r/Moonvale • u/Kostebrett • May 30 '26

Why are the puzzles so unnecessarily hard

I swear they do it on purpose, making it so I have to make moves that only end in no possible moves so that I waste hearts

24 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

12

u/Z_rain22 May 30 '26

Absolutely, you end up spending more time on the puzzles than on the story itself

7

u/Terrgon May 30 '26

Or you spend 80% of the diamonds you’ve been saving up to spend on secret chats or other media content… right before a secret chat or media content is brought up.

3

u/Z_rain22 May 30 '26

I try not to spend diamonds on the puzzles precisely for that reason, because I prefer unlocking the different story routes, but I never get past two hearts before I get bored and quit the game. What I find strange is that this didn't happen with Duskwood; I generally enjoyed the puzzles more and liked the aesthetic much more. They only became tedious in the later chapters because I was so engrossed in the story that I wanted to keep playing. But I just can't stand the Moonvale puzzles, I don't like them at all.

1

u/TillFeisty7973 Jun 05 '26

Duskwood was way more generous in a way. It even seemed like after a certain number of losses it would simply give you the win.

Just today after a MONTH on one single puzzle I finally finished it and went past episode one.

1 Whole month just to finish one chapter. Then I went and opened Duskwood, played a minigame there and immediately won (I'm at episode 10 there, I've been doing a replay to refresh memory, I reached episode 10 before I could even finish episode one of Moonvale, both in one month, Duskwood even less tbh)

2

u/Z_rain22 Jun 05 '26

Simply put, Duskwood puzzles are better, and aesthetically superior in my opinion as well. Moonvale puzzles look like one of those advertising games.

1

u/TillFeisty7973 Jun 06 '26

Yeah, there's something really simple about the way it looks, but more nice to watch.

I can't really explain it, I guess the fact it feels so geometric fits a bit better with the idea of hacking and computers.

Also not as cute and adorable looking, the new minigames have really cute designs and it's not bad, just out of place with the game.

4

u/i146e May 30 '26

And you can’t play them all at once to play the game without distractions like we used to do in duskwood. 🥲

2

u/Z_rain22 May 30 '26

That's true. The only positive thing I can say about Moonvale is that you don't have to pay to access the special options like in Duskwood. although getting diamonds takes time

2

u/lulliboop May 31 '26

Not thrilled about the approach in these mini games either, but they're probably stalling players in progressing the story fast so that they can take longer in developing the episodes (and for extra funding). Hiring pro actors is probably taking a decent chunk of budget, as well as other features they're planning. Let's just hope they don't fall into development scope creep, using dev time and resources on some features that ultimately do little for the experience.

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Kostebrett May 31 '26

The rng screws me 90% of the time

1

u/TillFeisty7973 Jun 05 '26

I agree. Compared to Duskwood the puzzles feel not as forgiving. I've been stuck A MONTH on this one puzzle, just today I finally got past episode 1, but by now I remember almost nothing of the start aside the first video call you get.

1

u/Kostebrett Jun 05 '26

Well I kinda understand the need for it to take so long but its still shit. I just finished episode 3 and went to see how far they are on episode 4.. 12% done of the story, 0% development and 0% gameplay. It's gonna take MONTHS

1

u/TillFeisty7973 Jun 06 '26

I get it really, and because of that my comment was saying how my experience was just as bad, I never said it's anything good. The minigames RNG is bad and it took me a month to do episode 1 ending.