Back to the Doom-verse with this entry! Moonlight is another Doom puzzle map from Dobu Gabu Maru, whose previous work The Given I've already covered in this blog. Unlike The Given, Moonlight is a tightly linear experience centered around cryptographic puzzles, and they're just as difficult in a completely different way.
It makes for a great companion to that map, and I honestly like the puzzles in it more...
Well, with one exception. You'll see.
VISUALS:
Unlike The Given, this map has a stark, minimalist aesthetic consisting only of black and white, putting the elements of the puzzles squarely into focus. It's immensely eye-catching, and I love it to bits.
I've always been a huge fan of monochromatic color schemes, so seeing something like that rendered in Doom this well is like candy to me.
MUSIC:
Both of the themes in here are MIDI Tunes by Bjorn Lynne, "Under the Bard's Tree" for the main map, and "The True You" for the epilogue map. The former is a VERY good, spellbinding piece great for thinking out the solutions for the madness ahead, and the latter is a great, contemplative little number to let you drink in the aftermath.
Both great tunes, I've linked them at the end of the review.
Given this wad is all about puzzles, again, do NOT read further before playing it. I promise you, it's worth it.
PUZZLE 1:
You start in with a word written in symbols you can't understand, a switch behind you, and a moon on the floor. Once you press the button, you're lowered into a large room full of silhouettes of the planets.
This puzzle doesn't really have a clear hint of what to do, but if you use your noggin a little bit, you'll figure it out. The first symbol you see is the moon... and what goes with the moon?
The Earth, of course! Pressing that button will open the way, to the first of many barriers that can only be opened by solving their respective puzzle.
Of note is that this map actually has a health system- wrong guesses will be penalized heavily, so make sure to think through your answers first. Some may find this annoying, but I think it's a very important ingredient to its challenge. This is not a map that benefits from having trial and error, since the challenge is figuring out the langugage- brute forcing it just skips the fun part, after all.
PUZZLE 2:
Now, after the easy first puzzle, comes the fun part. Throughout all of these halls, you'll find rows of candles with mysterious squares next to them... the patterns are simple, but the logic must be there. Just start thinking it out.
The second puzzle sets you with three sets of candles...
Then an enormous room of buttons with those same square symbols on them. There's too many to just press them all- the only way through is to figure out what it's asking.
No, the key is to notice a few things. how 7 and 10 candles have the same single block on the left, how 5 and 1 don't have any blocks on the left... if you track the differences between the numbers, it starts to make sense.
The left blocks represent units of 6, and the ones on the right are the remainder. I felt like a real smart cookie the first time figuring this out, and I am normally BAD at puzzles with no explicit hints (like, say, The Witness) and that's a testament to how good Moonlight's delivery is, I think.
PUZZLE 3:
The only splash of color in the map is used here, for these differently-colored torches. It's attention-grabbing, and lets you know "this is important, NOTE THIS." Especially since it has more of those mysterious symbols you've seen that you can't translate yet.
Less immediately eye-catching are these candles- but given the uniformity and symmetry of everything in the map so far, the fact that they're off-center is quite noticeable. Another obvious tell.
The recurring three lines symbol is the linchpin of this- good cryptography puzzles always have an obvious starting point, and that one is the way to do it. Especially the green torch, which has two of them... like the word 'green'.
Once you establish that, it's relatively easy to piece everything else together. 'Red' is easy to get, now. The candles represent 'left' and 'right'- a fact aided once you notice that 'right' doesn't have the three lines. Notably, both pairs are opposites. Keep this in mind.
Heck, at this point you can even get two letters of the word you've seen so far, though you don't have enough to fully translate it yet.
At the end of the hall, you reach this segment, with a mysterious silhouette. Using all the letters you've figured out so far, you can get SOME of the letters, but not all. This one's much less obvious- you might have to plug in letters for a bit in the empty spots to figure out what could be in there.
But there's only one that can... the letter 'A', which can make the word 'alive'.
And past the door, you get another silhouette, this time a white one with angelic wings. What could it mean? Well, since the last one said 'alive', and this one has angel wings...
Plus, there's all those symbols in the room. Don't bother trying to figure out the letters with the order of them, it's all out of order. That's not gonna help you. The only way forward is to figure out what this represents- DEAD. And you have all the letters already, so all that's left to do is input it.
The word 'alive' is very conspicuously chosen here, since with the letters you get it's the ONLY thing that fits with the silhouette, yet has an obvious enough connection with the angel-winged one that DEAD doesn't feel too much like a stretch. Especially since it continues the theme of opposites that the other two pairs have. Brilliant puzzle design.
PUZZLE 4:
Here you have an entire sentence, which immediately lets you fill in a couple more letters, in the words 'from', then 'moon', then 'came', one letter at a time to get the phrase "WE CAME FROM THE MOON". Gradual, yet exciting. But there's more.
As you progress, yet more words with one letter missing that can only be one thing present themselves. 'envy', 'king', etc. And the entire time, these sentences are accompanied by phases of the moon. It's not hard to figure out, based on the direction they're going, that that represents the order of things.
Even the less used letters get a natural chance to figure out organically, like with one short sentence with the word 'exploded' in it.
