Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight

For other uses, see Moonstone (disambiguation).

Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight
256px Cover art
Developer(s)	Mindscape
Publisher(s)	Mindscape
Designer(s)	Rob Anderson
Composer(s)	Richard Joseph
Platforms	Amiga, DOS
Release date(s)	1991
Genre(s)	Action role-playing video game
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer (2-4 players)

Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight is an action role-playing video game developed and published by Mindscape for the Amiga in 1991 and one year later converted to DOS with different sound and music. The title is a play on A Hard Day's Night.

Moonstone's gameplay blends several different genres, allowing up to four players to participate in a basic turn based game with real time combat for any encounters. It is also notable as one of the goriest games of its time, with some exceptionally bloody fight and death scenes.

Gameplay

The player takes on the role of a chosen knight who is sent by the druids to return the mystical 'moonstone' to Stonehenge. The game supports between 1 to 4 players at once, with the computer controlling any knights not controlled by human players as rival NPCs. Gameplay consists of two distinct modes: Turn based exploration and real time combat.

In turn based mode where each player can move a limited distance on the game's world map and visit various locations. Players will mostly visit the many dolmens that are scattered across the map. These places represent areas guarded by monsters. Visiting these dolmens will trigger the second main gameplay mode: real time combat. The player takes control of his chosen knight and attempts to defeat the monsters using sword combat similar to Barbarian (Palace Software) or Sword of Sodan.

Defeating the monsters rewards the player with treasures from that location. Success will also result in gaining one experience point (XP). These then can be distributed in one of the three abilities: Strength, Constitution and Endurance. The required amount of XP needed to advance varies according to the number of human controlled characters. This, combined with some powerful weapons that can be discovered or bought, can boost the player combat abilities. However, the difficulty of the game increases to compensate.

The overall objective of exploration is to find the lair that holds one of the four keys. The player who gathers together all four keys (either by finding them or by stealing them from rivals), will have access to the Valley of the Gods at the center of the map. The knight will have to fight against the Guardian in order to win a 'moonstone'. The moonstone corresponds randomly to a lunar phase, and grants the knight more power during that phase. The moonstone must be returned to Stonehenge for the game to be completed.

After some days, a dragon will appear and make regular sweeps across the land. In the event that an unskilled player is unfortunate enough to encounter the dragon early on in the game, defeat is almost inevitable.

Reception

Reception
Review scores Publication Score Amiga Action 90% Amiga Computing 89% Amiga Force 80% Amiga Format 59% Amiga Format 72% Amiga Power 73% Amiga Power 74% CU Amiga 81% CU Amiga 86% The One Amiga 52% The One for Amiga Games 82%

When the game was released, it got quite positive reviews from some magazines while some reviewers did not like it at all. However, these days the game has a large cult following among vintage gamers. The game is highly sought after as a collectible; an original copy in good condition with all the original included contents, including a map of the game world, is extremely rare costing 299 pounds at eBay. The game was put on the German index by the BPjS.

External links

• MoonstoneTavern
• Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight at MobyGames