Moonlight, by Jonas Kyratzes

Jonas Kyratzes has this thing where he writes pretty good: he and his games first won me over with The Fabulous Screech, and he pretty much picked up a lifelong fan with The Sea Will Claim Everything. The games are confidently-written, incredibly original, and possessed of this crazy, carefree, despairing, empowering life-force that mixes whimsy, nostalgia, surrealism, wonder, and really, they are very, very good.

His latest – Moonlight – brings the sweetness yet again. It’s been receiving some rather nice words elsewhere, so I’ll try not to be too redundant: it’s a dreamy game to be sure (it is literally a dream), but the feeling that struck me most was that of a new, enchanted, interactive improv theatre. It’s not some wild experience over which you have no control; instead, you point the way, and the game winks and says “Why yes, why wouldn’t we?” and away you go. It’s intentional, it’s effortless, it’s joyous. That this sort of improvisation can be felt in a browser-based, text-only game is remarkable.

Play Moonlight. Go on.