I first learned about MoaCube in 2009. Tom, among other developers, was campaigning to Get Indies On Steam. It was a Big Deal back then.
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Solstice is okay. It's an artsy game for adults, and it's full of things which make hipsters swoon and piss me off. (Player agency? What player agency?) It is however shiny and pretty, so I enjoyed the game, and I'd have bought it if I hadn't got it for free.
Cinders handled player agency way better. You are Cinders, a feminist Cinderella who won't take shit from anybody. Your stepmom and stepsisters are assholes. You want out. Romantic choices are central to the game, and actions have very obvious, distinct consequences in the story. Want to mend relationships with your family? Be nice to them, and they'll react in kind. Want to marry a dude? Pick one, and you'll be getting his special events. Or, to, rephrase it in a highbrow way, if you're emotionally invested in a character, you can actively work toward a conclusion you want and possibly reach it.
Solstice on the other hand has a loooooong story arc which is fundamentally the same from playthrough to playthrough. You control two characters -- actually, "control" is a strong word, they pretty much do their own thing and hide their motivations and actions from you. The relative sparsity of choices doesn't help, either. Choices mostly feel cosmetic. You find this or that setting detail or provoke a slightly different reaction. If you're heaven forbid emotionally invested in a character, there's no way to work for a better conclusion for them outside of trying every option blindly and then choosing the ending where they don't get lolrandomly killed off in an ending card. I found about four distinct turning points whose options combine to produce the game's variant endings, but the variations themselves are confined to ending cards and don't actually impact the story as it unfolds. The most significant variations within the story are the two romances, and the options in both cases are binary -- the characters either fuck or not.
The art is great, Gracjana Zielinska is awesome as always, the UI is delicious and oh so clickable, seeing and hearing the text being displayed on screen is a profound joy (certainly beats voice acting). And, of course, the predominantly purple color scheme is much appreciated.
