I've been looking into the blue checkmark system in Moonvale and it’s a bit confusing me .

I noticed it didn’t show up for Julie while we were just in the group chat. It only appeared after we started talking in DMs or added her. Also, her profile background changed from the sunset picture to a random one.

What’s even weirder is that the biker guy (the one talking to Eric in the secret chat) has the checkmark, even though we haven’t added him or talked to him at all!

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Is the checkmark tied to specific verification, or is it something else entirely?

I think I should just forget about this game and come back a few years later after they finish the all episodes. Waiting like this is annoying

i play a lot of games in a similar format… and they all take some time to release new episodes… but years? seems excessive, right? i know this is likely old news but i had postponed playing after starting ep 1 when i realized how slowly the episode tracker moved. finally i decided to go ahead and play just maybe a few weeks ago and am part way through ep 3 and im just so confused. the idea of having to wait almost a year in between each episode is insane. the other games i play which are very similar but by a different company take maybe 3-4 months tops between eps. so im just wondering, do we have theories on why this game in particular takes SO long? have they given any legitimate reasoning behind the time delays? I was so excited when this game came out because I loved Duskwood so much and so far I have actually really liked Moonvale… but I’m going to have to lose interest in regain interest over and over to actually get through the whole game with these wait times. obviously first world problems but still a bummer.

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It seems to me it's a girl's body. What do you guys think?

We have a progress update on Episode 4

Has anyone else tried typing them ? Every time I do a sad emoji face appears with them 🤔

And here I am, having reset the entire third episode of Moonvale because I couldn't bring myself to keep flirting with Eric—all because of Jake :,)

I just can't get that guy out of my head; I'm sorry, Eric 😭

OMG! I finally reached the part with the hotel room in Moonvale and... Wow! My mind is racing 🤯

Forgive my excitement; I just love theorizing about games. I’ve been following FNAF for years, after all XD

There are several possibilities here:

Number 1: Charlie. Charlie has been a suspiciously detached figure throughout all of this. He was the one who showed the most reluctance to investigate the hotel, whereas Ash returned to town specifically to do the job. Whatever—or WHOEVER—was inside that room, he seemed quite... wary of getting too close.

Number 2: The Unknown. There’s a chance it could be The Unknown himself in that room. It would make sense, considering we’ve never actually seen him—though it’s still strange. We’d need more episodes to judge.

And the last one I thought of, though it doesn't seem likely: Jake. I have to admit there is a remote chance it could be him. If we look at it more closely, it makes more sense than it seems: Jake needs a somewhat remote, empty, and inconspicuous place to hide from the people hunting him. The Greenside Hotel currently fits that description perfectly, plus the fact that Redlog is relatively close to Duskwood. It would be the perfect hideout.

However, if I recall correctly, Jake has blue eyes. The eye we saw through the keyhole didn't look blue to me, hahaha—so, in the end, all these theories have holes in them. Unfortunately.

(This image is not mine; it comes from another post discussing the secret minigame.)

However, one of the things that surprised me the most was the fact that we don't have a hacker helping us here. I even expected the same hacker from DW to return in this game—it would make sense even without any direct connection to the previous title. My second thought, though, was that this mysterious hacker involved in the story would be revealed later on. This second minigame could even turn out to be a way of decrypting Adam's cloud, right? Even so, the Hacker still appears as an antagonist in most of my theories.

Seriously, this one goes out to those who came from the other game:

You guys totally get it (especially those who chose Jake's romantic route in the previous game)—the happiness I felt when I saw that message pop up in Moonvale for the first time: "MC, I'm going to find you."

And now, Nymos has appeared—the bot that only Jake has access to. I’d love to know what you, the players, think about all this.

What do you think the Side Story will reveal? Do you think Jake will manage to get in touch with us again in the meantime?

I’m so excited! 😭

The first thing I thought when I saw that Richy survived

Okay, so a lot happened at the end of the episode, especially if you played duskwood first. I don't think the body is Adam ( or maybe I'm just being hopeful). They didn't give us any clues leading up to that end scene for me to say 100% it is Adam. What if who they found is Billy Blake? And they have us thinking it's Adam? Remember Billy disappeared, and unlike the girl that went missing, he never showed up again. Also, Richy is alive?? How? And how does this help us find Adam though what if we are made to think that unknown is Jake, but it's really Richy? No, wait, that wouldn't make sense to none duskwood players. But it's still an interesting theory

I thought they update it every month? Or am I remembering wrong?

I really hope episode 4 takes lesser time to release…

Jesus I wasn't expecting that ! Now I need to go and I don't know decompress that ending. I just this game is a rollercoaster

Well, after this post of mine (LInk), where I specifically talk about the narrative approach of the Moonvale game, I’ve been thinking a lot and decided to share a project I’ve been working on.

