two guys on the moon
"If there were two guys on the moon and one of them killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what?"
Sometimes, a joke idea gets in your head and absolutely will not leave. TWO GUYS ON THE MOON is a joke idea made manifest: wouldn't it be great if there was a game where two people tried to kill each other on the dang moon?
For having rattled around in my head as long as it did, I'm really happy with how the mechanics came together. It's simple, straightforward, and fast-moving.
The bones of the thing are deeply in debt to other, better, more elegantly-designed two player games, most notably:
- Last Shooting by My Name is Grant, a game of mech duels. TWO GUYS started as a Last Shooting hack, and doesn't resemble it nearly so closely now, but it keeps the three-scene structure.
- Full Court by Caro Asercion and Janie Jaffe, an incredible game of basketball that uses For the Queen-style card prompts. Card-draw prompts are as old as The Quiet Year, but Full Court's implementation of them are absolutely what inspired the back and forth of TWO GUYS. There was originally added card draws in the middle of combat, but they slowed the action down a little too much.
- I Have the High Ground by Jess Levine. I'd settled on some kind of rock-paper-scissors mechanic for actual meat of the thing. I Have the High Ground is a more developed implementation of that idea, and served as a great guiding light for how to wrap that stuff in game. Being able to tie "Rock" "Paper" and "Scissors" to particular types of actions on the moon really helped firm up the notion of the game in my head. It wasn't until I got to that point that I felt like "Okay, I've got a game on my hands."
I had originally thought to target a Halloween release, but I lucked out with the discovery that there was a lunar eclipse in the first week of November. Five days before the event itself, I started a cryptic tweet thread with astronaut comms and a slowly-eclipsing moon, to try and build some anticipation for the release. I'm not 100% sure if it worked, but it was fun.
Ultimately, I'm pretty pleased with what started as a silly joke, and I'm glad people seem to be receiving it well. I'm hopeful that I'll hear back about some fun confrontations on the moon.
TWO GUYS ON THE MOON is now available on itch.io.