MoonShine is a stock trading game set in the US Prohibition era. Buy various kinds of alchohol at low prices, sell them for high prices, and hope that the cops don’t confiscate your supplies. The periphal features of the game are well done – the newspaper reports are interesting, the music is nice, there are achievement-like goals, and many different modes (including a mode you can customize features as you like) – but the interface is needlessly complicated and the gameplay falls in this uncomfortable nether realm between being too complicated for the action crowd and not complicated enough for the sim/strategy fans.
Mostly playing MoonShine made me think of how you might make a better game. Instead of just buying and selling supplies, how about letting the player run an actual speakeasy? You could have some simple arcade-ish type elements for the actual serving (like Diner Dash) and you could also add some Lemonade Stand elements like paying for advertising (which would increase your popularity but also increase the chance of raids) and pricing your drinks (price too high & you risk losing clientelle). You could also have rival speakeasy that you would have to take into account. The police element could also be made more complex with things like bribing corrupt cops, switching locations to evade raids, or tipping the law off onto your competitors.
As it is now, I can’t recommend MoonShine. It’s unique on the service and certain elements are well done, but the poor interface, heavy reliance on luck, and lack of variety pulls it down. It’s not awful by any stretch, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer before a truly great business game comes out on XBox Live Indie Games.
