The Indie Game Magazine November 2014 | Issue 43 | Page 10

GAME WATCH

DESIRE
by Vinny Parisi

Developer: Mooneye Studios
Website: http://mooneyestudios.com/en/
Twitter: @MoonEyeStudios

A

s mentioned last issue, this month we’re tracking a brand
new game in the early stages of development. Before we
delve into the game itself, I’d like to introduce the team at
Mooneye Studios who are currently building “Desire” (working
title). The studio consists of four men in total; two programmers,
one concept artist, and a single 3D artist (see sidebar for details).
All four are currently studying Game Development at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in Hamburg, Germany,
and have banded together as Mooneye to developer Desire.

In a nutshell, Desire is “the first episode of an episodic exploration
adventure game (kind of like Journey) in which you play a wolf
who can switch into other animals’ bodies,” according to Tobias
Graff. “The setting is an old, Inca or Mayan-like land with the
ruins of a forgotten culture.” Nature has long since overtaken the
ruins, and so the wolf must try to navigate various environmental
puzzles while exploring the world and “waking” the temples he
(the pronoun does not signify gender in this case, as the wolf is
shrouded in mystery) comes across. Waking the temples will reduce
the amount of foliage surrounding the area, as the remnants of

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the forgotten civilization begin to rise once more. With each new
temple awoken, the wolf will discover more about the once-mighty
culture, and how it came to fall into such decay.
Inspired by games like Shelter and The Legend of Zelda, with a
healthy dose of Tomb Raider to boot, Desire will include increasingly elaborate puzzles, and small action sequences, although
Mooneye confirmed there will be no fighting in the game. So most
of the action will come from safely navigating the terrain. As for
the puzzle sequences, the player can switch into the bodies of
other animals and control them, as part of the wolf’s mysterious
magical abilities. Once in control of the other animals, the player
can use their different abilities to rebuild and awaken the temples,
while also uncovering artifacts that further reveal what happened
before the civilization’s collapse.

The Indie Game Magazine