Eye of the Moon

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I had a great day today. Work has been slow on iLom – basically because April had too many bank holidays, and with one thing or another, all these long weekends have messed my month up. I should be getting back to work in earnest in the next few days.

However, Mike and I recently found ourselves talking about that project that one does not speak about… Eye of the Moon. For those of you reading this because you are interested in all things Midnight, then you know exactly what I am talking about. For those of you who have no interest at all in Midnight, lets just say that EotM is the legendary missing sequel to all the other Midnight games.

Mike explained that he’d been thinking about EotM a lot lately. I guess it’s only natural as we stir up things with iLOM and go over old ground discussing other things Midnight. He said that he’d go a few things in his head for the story. Then today he surprised me with a design document for the game, complete with story overview.

It’s a ten page document, and very detailed. I like it – I like it a lot. It now changes the focus of the development of LOM. I think we are going to push out LOM and then jump straight to EotM, with DDR and CITADEL following as additions to the canon.

I’ll be working with Mike on the concept and fleshing the details out as we develop LOM. But I can already tell from the amount of info that Mike has generated in the last few days since we started talking EotM, that he is mentally very committed to this.

I can’t share much right now, however to snippets that give nothing away, that are of interested…

Those of you who remember EotM law; EotM was going to take place in the Bloodmarch and have 12 regions. Bloodmarch and these regions were eventually used in Citadel. That base concept remains, but those lands are now west of Midnight…. one of those is currently called “VARANGOR” another is “ISHERIL”

Mike Singleton wrote:
The map. I have deliberately broken up the overall map into Midnight-sized chunks. As much as anything this is to serve as a reminder to myself that each chunk should be as detailed and varied and hand-crafted as the original Midnight map itself. If this is not done, bigger quickly becomes worse and monotonous rather than better.

Mike Singleton wrote:
The idea is to make this last game of the series a truly grand finale, with new landscape and gameplay features, new enemies and new friends, but also the potential of Midnight being assaulted by all its old enemies too. And at the same time the land of Midnight itself returns firmly to the gameplay, which is fitting for the end of the saga, not to mention satisfying for old fans.

28 thoughts on “Eye of the Moon”

  1. Wasn’t there a third game that appeared only on a cover disc somewhere? My memories of those days are misty and I seem to recall having trouble getting that third game to load – let alone run.

    What was that? Is it also worth reviving/

    • By third game I presume you mean a third Midnight game.

      There was 3…

      The Lords of Midnight
      Doomdark’s Revenge
      The Lords of Midnight:The Citadel ( 1994, PC )

  2. Excellent and long overdue, sounds just like the game I imagined would be next when I first completed DDR in the late 80s, do you plan to release it on the PC at some point as I don’t have any of these fancy console or hand held things.

  4. Hi again Chris,

    Amazing post, I can’t tell you how I much wanted to play EOtM. WOW!

    If you do develop EOtM, I would love an additional version as if we were back in 85/86 with authentic Speccy graphics – that would be the icing on a wonderful nostalgia cake.

    Keep up the good work and keep inspiring Mike.

    Milnrow Andy

  5. Fantastic news, actually way beyond anything I’d hoped for…

    Thanks for all the updates and hard work!

    I’d be happy to help out in any way I can.

    Kind regards,
    Kieron

  6. An updated LOM on my Android device (Barnes&Noble NookColor), great. But the long awaited Eye Of The Moon… wonderful.

    The Spectrum original graphics are a little long in the tooth for new player, so I’m not so bothered if you can’t incorporate them into this new conversion.

    Having said that I wasn’t a big fan of the Midnight Engine art. Yes, the art was beautiful but it was too realistic when in the game. I love the strong stylization of the world in the original, every move generated a new piece of ‘art’ to look at. Hopefully you can recapture that aspect of the game.

  7. This is excellent news indeed. I’ve been a massive fan of the midnight series since the 80’s and drop into this site every so often, but have to admit that I’ve not been around here for quite a few months.

    I very much look forward to seeing this progress

  8. I’ve been a massive fan of the midnight games since the 80’s and this is really excellent news. I used to drop into this site fairly often, but admit, I must have been away for a year or so as I assumed the project was dead. I’m looking forward to this greatly.

  9. Just found this blog and have a really big smile on my face.

    Hope to see these games soon in Windows as I don’t have an iPhone.

    Good luck with the project and all the best!

    Rich

  12. Thank you both so so much. I have been looking forward to EotM for two thirds of my life. It’s the Duke Nukem Forever of the Spectrum world.

    Forget the Speccy memory limitations and go mad with the AI and story but try to keep true to the graphic style of the originals if possible.

    So so happy.

  13. Every time I see the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh I think: ‘Midnight’.

    The Midnight games have had a massive influence on my life, and indeed my speculative concept art for an imaginary remake got me my first video game job. I still intend to illustrate the word again in much greater detail.

    Thanks so much for keeping Midnight marching on through the dark and back into the light.

  15. Just keep this in mind: your initiative is just too important to all of us, out here, who (after all the elapsed time) keep looking eagerly for a clue to an extension of the Midnight experience.

    So please, please, carry on and let us recover our long lost tranquility, which will only return through the experience of a true EotM edition.

    I doubt any brilliant game we have today will last so strongly in players’ minds as this trilogy did, so please lets give it the appraisal in definitively deserves!

    Relieved to know that persistence has proven worthwhile.

    Thank you very much!

  16. Just a thought, have you and Mr Singleton thought about setting up a Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com) for this project and actually getting some promises of financial payoff once its produced?

  18. If you need anyone to test stuff on Android, then count me in! Many moons ago I wrote the manual that came with ‘Lords of Midnight II: The Citadel’ and play-tested the game too. Of course, I was already a big LOM and Mike Singleton fan way before then, and in a previous life I also worked for Firebird/Rainbird and got to test stuff like Whirligig and play around with the very earliest versions of Starlord on the ST… There would be some nice symmetry if I could help test out LOM in some way in all its new guises! 🙂

  20. Hi Richard,

    I know who you are and what you have done… ) Email me, I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have on the game and bringing it up to date…

  22. Yep, The Citadel. I remember seeing it as a cover disc, but it didn’t seem to work.

    Does it live on in any form?

  23. I’ve still got LOM: The Citadel in it’s box!

    I’ve visited this site for years now, and had slowly stopped coming by, as things seemed to get awfully quiet on the LOM/DDR front, but it’s fantastic news that an updated version is actively being worked on.

    Personally, I’ve have Nokia phones, so would have loved to been able to test on that, but I can also help out on Windows too …

  24. Wow! I’ve been working away a lot, and somehow just found this update in an old email folder today, unread!
    Brilliant news! I loved LOM and DDR back in the spectrum days, and played them a lot. It would be amazing to see EotM make an appearance after all these years!
    Keep up the great work!

  25. Wow, awesome. Is this still happening? We’ve waited 25 years for this 🙂

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