Moon is a fun game. Absolutely a good game. Moon is a game on which one can win good. But, Moon is also a bit a more complicated game that requires concentration, strategy and thinking ahead. A good and fast memory is also a plus when playing Moon.

Moon is great when you are in for a challenge. Moon might be not the best game to choose when you are rather new to gaming in SL.

Moon is a number matching game, just as e.g. No Devil, Eureka! or Fire. You get 200 points for making a number match, 1,000 for completing a line, 3,000 for completing the figure on the board and 1,000 for completing the entire board. You can gain 1,000 points more when doing things right with the astronaut. You can activate multipliers, a X2 multiplier and a X3 multiplier. When you have a multiplier active, the points you score are multiplied by that multiplier.

Wilds on the spinner are named “moon” in this game and each one gives you 1,000 extra points. (Not affected by the multiplier)

You can gain a 1,000 extra points when you do things right with the order of revealing the multipliers. I was not yet capable of figuring out how.

Here to the left you see the official how to play Moon sign.

I already told you it isn’t an easy game, but on the sign it might look much more complicated than it is.

Below I take you step by step through a game of Moon I played, explaining the features while the game progresses.

I paid L$1 to the cheapest Moon game machine I could find.

On top of the game you see the price I paid, being L$1. You see “% to pot” which is always zero at our regions. Score to beat is the score we should beat (reach at least one point more than the score displayed) in order to win the game. That score is in this example 43301. Below that you see the prize that can be won, in this case L$2.

Below all that on the second plate we see our score. We just started, so it is still zero, and the number of rounds left after this round. Moon has 15 rounds, thus there still 14 rounds left.

Then, you see the board. Some fields are blue, these form the figure, sometimes also called pattern, filling that will give 3,000 points. So it is important.

The number 5 is shown in orange. This means that the X3 multiplier is hidden behind the 5. As soon as we match 5, we will have that multiplier. Thus, we know where the X3 multiplier is, but we don’t know yet where the X2 multiplier is.

The game has 2 spinners. One is visible now, that is the next round spinner. This shows what the spinner will be in the next round. It is only visible for a few seconds. It is a great advantage seeing what is up next, you can look at it fast, try to remember as much of it as you can, and use that to your benefit. E.g. not playing a wild (wilds are called moons) on a number that will be up next round anyways. Then better use your moon for something else.

You see this next round spinner ever round (except of course the last one), do your advantage with it! I mostly ignored it when playing the game for this manual. Thus I also won’t show you this for every round. This simply because this manual would become twice as long.

After a few seconds we see the spinner for this round. This first spinner isn’t really exciting but it is a good start. We can match the numbers 7, 49 and 55. Let’s do that.

Always look careful if there are not more numbers to match, don’t overlook a number. In some odd cases you might sometimes intentionally skip a number, but never miss one. It is a waste of points. Each number match gives 200 points, and each number is on a horizontal line and a vertical line, some numbers are also on a diagonal. Matching a number is also a 1/5th step towards completing these lines.

Matching a number gives us 200 points, thus after matching these 3 numbers, we now have 600 points.

Note that we see a set of 4 green arrows on the matched numbers. This symbol with 4 arrows gives an indication where the X2 multiplier is hidden on the board. We already know where the X3 multiplier is, the arrows help us finding the X2. This symbol with 4 arrows mean: The X2 multiplier is not on this column and it is also not on this row..

It is pretty interesting where this X2 is, as we try to catch it as soon as possible. Preferable before we catch the X3. This to ensure as many points as possible are multiplied by a as high as possible multiplier.

The second round gives us a blue moon on the second column. This is nice for two reasons:
-We got 1,000 extra points. Every moon on the spinner gives 1000 extra points.
-We can play it on any row in the same column. It is a wild, we can choose where to play it.

We also can match the number 37.

We first play 37. It is in the area where we will find the X2 multiplier. By playing it we either get the X2 multiplier or an extra indication where it might be. That indication we can use when playing the blue moon. After playing 37, the board looks like this:

The next round: Our score went up with 200 points for matching the 37, 400 points for matching the 20 because the X2 is effective immediately and thus we get 200 points X2 = 400 points. A 1000 points more because this round once again contains a moon. We had 1600 points last round, 1600+200+400+1000=3200 points.

In the new round we can make 2 matches: Number 18 and the blue moon.

Previous round we gained quite an advantage by playing the matches in a smart order. This round the order doesn’t matter, just play them.

It however does matter where the play the blue moon. It can be played anywhere on the same column, but only the number 63 is a wise choice. All others are worse choices, choosing 56, 62 or 58 instead of 63 significantly reduces our chances to win.

63 is on a diagonal, playing it increases the likelihood for us to complete 3 lines, instead of only 2. Also, on this diagonal, we see a lot of blue fields in the pattern and the X3 multiplier. When later in the game we get more wilds, it is likely that the best choice is to play them on this diagonal. We even know that IF we complete this diagonal it will go for 3X the points, as the X3 multiplier is here, so it will be always revealed before completing this diagonal.

Thus: We play 18 and 63, then click the spinner to go to the next round.

Bweehh!!

This round is no good. It sucks. It is bad, nothing to match at all.

Let’s make it go away, by clicking the spinner, on to the next round, hoping for something better!

This round is much better!

We can play 15, 28 and 58 plus we got a blue moon, giving us another 1000 points and a free shot at the first column.