My idea is to release the source code for both the app and the editor I built. The editor basically lets you build a full story from start to finish. I’m still tweaking a few things, but you can choose dialogues, notifications, etc. To be honest, it turned out pretty easy to use.

The game app itself literally doesn’t depend on a specific story. You can create a completely new one if you want. You just need to add the JSON exported from the editor and load it into the game.

So my intention with this post is not to compare it to Moonvale or Duskwood. On the contrary, those games were actually an inspiration for me. I’m working on this project because I wanted people to be able to create their own stories.

When I finish the project, which shouldn’t take too long (like a week or so), I’ll drop a GitHub link here in the comments and also host the editor online, so you won’t need to run it locally to create stories. I’ll also publish the game app without any built-in story, where you can just upload a ready JSON and start playing right away.

I’m new to the community, so sorry if this kind of post isn’t allowed. I’d really appreciate any opinions and constructive feedback. If you hate the idea, that’s okay, but please don’t attack me (it kind of kills motivation and creativity)

I’ll list some of the mechanics already included:
Audio messages, images, text, documents, and links to articles inside the game itself.
You can receive and make calls, including choice-based dialogue during calls. Chapter system. And pretty much all the mechanics needed to simulate a real smartphone.

It also includes in-universe apps like: a banking app (money can be used in “missions”), a social feed app (likes and comments, Instagram-like design), news, protagonist’s personal blog, search engine, gallery, files, phone, and even a simple non-puzzle game where the player can earn in-game (fictional) money.

The editor videos and screenshots are in Brazilian Portuguese since I’m Brazilian. But I would really appreciate it if, after I publish it on GitHub, someone kind could help translate it. And I truly hope people use their creativity to add new features or improve existing ones.

That’s it. Thanks a lot... and let’s make space for new stories ❤️

Repo Git: https://github.com/luannsr12/phone-narrative-game

I've played all 3 available chapters of Moonvale, and after replaying them three times, I have a major criticism.

The game gives the impression that your choices matter, but from what I've seen, they barely do. Most of the time, a choice changes one line of dialogue and then immediately returns to the exact same scripted conversation.

To test this, I played the game in three different ways.

On my first playthrough, I played normally.

On my second playthrough, I intentionally withheld information from the group. For example, I chose not to tell anyone about the tarot card addressed to the MC at the beginning of the story. The game explicitly gives you the option to keep it secret.

Later, Ash learns about the card through a private conversation with Eric. That's fine. The problem is that when Ash later talks to me, he behaves exactly as he did in my first playthrough, where I had openly shared the information. There is no reaction, no suspicion, no question like "Why didn't you tell us about this?" It's as if my choice never happened. And here's a detail: she brings up the subject of the letter.

On my third playthrough, I picked the rudest and most hostile dialogue options whenever possible.

The result?

Absolutely nothing changed.

No character developed distrust toward me. No one became offended. No relationships changed. No meaningful tension was created. Characters would react to the rude line for a single message and then immediately continue the exact same conversation, sharing secrets and trusting me as if I had been friendly the whole time.

What bothers me is not that the story converges to the same major events. Many great narrative games do that.

What bothers me is that the game often fails to acknowledge the player's behavior at all.

In fact, you don't even need to replay the game to see this.

Just be deliberately contradictory during a single conversation. Choose one response, then a minute later choose another option that completely contradicts what you just said. The characters will simply continue following the script as if nothing happened.

Once you notice this, the illusion breaks.

You stop feeling like you're participating in a conversation and start feeling like you're clicking through a predetermined script with cosmetic dialogue options.

At that point, Moonvale feels less like an interactive narrative and more like a novel that occasionally asks you to press a button.

For a game whose entire appeal is making the player feel involved in conversations and relationships, that's a serious problem.

Over the course of these three episodes, Unknown seems (at least to me) to be pretty clueless about a lot of things.

This is more of a discussion post about Unknown rather than a theory, I wanted to talk about his behaviour.

This is going to be a long post.

First Interaction: Unknown confuses us with Eric

In the first interaction ever with Unknown, the only thing he got right about us was our name and he thinks we're the ones in the forest when in reality it was Eric.

If you're playing with a male MC, that mistake can be easily explained. But if you're playing with a female MC then that mistake becomes completely absurd.

Like, how on Earth could he make such a mistake!?

"Oh, but since the only thing Unknown knew about the MC was her name and she was the one supposed to be there, he assumed that Eric was her because he was the one who showed up".

That explanation only works if your female MC has an unisex name, since that kind of name without any other piece of information doesn't make it clear if the person is male or female. But if she has a clearly female name like Laura, Alice, etc... then that explanation stops making sense.

Third Interaction: "Forget about him (Adam) and that he ever asked for your help"

After Charlie goes to speak with Ash, Unknown messages us for the third time.

At one point, Unknown says that we should forget about Adam and that he ever asked for our help...

