We spoke with Rob Anderson, author of the cult classic Moonstone.
Moonstone originally came out in 1991 for the Amiga and PC, and is generally known as a cult classic for these platforms. It’s especially well known on the Amiga, where it’s got a great reputation. It’s a gory mix of genre where up to four players guide their own knight on a fantasy quest in an Arthurian-inspired fantasy version of England, on the hunt for the magical Moonstone.
We recently had the chance to interview Rob Anderson, the creator of Moonstone. In our conversation, Rob shared insights into how he brought this iconic game to life, the challenges and inspirations behind its development, and even gave us a hint about the possibility of a sequel. So let’s just get on with it:
How did you come up with the idea for the game?
The idea for Moonstone came from a lot of inspiration from my gaming roots. My friend Todd and I spent endless hours playing D&D together, creating our own campaigns and serving as dungeon masters. That creativity and storytelling naturally spilled over into Moonstone. I really enjoyed a lot of Amiga games and was drawn to the idea of blending the immersive RPG feel of D&D with the action-packed thrill of games like Barbarian/Death Sword.
It is amazing that Mindscape had hired Richard Leinfellner to manage Moonstone from their end, who wrote Barbarian, so we got along great and he immediately got what the game was about.
The game is quite bloody; was that one of the main aspects of the concept when you started development?
Yes, the intense combat was definitely a focus from the start for me! I always pictured Moonstone as having a strong “hack ‘n slash” vibe, so I wanted the combat to feel bloody and impactful. When I put together the first animations to show publishers, I made sure to add a bit of gore. The very first one was a knight doing a forward slash that sliced a «Trogg» clean in half, with blood spraying from the chest and lower body. That was loosely inspired by the iconic Black Knight fight in Monty Python & the Holy Grail—I wanted it to feel gritty but also a bit tongue-in-cheek as you can see in other death sequences.
As I gained more experience with the gore effects and using Deluxe Paint I would often use the mouse lag to create a natural “spatter” effect. Eventually, I switched to animating blood by hand on my light table using paper and pencil, which added even more depth to it as you can see with the Troll killing the knight. Plus, watching a lot of horror movies gave me some wild ideas and some nightmares that definitely found their way into the game.
How much tweaking and playtesting was necessary before you were satisfied with the game’s flow?
Playtesting and tweaking felt like a never-ending process, but I had a rhythm that helped keep things moving. I’d start with animating on my light table, then move to coding, then fine-tune the timing and work out any bugs. After a pass, I’d step away for a few weeks before returning with fresh eyes, which helped me catch details I’d missed and often inspired new tweaks. The tweaks might be reworking animation, adjusting timing, or modifying the difficulty. I didn’t give myself a strict timeline and I’d just keep iterating until I felt it was ready to move forward. Some enemies, though, I definitely wish I’d spent more time with!
The final testing phase was too short and should have been extended. That is another story. The testing gave me feedback from other players and I’d realize that things I found challenging weren’t an issue for others, which helped me feel more confident about the balance. I found it refreshing that testers found that some enemies were hard, while others would say they thought it was easy. This showed me that balance seemed to be right. If I could go back, though, I’d definitely spend more time ironing out the loading times and if possible reduce the game down to just 2 disks.
What was the hardest thing to achieve out of what you wanted for the game?
One of the toughest challenges was squeezing everything onto disks and managing the limited memory. Thankfully, Kevin Hoare played a big role in tackling these issues with his engine and debugger—it was a massive help in making sure I stayed within those tight constraints. This included removing the Amiga OS which freed up the valuable 150K of additional RAM, and rewriting the required interrupts for file I/O, graphics, sound, and input devices.
Another big hurdle was setting up an art and animation pipeline to get the look and feel I wanted. Creating the animations was fun but also incredibly time-consuming, especially since I was also coding the art pipeline tools (in 68000 assembly) and updating the runtime game as I went. The process involved animating characters, integrating them into the toolchain, and then coding them into the game, which was rewarding but definitely exhausting at times.
The Amiga’s 32-color limit definitely made things challenging! With two characters on screen, plus backgrounds, props, and effects, fitting everything into such a limited palette required some creativity at times. Organizing the colors was a balancing act to make sure each element looked distinct and vibrant.
Looking back now, it’s amazing to see how far game development tools have come. With modern engines like Unity3D and Unreal, you can quickly iterate and refine artwork using drag-and-drop features, scripting, multiple support tools, and sophisticated debuggers. In contrast, back then, we had to program every detail in assembly language, which was time-consuming but incredibly rewarding once we got it right!
