to really say much more about this work. It's a bona fide tone poem - almost a more intimate, intricate IF successor to Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra - and as such is something more to be experienced and reveled in than dissected. I strongly recommend it.
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Recommended Lists
The Moonlit Tower appears in the following Recommended Lists:Plot-Driven IF by Andromache
Some of my absolute favorite games.
Some interesting games by Atropos
Enduring Games by AmberShards
These are games with memorable stories, whose characters live long after the window has closed, and in which the puzzles are an integral part of the game.
Polls
The following polls include votes for The Moonlit Tower:Lost Pig type puzzle complexity by Mostly Useless
I haven't played a lot of IF, as I'm often put off by what are (for me) difficult puzzles. Without doubt the most satisfaction I've had from finishing a game has been Admiral Jota's Lost Pig, and I would love to hear about other games...
"IF with, wings of poesy" by A. I. Wulf
I would like to explore the IF works with a pinch of poetry. I want to find the IF games with a good dose of emotions collected in tranquillity, heightened by wings of poesy.
Vivid games by Jeff Sonas
I'm looking for games that evoked strong feelings or strong mental images that stayed with you long after you finished the games.
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