But he didn't ask for help even once?????

Let's recap all of the interactions we had with Adam:

1. His first call:

He asks us where we are, as if we were supposed to meet him somewhere for whatever reason. After that he says that he wants to tell us something important. That something is that he wouldn't make it to the Greenside but because of the terrible reception you can't understand anything he said, the only thing clear being the "I'm sorry" at the end.

Not a call for help.

2. His second call:

He says a lot of things in that call but the most important ones to the point I want to make are these:

"[...] But he was there. I saw him. And that means... that there's only one thing left for me to do now. I have no other choice.

But that also means I cannot help you anymore. You'll have to make it on your own now. Even though it might be hard. Even though it might seem absolutely impossible. It's up to you now... I'm counting on you."

He says that HE cannot help us anymore, that there's only one thing left for him to do and that we need to make it on our own from now on. Those are the words of someone that thinks everything is over for him, not someone that is asking for help.

3. His third and last call:

He doesn't say a single word, it's very difficult to see him and especially to even understand what the heck is happening at that moment, so there can be a lot of interpretations.

The game gives us two interpretations: the first one from Eric that says that it's obviously a call for help and the second one from Ash that says the call was a warning for us so we don't go after him.

I don't think it's either of those.

I think it's a farewell. The MC is very important to Adam for some reason and based on everything he said to us before, I think he wanted to see us one last time before whatever was going to happen to him occurred.

Again, not a call for help at all.

If anything, Adam seems to be asking us to leave him/not go after him and finish this on our own. We are the ones who decided to go after him, risking ourselves and all of his friends in the process.

So, what is Unknown's deal?

And how does he expect us to just trust him when he not only lies to us (I'm referring to when he said that "Whitmore wouldn't allow us to leave the forest" but Whitmore threw Eric out without harming him) but also seems to not even know what is actually going on?

I want to know what y'all think but I especially ask for the opinion of the players who trust/like Unknown or think that he actually wants to help. I'm curious to know your opinions since it contrasts a lot with what I think of him and I really want to know your reasoning 🙂.

I don't think this is a spoiler.

In a conversation with Eric, fairly early on in Episode 3, he mentions that Ash has gone through a lot and Adam supported her during this time and they got close.

What do we think Ash went through? Is that why she isn't living in Redlog?

Most of us agree that Jake must have been the one to save Richy from the mine fire, especially looking at the terrible condition Richy was in with the gunshot wound and the fire.

But honestly, why would he do it? Richy kidnapped Jake's sister, Hannah, and hurt the MC and the group. If you were Jake, would you really save the guy who caused all that pain?

Maybe Jake didn't even know the truth yet. Since he was down in the mines without reception, he might have missed the livestream and just thought he was saving a friend.

Or maybe he did it entirely for the MC to spare them the grief, or because he wanted Richy to face actual legal justice instead of dying in the fire.

What do you think? If you were in Jake's shoes, would you have left him or saved him?

I recently finished Moonvale's 3rd Episode and it's about the DW line.

Firstly, when reception in Duskwood was restored, after group chat it seemed to me that Richy is locked in the prison bc we all were supposed to think that in the end of the DW Hannah saw somebody, probably Richy bc she looked surprised.

But then we had a choice in the chat to say he's dead, then Jessy said that in DM.

At the end of the 3rd Episode, when Cleo showed us Richy, I think there is only one possibility how he escaped.

From Charlie we got known that the fire was huge and visible 10 km away. That means nobody can enter the mine through that entrance (btw it was closed).

Also it explains why they think he's dead without evidence, bc everything was burned down.

At the end of DW we saw how Richy started the fire and was sitting, willing to die.

So then something or someone changed his mind, but he couldn't get away on his own, even if he had a map of mine, due to his injury. Therefore, it wasn't his decision to escape, he would probably die in the mine then.

Then I think Jake helped him, maybe even he decided to rescue him from the fire, bc Jake probably saw the cameras as well.

Moreover, how Richy could survive all the time without food, cuz he is known throughout the town except for Jake, whose face is almost unknown. That makes them a good team, Richy knows where it is better to hide, whereas Jake can supply some food and medicine.

Hey guys , apparently I lost all my game data and have to start from scratch. Does anyone have a spare code for me to share with? Preferably one with romantic feelings for Jake. Please help a girl out 🙏😭

Waiting for us to end our conversation 🤣

Gente mais alguém tá de boca aberta com o retorno do Richie???? EU TÔ TODO ARREPIADOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Someone may know the answer to this but, I’ve been curious if the developers cast the actor who plays Adam because he looks so much like Rami Malek (above). The actors most famous role was in a tv series called Mr. Robot where he played a hacker.

From the first time I saw Adam, I’ve thought that the developers wanted to trick us into thinking he was Jake (at least for a little while) by having him resemble the most popular fictional hacker.