MoonWard Going Forward (April 2025)

Welcome to the "MoonWard Going Forward" (MGF) blog!

I'm Mr. Slate and I'm here to let you know what's been happening with MoonWard as of April 2025!

Please make sure to check out the MoonWard demo on the Google Play Store and our Discord Community! If you'd like to support us, please check our Patreon and Ko-fi!

Before anything else let's get the big news out of the way. Release date time!

The MoonWard Release Date for Android is:

31st of July, 2025!!!

Release Date

It's close! I'm so happy to be able to share this date! I've been considering it for a few months and I finally feel confident to pin it! I can't wait for MoonWard to finally come out and for you to try the full game! Final stretch! Let's go! Woooooo!!!

Price!

I guess it's time for the surprise announcement!

The Price of MoonWard on Android will be:

£3.99 (and equivalent €/$/etc.);

Lots of news today! This price will get you the full game and all free content updates post release! Content wise - that's a 5 hour single-player campaign, tons of hand made side quests and an endless supply of bounties and loot! No in-app-purchases, no subscriptions - none of that! It'll be a one time purchase. MoonWard will continue being always-offline, like the demo. Meaning you can play without an internet connection as much as you want! The demo won't have an "unlock full game" feature, it'll continue being a separate app on the store.

iOS and Other Platforms

Firstly iOS - I've been making progress with the Apple Developer program so the iPhone release is a guarantee! Regarding release dates - it'll have to be at least a month after the Android release. I know this might be frustrating! But please believe me when I say - the only reason for this is to allow me to focus on each platform individually and deliver the best version of MoonWard everywhere! I also had plans for releasing a cut down version to iOS as a demo of sorts but I'm not sure about that anymore. The overhead of yet another release to keep track of is not something I'm sure I can keep up with.

And then there's the widescreen version - the one for PC/Mac/Linux/etc.. I fully intend on releasing MoonWard to Steam at some point. The main problem is that all of the UI is made for a vertical screen. I'm aware some games work fine in vertical with black bars or still images on their sides but I feel that's a bit of a cop-out. My engine is set up to support swapping between UI at runtime so code-wise I'm fine. Designing the new screens will not be that easy and worst of all - will take a lot of time. Basically every screen needs to be re-designed in the new aspect ratio. So in short - unfortunately I can't commit to a release date for the Steam version of MoonWard at this time! I'm not sure if this version will have a demo available for the same reasons as the iOS - too many releases - too much overhead.

Upcoming Demo Patches

And now a bit of bad news - I'm going to significantly slow down patches for the Demo. In fact I'm going to stop announcing them in advance and I'm removing the schedule effective immediately. I'll still release patches! Don't worry! Just not on a schedule like before. They'll also be smaller in general.

Changes to Blog Structure

Lastly I want to address some changes to this blog post. Starting today, MoonWard Going Forward will have a more general-update structure - as opposed to previously where I focused on the work I've done for the upcoming patch. This is partly due to the patch releases becoming less frequent, but also because MoonWard is close to release! I'd like to be able to talk about things outside of strictly the development process. This might include struggling with marketing (always), business stuff, live events, upcoming sales, etc.. Not to say I won't touch on dev work at all, but I'll mix it up with other topics relevant to MoonWard.

Features

Here's a list of approved and work in progress features as of writing this:

WIP 80%: bounty locations images. The splash screens appearing behind the story and bounty descriptions in the journal. Only story backgrounds left!
WIP 80%: All player characters are done, I now need to replace and update story and bounty portraits.
WIP 85%: Increased hex variation. Finished county 4. All that's left now are the hexes for County 5 towns and cities.
WIP 20%: Long term Save Game. Currently all of your characters are deleted forever when the game is uninstalled. This is obviously not ideal. Modern games save these in the cloud. I'm not interested in that. I did some research on this and it seems plausible.
WIP 50%: iOS Release. I'm now on the Apple Developer program! Next steps - create and set up a store page!

Pricing and Support

Here is where I elaborate on a couple of things regarding the demo and pricing.

Price. The demo (and App Store intro version if that's even happening anymore) will always be free. The full version (on Android and iOS) will always be a one time purchase. There will never be any in-app purchases. There will never be any adverts. There will never be battle passes. There will never be Web3 technology.
Support/Patching. When the full version is released, the demo will continue to receive patches at the same rate as the full version. This will include new or changed content in county 1 and partially (side stories and bounties) in county 2, as well as any new/upgraded mechanics available in those hubs. The demo will also get bugfixes and balance updates in parallel with the full version.

Before I go, if you'd like to support us, please check our Patreon and Ko-fi! Any donations and patronage towards Slate Games and MoonWard development are greatly appreciated!

Thank you all so much for your continued support! It's very humbling to be able to do what I love!

Like always,

stay awesome!