That said, some of these techniques still have their place in AAA game development. Developers still turn to assembly language or similar low-level methods for critical parts of the render pipeline, optimizing with intrinsics, CPU caches and threading to squeeze every ounce of performance. The technology and industry has come a long way, but there’s still respect for the power and precision of those early methods.
If you could make one change to the game, what would it be?
If I could make one change to Moonstone, it would be to expand the final battles with the Guardian and the Dragon. I wanted those encounters to feel more epic and memorable, setting them apart from the rest of the game’s challenges. But with time and memory constraints, I had to keep things scaled down.
There were also several enemies that ended up on the unused pile and never got fully developed. This was mainly because they offered nothing more to the game and would have been too time-consuming to develop.
I also would’ve loved to fit the game onto just two disks for simplicity. Some fans of the game have asked for a save game feature and I think it would have helped, giving players the option to take breaks and come back, rather than needing to complete the whole game in one session.
Could you tell us a bit about the design on the game’s box? It stands in stark contrast to the bloody content of the game.
The design of Moonstone’s box art definitely stands out compared to the game’s bloody content. Initially, when Mindscape approached me about the box art, I created a shortlist of artists I thought would be perfect for the project. This included:
- Alan Lee (famous for Lord of the Rings). I loved his book Castles and probably one of my favorite sketch artists.
- John Buscema (Marvel Conan the Barbarian comics). Big fan of his work on Conan
- Jeff Easly (D&D) Some of the nicest work for D&D
Unfortunately, these artists were either unavailable or locked into exclusive contracts at the time. While I was focused on completing the game, Mindscape took the lead on finding an artist and eventually hired David O’Conner. I saw his preliminary sketches and appreciated his illustrative style, which even made its way into the game and manual.
I wasn’t involved in the final approval of the box art, and although it was good I didn’t feel it captured Moonstone gore or the knights. Mindscape was mindful of their marketing and opted for a friendlier, less intense look, which is also where the “A Hard Day’s Knight” pun came from.
There were a few inconsistencies that stood out to me. For example, the knight on the box art showed his face, while in the game, they never did. Also, the “hobbit”-like character on the box didn’t exist in the game, which I found confusing, though I understood they were going for a storytelling angle. I mentioned these issues, but by that point, the illustrations were almost complete and would have required significant effort to redo, especially since David is a true traditional artist and these illustrations were not made in Photoshop.
Despite all of this, David’s work for the poster, box, and manual was beautifully done. The detailed sketches of cities like Highwood and Waterdeep and the intricate symbols made their way into the game and added depth to the map and other elements. Today, I’m proud to have those pieces hanging on my wall as a reminder of my time developing Moonstone.
Do you know if the game is now legal in Germany?
I have no idea if Germany is allowing the sale of moonstone, but it has been a while so perhaps their priorities have changed. I do know Moonstone was available on the German “pirate” boards shortly after the release of the game which is ironic.
Moonstone 2 has been in the works for a few years now. How is it coming along?
The moonstone 2 update has been an on and off personal hobby project for a while now, but I do not have any specifics that I am ready to share publicly at the moment. I do have the design layout and have been working with the latest engines to create something that remains faithful to the original game, but also incorporating a modern aesthetic. Like the original, it will remain true to its 2.5D root and the design for combat does have a few tweaks that the original didn’t have mainly due to Amiga hardware limits, time, or memory.
I want to stay true to the original gameplay and not reinvent the whole game as that would be an entirely different game then. I wouldn’t want to receive letters saying I ruined the game and the memories.
At the moment I have no official schedule or release date for moonstone 2 that I can share.
Did you ever encountered any issues regarding the name of the city Waterdeep, which is a well-established location in the Forgotten Realms by the former TSR, now Wizards of the Coast?
Moonstone was released in 1991 and its development began around 1989, well before the Waterdeep novel and the more established D&D Waterdeep campaign. Mindscape never flagged any conflict at the time and aside from the name, there are not any similarities and is more a coincidence rather than a direct reference.
In Moonstone, Waterdeep is simply used as a town name with no deeper connection to anything else. I named it that because it is in the Wetlands on the map surrounded by a bloody swamp :) Name that reference?
We’ll leave that one to our readers. Thank you so much for your time!
Interview done by Retrogamingpappa. Article prepared with help from Joachim Froholt.
The concept art was provided by Rob Anderson. The cover scan and final map, as well as one of the screenshots, are from Mobygames. The rest of the screenshots are our own.
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