The premise is okay, but it has a few issues.

First, there are basically no instructions, which can be fine, you’re supposed to figure things out on your own. However, the particles were very confusing. At first I thought they were just a visual effect, but they were actually the resources you need to collect. Since the game is called “Forge the Moon,” I assumed hitting the moon and the sun was what gave resources, when in reality it was the floating particles in the air.

Then it took me a while to figure out how to get the third resource. It’s a bit unintuitive because you have to hover over a teal moon after playing for a while. But as I said before, earlier in the game hovering over the moon and sun gave you nothing, and now suddenly it does, so it becomes really confusing (itch comments point out the same thing).

After that, it’s all downhill really. It basically turns into a recipe/puzzle game where you combine things to create new things, and that’s pretty much it.

It’s an interesting prototype, but it struggles to convey information to the player. There’s a difference between “not holding the player’s hand” (which is perfectly fine, where you give players the tools and let them figure things out themselves) and simply failing to communicate core mechanics. The recipe aspect works in that sense, but the moon and particle mechanics are not intuitive at first glance. Also, the monk in the middle does absolutely nothing, so for newcomers it’s hard to tell what is actually part of the gameplay and what is just decoration. I initially thought the particles were background effects and the monk was the main gameplay element, when in reality it was the opposite.

So yeah, it definitely has issues. The good part is that I loved the art, the sound design, and the overall atmosphere, but the gameplay is confusing at first and then becomes fairly simple and short afterward.