1993 Team Hoi
Platform: Commodore Amiga (AGA)
Moon Child is an interesting project that started life on the Commodore Amiga, but ultimately ended up being completed and released on PC instead. The game was developed by Dutch team Team Hoi, made up of Reinier van Vliet, Metin Seven and Ramon Braumuller, who had previously worked together on titles such as Hoi and Clockwiser.
The team had strong roots in the Amiga scene, not only through their games but also through tools such as SIDmon and Digital Mugician, as well as their demo scene work with Digital Force International. Development of Moon Child began around 1993 as a side project, and was originally intended for the AGA Amiga range. The game itself was planned as a kind of spiritual successor to Hoi, even featuring the original character as a sidekick during early development stages.
The game was eventually to become a platform action game with puzzle elements, following a small green elf sent from a moon to the planet Utopia. The world is under threat from a techno-virus caused by a crashed comet, which is transforming natural environments into cold metallic structures. The game unfolds across a series of levels, where players must navigate hazards, activate switches and overcome enemies using a flexible actor based system that drives character behaviour.
Originally, the Amiga version had experimented with a dual character setup featuring the hero from Hoi as a companion, though this was later dropped. Around this time, elements of the Amiga version were also repurposed in an unusual way. In 1995, a variation of Moon Child’s graphics and engine was used to create a small interactive “micro-game” for the Dutch educational television programme Typisch Techniek.
Metin Seven produced graphics and a short level based on the Amiga version, whilst Peter Schaap coded the sequence so that it could be played and recorded for use as part of the show’s theme. The segment incorporated different elements tied to the programme’s episodes, and even featured an appearance of Hoi, with Metin also being interviewed about game development during the broadcast.
Meanwhile, it seems the game may have also been pitched to Psygnosis at one point, as an intro was created with their logo present. However, following repeated financial difficulties due to unpaid royalties from earlier projects, the team were forced to rethink everything. After Commodore’s bankruptcy in 1994 and the declining viability of the Amiga market, a decision was made to shift development over to PC under a new arrangement with Dutch multimedia company Valkieser.
By 1995, Reinier and Metin had joined Valkieser to form a semi independent development division, with Ramon continuing to contribute as a freelancer. At this point, Moon Child was effectively rebooted for Windows, with a significant upgrade in resolution from 320×256 to 640×480, allowing for much more detailed visuals than originally planned on the Amiga.
The PC version was built using C++ and early DirectX technology, initially targeting DirectX 3 before being moved to DirectX 5 during development. Like many projects of the time, everything was built from scratch, including sprite systems, tools and editors. The game featured a data driven structure with custom tools for level and asset creation, continuing the team’s tradition of building their own development technology.
Moon Child was eventually released in 1997 on CD-ROM in the Netherlands. However, its wider release was cut short when Valkieser ran into financial trouble following a failed investment, leading to the closure of its publishing division before the game could be distributed internationally.
Despite this, the game did not completely disappear. Over time, it found its way into the piracy scene and quietly spread around the world, with many players discovering it that way. As for the original Amiga version, development was halted relatively early, at only around 15% complete, leaving behind only a glimpse of what could have been. A demo of this AGA version does at least survive today, giving a small insight into its initial direction, which you can download here.
A large collection of materials related to the game has since been preserved online, including the original PC CD-ROM image, patches, soundtrack, artwork, videos and even the Amiga demo. These can be found here: https://archive.org/details/MoonChildGame and https://archive.org/download/MoonChildGame
If you want to experience the game today, the PC version has also been ported to run in the browser and can be played online here: https://proofofconcept.nl/portfolio/moonchild/
A huge thank you to Metin Seven for all the information and Archive.org for screenshots/resources from the team.
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This is really cool! I’m a big fan of silly demoscene aesthetic and exploration platformers.
I noticed a bug in the web version at least. On level 4, the autoscroller machine noise never stops, even if you quit the level. So there’s just this big loud servo loop drowning everything out.
Has anyone managed to extract the music (preferably as a MOD file)?
I think some of the songs do exist as .mod files out there… but the one with the vocals at the beginning (he’s got the power to be your friend) is not one of them. The song was made with Digital Mugician, and specifically uses a later version that supported seven voices at once by doing software mixing on four of the voices and letting the hardware use the other three. That has its own file format.
the story, is TRUE..!
Woa-oh-oh-oh!
I ran into this game on a random shareware CD-Rom a while ago (link to the livestream including right timestamp in URL of this message). I never heard of it. Just recently I found an huge ad for it in a Computer-Zone Magazine (Dutch). I’m going to investigate this game some more.
I got the power to be his friend.