Indie Gaming Theater - MOAI: Build Your Dream

Welcome to Indie Gaming Theater, where I take a discounted, barely-reviewed indie game from Steam's stacks and take a close, honest look at it. For more details on what this feature aims to do, go here to check out my lengthy preamble. Otherwise, enjoy!

MOAI: Build Your Dream

Let's get this out of the way. Build Your Dream is a royal bastard of a misleading subtitle. If I could build my dream in a video game, Mantaur of WWE fame would take on space goddamn dinosaurs being mind controlled by Samurai Shakespeare and Master Shredder. As Mantaur, you'd assemble two hundred of the greatest warriors Earth has ever seen, like Weird Al, William Henry Harrison, the "dude, you're getting a Dell" guy, and a plethora of other heroes waiting to be unleashed. Along the way, you'd pound beer, fight skyscrapers, and have the opportunity to romance Emily Dickinson, Martha Washington, and Fran Drescher... at the same time.

You'd traverse the universe, and unlike every science-fiction game ever made, there wouldn't be fire worlds, ice worlds, jungle worlds, and a city world. You'd travel to Giant Oozing Pustule Planet, or one where the residents are all slightly soiled undergarments who can't figure out why you're slightly disgusted when they want to shake hands. You'd haggle with an inexplicably present and bored Monica Bellucci over the one billion cosmetic options. Combat would be you whacking people with swimming noodles and firing cans of Fanta at them because when we meet aliens, Fanta will save us all with its awesomeness.

This game wouldn't be good, mind you, but it's the dream. MOAI's "Build Your Dream" underdelivers just a touch then, because all I'm basically building are huts, trading posts and giant Moai heads that ward off ghosts. So first let's give a big pbbbbbffffffffttttt to that subtitle and move on.

You might think from that totally coherent rant that I dislike MOAI. I don't! It's not a game for everyone - in fact, I'd say if you're old enough to read this and make sense of my gibberish, you're probably beyond the scope of who this game is aimed at. But if you have failed at figuring out the business of wearing condoms when doing a little thigh fivin', then maybe MOAI is worth a look if just for your demon seedlings. I assume your children are demons because... c'mon, of course they are. They're little and poopy and you can't exactly get them to lift your keg for you without them whining about pulling their back. Ugh. They're the worst.

MOAI is a stripped-down time management builder. That's pretty much it. You clear some trees and rubble, you build resource-producing buildings, and you click on ghosts. If that sounds reductive, the game is just that simple. There's some challenge in a three-tiered award system, with better times beating the levels netting you the best reward. This just basically amounts to the player needing to memorize the order in which tasks need to be done, as well as keeping an eye on the ghosts, which can wreck your progress by destroying buildings.

There's a fun, breezy islander aesthetic to the game, with some light moments of lore and non-voiced cutscenes in between missions. Of those, there are plenty - I'm two hours in and I don't feel like the game is going to run short on missions anytime soon. The story largely revolves around you washing up on a beach, where you help the natives take back their land from ghosts and greedy bandits.

The bandits and the ghosts aren't much of a threat. Bandits are dealt with by gathering resources and paying off their bribes, which feels like a pretty terrible life lesson, but I suppose it beats the alternative of "mash this jackass'es head with a coconut until he stops being a bandit douchebag." Probably don't want to teach our kids that. Probably. Ghosts wander at your villages from set positions and attack your buildings, eventually sending them into ruins you can rebuild for a nominal fee. They're there mostly as an annoyance and to slow you down.

I like the general art style with no smartassery whatsoever. It's a pleasant looking little game, clearly developed first for tablets and then ported to Steam. That's not necessarily a bad thing - as I say, it's the sort of thing your kiddos will appreciate, particularly with the recent release of Moana. It's all large and cartoonish and very easy on the eyes, a nice change after Krampus's "where the effing eff do I find a shovel" moments.

The whole thing is a pleasant little package, particularly for the cheap price. If you have to wake up every morning to the screams of, "Daddy/Mommy! I need Moana stuff foreverz!" then definitely plop their butts in front of this one while you pour whiskey into your corn flakes and prepare for another day of utter shittitude. Not recommended for adults, but you could sure do worse than playing it with your kids.

Moai is available on Steam. It appears to have once been available on Apple devices but doesn't seem to be listed on the Big Fish Games website as such anymore. It is regularly priced at $5.99.