One passage is a bit difficult to find thanks to how the hallway blends in with the walls- the automap is your friend in places like this. Soon, you'll have all the letters, and the next puzzle is solvable.
It asks you to NAME OUR KING. Well, what burns heavily, and exploding would kill a lot of things... and what's an opposite to the very prominent moon?
The SUN, of course. A stretch? Perhaps. But given the moon theming all around, it's not too much of a hurdle to get it.
PUZZLE 5:
Now comes the real fun. A simple cipher's given to you right at the start. The top half says "MOONSONG", so the bottom half must mean the same thing... right? But M and N have the same symbols assigned to them in this sub-language. Clearly there's some deeper layers, here.
The rest of the room gives you four LOOOOONG passages in Moonsong, so get comfy, pull out a pad of paper, and get transcribing.
The key is noticing that there's a specific four-letter word that keeps appearing, one with M/N and G at the end of it. And M can't go before G in any words, so it has to end in 'ng'. Still, that's not enough. What could be it... But. there's one tiny thread to pull. Noticing that there's a three letter word that begins with two Os, except there's no words that do that. hmmmm.
The only obvious commonality is the fact that M and N have the same symbol, just swapped horizontally. Perhaps it's the same with others? Doing that lets you pair G with V, and O with U, but that doesn't help really.
Doing that ends up pairing most letters to others, except for E, R, T, and Y, who have no equivalents. What you can figure out is the beginning of stanza 4- E can't be a word by itself, so it has to be A or I- which ALSO conveniently have flipped sigils. That helps fill in quite a bit- including a very important three letter word, A/I-M/N-blank. The only thing that fits is a D (along with its flipped symbol L.)
But it's still not enough. So go back to the drawing board- and eventually you notice something. G/V and A/I both have small lines, the only difference is whether they're vertical or horizontal. And their symbols are both one dot on different sides. HMMMMMMMMM. Come to think of it, O/U has two horizontal lines, and their dots are on the left.
And then, it falls into place. R is easy to figure out, since it has three horizontal lines and two verticals. The other letters with no duplicates follow suit, which fills in a huge portion of the thing. It'll take a lot of plugging in random letters until you figure out what each of the words mean... but it fits. It all fits, and it's brilliant to figure out the first time.
I only put my thought process for this puzzle here to illustrate how good the delivery of the puzzle's rules is- all the steps felt logical with zero hints. It's amazing.
Or you could find this secret hint to point you in the right direction. Either way is valid.
The puzzle asks to SING WHAT WE DESIRE MOST... and trust me, the answer makes sense logically.
PUZZLE 6:
For the final puzzle, another two stanzas of the sub-language follow- thankfully, it's shorter than the last one, and there's no new language to figure out. Only more cryptic backstory.
At the end of this looooooooong corridor, you find a mysterious symbol...
That teleports you to this mess. It's aesthetic as hell.
Off to the side, there's several mysterious objects that flashes a bunch of moon phases in order- better make note of those... especially the passages on the back, mentioning various "sacred names".
Then, finally, you enter this room: where you must deliver the most sacred name of all. There are eight squares here... enough for eight moon phase inputs. If you figure out what the other three things are communicating, this should be easy, but that's... not easy.
This is the one bit that i think could've benefited from a clearer delivery- aside from the orientation of the moon phases in the Lightsong room, there's no real indication that that's how you pair it with the Moonsong lettering system. Unless you use hints, of course- but I did not, so I only have myself to blame for this, ha.
It is a bit strange that the Moonsong has a hint tucked away in a corner where the moon phase sub-language doesn't seem to have any such thing, though.
Regardless, puzzle out the moon phases to spell the solution, enter it into the buttons, and this beast of a puzzle map is finally over. You're greeted with this aesthetic as hell visual, with all the animated textures moving in perfect rhythm, and a psychedelic void illuminating the room as you exit.
THE END
You get one last message to translate, and then the game ends. You're left in a room with a bunch of sketches, vaguely illuminating the plot and lore that the messages have been spelling out, with a slow piano tune to let you soak in your victory.
Go through the diamond, and you can find one last song- Earthsong. There's no puzzle attached- this is your victory lap, your final nugget of lore as a reward for finishing this map. Enjoy.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If it seems like I'm being purposely vague as to the contents of this map, I am. This is something best left experienced totally blind by an experience puzzler- and with one exception (the last puzzle) everything in it is perfectly fair and relatively natural to suss out.
Not to mention, the aesthetics in this map are smashing, with the lack of textures doing nothing to distract from the map's monochromatic beauty. Dobu went in the complete opposite direction of The Given with this one, and succeeded just as well. If you like puzzles, you owe it to yourself to play this map.
GAME LINK:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dn8tcrUmojANOK-dazoXpPXmG4jfjE86/view?usp=drive_link
In the latest version of Moonlight, there's a hint that appears no matter what difficulty you're on, even if you're on "No Hints". I've provided my copy of Moonlight with the broken hint not present- if Dobu updates the wad again to fix this, I'll update this section accordingly.
OFFICIAL WAD LINK:
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/m-o/moonlght
MUSIC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcFiG6mxGNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q0XSlpvQrQ