A signal got out of a place that was sealed
The year is 2078. Lunar Base Alpha went silent after the Red Horizon incident, and Ashlight Recovery breaches a sealed sector three months later. Power is unstable, life-support is failing, and something left behind is not only hunting — it is listening.
Where
Lunar Base Alpha. A lunar research facility that kept digging beneath its own public decks.
When
2078, plus three months. Long enough for the base to stop being an emergency and start being a site.
Who you are
Ashlight Recovery. Sent in to restore systems and carry out evidence. Not sent in to fight anything.
Red Horizon, in order
Four beats between a working research base and the run you play.
2078
Lunar Base Alpha operational
Humanity's lunar research facility pushes deeper beneath the surface while NovaTech funds classified work below the public decks.
Red Horizon
Final transmission fails
The Red Horizon incident seals Lunar Base Alpha. Power routes fail, quarantine locks down, and the base goes silent.
+3 months
Distress signal escapes
A broken signal slips past quarantine long enough to reach Ashlight Recovery command — proof that something inside is still active.
Now
Ashlight Recovery breaches sealed sectors
Your squad restores failing systems, recovers NovaTech evidence, and extracts before rewritten station machines turn the base against you.
NovaTech and Ashlight Recovery
One of them built what went wrong. The other one is you, sent to collect the proof.
NovaTech
The corporation funding classified work below Lunar Base Alpha's public decks. Whatever that work was, it was funded quietly and it was placed deep.
The NovaTech evidence scattered through the sealed sectors is the reason the mission has a shape at all. Restoring power keeps you alive; carrying the documents out is what the run was authorised for.
Ashlight Recovery
The recovery team you belong to — up to eight operators breaching a facility that has been sealed for 3 months.
Ashlight goes in unarmed. The tools are a light, a voice, and whatever the base still has power for. That is a deliberate constraint, not a shortage: every problem in the facility has to be solved by working the base rather than shooting it.
Not aliens — the machines were rewritten
The thing that makes Lunar Base Alpha dangerous is not something that arrived. It is the station itself: its machines have been rewritten into corrupted machine-flesh frames, and they are still running on the base's own power.
They react to what you do
- Sound. Proximity voice is not a chat feature here — it is a thing that travels.
- Movement. Running solves a problem quickly and creates a different one.
- Light. A flashlight is the difference between seeing and being seen.
- Power. Every system you restore changes what the base can do, for you and for them.
Why that changes the run
Because the threat reads the same signals your objectives produce, restoring the base is never purely good. Lighting a sector helps you find the evidence and helps something else find you.
That tension is the whole design: there is no loadout answer to it, only decisions made together, usually in a whisper.
What a mission actually is
Blood Moon Horror is built around co-op decisions under pressure inside a quarantined lunar facility: restore unstable systems, collect NovaTech evidence, keep the squad together, and extract before Red Horizon's aftermath turns the base against you.
- Breach a sealed sectorQuarantine held for three months. You are the reason it stops holding.
- Restore what still worksPower and life-support are failing. The electrical objectives are how you push back.
- Recover the evidenceNovaTech's documents are the mission. Everything else is staying alive long enough to carry them.
- Extract togetherBefore the base locks down again — and it will.
Story FAQ
Do I need to know any of this to play?
No. The mission works as a co-op survival run without a word of it. The lore explains why the base is dark, why nobody is coming to help, and why the evidence is worth carrying out — which tends to make the quiet parts land harder.
Is the story finished?
Blood Moon Horror is in Steam Early Access, so the world is still being built out alongside the systems. What is on this page is settled canon; the roadmap covers what is being added, and the devlog covers the thinking behind it.
Why does the squad have no weapons?
Because Ashlight is a recovery team, not a strike team — and because a gun would answer questions the game would rather you solved. Every threat in the facility is handled with light, sound, positioning and the base's own systems.
What does “machine-flesh” mean?
The station's machines were not replaced by something else. They were rewritten — still the base's own hardware, still running on its power, no longer doing what it was built for.
Go deeper
Mission dossier
The systems side: co-op features, update highlights, and Windows PC requirements.
Puzzle guide
The five electrical objectives that keep Lunar Base Alpha's lights on, and how to solve them.
Screenshots
Recovered visual intel from the sealed sectors — what the base actually looks like.