Mothman Test: FAQ

Mothman Test, my interactive fiction game written for Ectocomp 2023 (English), is out now.

It took over four hours, so it’s in the Le Grand Guignol category. It was originally a flash fiction story I wrote in the format of a multiple choice test. It got rejected from one magazine a few years ago, and I promptly trunked it forever! (I knew it needed revision. I didn’t want to revise it.)

For Ectocomp I revised it. Thank you, the urge to participate in an IF jam 🙏

Making it IF and putting it into Twine somehow made the pacing clearer to me too, and I’m happy with how the end result turned out. It felt stiff as flash fiction, but in this form it’s more fluid. I’m also happy with how I interwove some of the details, like the [moonish knuckles] and the [10 (moons), on the steering wheel.] And through making it I learned how to implement a lot in Twine, without feeling like I bit off more than I could chew, so the scope and size was a great fit for me.

How would I describe the game? For me, speculative fiction, subtle psychological horror. About denial and grief. Maybe a puzzle element, with the grading? I didn’t think it was horror until my friend pointed out it has mothmen abducting children (thanks, K.S.!)

Spoilers ahead!

FAQ:

How many endings does Mothman Test have?

One.

Does Mothman Test have branching?

No. The only thing that changes as a result of your choices is the grade you receive at the end.

Is it possible to achieve a full moon (100%) grade?

No. The last question in the game, you aren’t allowed to choose, so therefore a 100% is not possible.

Is it possible to achieve a new moon (0%) grade?

Also no. There are several questions where you can only answer the ‘correct’ one.

So what is the highest grade I can score, numerically?

16 total questions, 15 that are possible to actually answer correctly. So, (100/16) * 15 = 93.75%.

Do some of the questions have multiple correct answers?

Yes.

I got confused when details referring to choices I didn’t choose appeared later in the game.

I did that on purpose, to mimic the phenomenon when a test will sometimes give you the answers to its questions within the test itself.

Where did you come across those little moon assets?

I drew them in Photoshop!

That’s all for now. I’ll be periodically updating this. Thank you for your interest in Mothman Test! I hope you enjoyed it!