It is clear where that shot is going to be: Number 5! We will reveal the X3 multiplier and thus get all our points multiplied by 3.

We could first play the 15, 28 and 58 and then the blue moon, giving the X3. That wouldn’t be smart.

Playing first the blue moon, getting X3, and then the other numbers will make that the score we get for these numbers is multiplied by 3 instead of 2.

Thus we first play 5, and then 15, 28 and 58. The order of these last 3 doesn’t matter.

Holly crap!!

See what I did? What a silly cow I am. I forgot to click 28.

As I told, this game requires concentration. Missing a number can be quite some pain, 600 points lost plus potential two times another 1000×3 for the lines. Never overlook a number.

The game is not lost. Perhaps we will get 28 again in some of the next rounds, then nothing at all was lost. But, well..play concentrated not to make the same mistake.

This round we can play 25 and have yet another blue moon.

The only correct choice where to play the blue moon is 52. It is on a diagonal, on the pattern and even on a row that is almost completed. Neither of the other options where to play it has any of this advantages.

Thus we play 25 and 52 and go on to the next round.

This round gives us 2 matches: 26 and 41. 26 is a nice one, because we will complete a vertical line. We have the X3 multiplier active, thus that gives an extra 1000×3=3000 points.

With more and more fields matched on the board, more and more lines come near completion. Near the end of the game, score can go very rapidly up.

Thus we play 26 and 41 and then click the spinner to go to the next round.

The next round gives a white moon and a match on 1. Let’s play 1 and 38.

The number on the middle of the board, in this case 38, is of course an important number. It is on 2 diagonals. Thus, it is of importance to have this number matched. In this game it is also on the pattern, that is another good reason.

And it gets better, it is for both diagonals the last number we need. After playing 1, playing 38 will complete 2 lines. Our score will go rapidly up.

This round is a dull one again. Nothing to play. More near the end of the game, with many numbers already matched, it is logical to also have some rounds as this one.

We click the spinner, on to the next round.

This round we get another blue moon. I cannot shout at you ‘of course play it on the diagonals’ because there aren’t any free fields on a diagonal anymore. Some might say it doesn’t really matter if we choose 57 or 62. But that is not the case. It matters and 57 is the only correct choice.

With playing the number on 57, we see that on the horizontal line is only one field left open. A special field as that field will also complete the pattern. If in any of the next rounds we get a blue wild on the 3rd column, we will play it on 32. Because we now chose 57, we will also complete this line in that case.

If we would have played 62 we would still have 2 spots open on the corresponding horizontal line. One spot is on the first column where we would not waste a blue moon on filling it, we could better use it on 12, completing that horizontal line.

So yes, the correct choice here is 58. 62 would be a much worse choice.

We play 57 and we go on to the next round.

There he is! The astronaut.

The astronaut is hidden under one of the fields, and we don’t know which one. Every field we match, it could be we reveal the astronaut. And that was this field, 58.

The astronaut does not yet give us anything, but…If we will be able to match it again, with number 58, it gives 1,000 extra points (multiplied by the multiplier) and an extra round. We can also match it with a moon, then we get the points but not the extra round.

So, let’s try to remember that each of the coming rounds: Matching 58 again can do us good!

I tend to easily forget, not being sure in a few rounds which number it was. I could write it down, but I usually use another trick, keeping the local chat window open next to the game.

The next round gives a blue moon.

As we all can see, we should play it at 46. Then with only 39 we can complete a line.
Playing it at 40 can have its advantages too. A blue wild on the middle column will not be used for 39 but will be used for 32. Playing it on 40 will give a possibility to make a line not counting on the middle column.

Ok, I am only looking for excuses. A blue wild on the first column will also not be used for 2, it will be used for 12, to make a line. But, well, I don’t play perfect. I played it on 40 anyways. I am not the best player there is.

I can’t go back in time ..so we play the blue moon on 40 and go on to the next round.

There it is! The number of all numbers, number 32!

32 will complete the pattern, 3000 points, and make a horizontal line, another 1000 points, another 200 points for the number match itself, and then all that multiplied by the multiplier. We will gain 12600 points.

I click on the 32, then the spinner to go to the next round.

Ok, here we get the rebound for number 46, which we should have played 2 rounds ago. Now we get our chance once again.

Due to my silly mistake earlier on where I took 40 instead of 46, I now end up having them both. I can play 46 this round, and so I do.

But…there is another number that looks familiar: 57. This is the number we used to find the astronaut, so if I click the astronaut again, while having 57, I get 1000 (x3) extra points plus an extra round.

I click, the astronaut, I click 46 and start happily humming a song, when I see the resulting score.

It went rapid last round, gaining more than 6000 points, our score is now 44800. That is enough! We won. This game is won, whatever happens in the next rounds.

It is never bad and always good to win with a higher score, so, we throw that blue moon on the 62. Still humming happily we go on…see what the next round brings.

It brings nothing. No match, nothing to do. But we don’t care, we already won this game. After this round it is over and the game will pay us our prize.

We did it. It wasn’t easy, we made a few mistakes, but at the end: Victory!

 You made it. All the way to the end of this long walk-through.

One thing I didn’t do was trying to make use of the fact that you can know for each round, what will be the next round. When you play your first games of Moon, you might also best not look too much at that. Get a bit used how it works, with these multipliers and astronaut. Once you get that, your mind will have time to also deal with the next round info, and thus increase your results.

Succes playing Moon!