I hate how overused the term is these days, but I’d argue this is a true deconstruction, not because “lol what if good guy is actually bad guy” but because it’s about the way that stock JRPG characters become so much more than the sum of their parts through perception, perhaps even in a way that wasn’t intended by the devs or varies from player to player. The opening segment that depicts the actual game the boy is playing is overly literal and simplistic in its dialogue, seemingly a generic experience, and yet when he’s sucked into the game world, we see it through the lens of his imagination: a world not of cardboard cutouts but of fully realized people with interiority who exist outside the scope of the protagonist: enhanced in higher definition, both literally and figuratively. And, well, haven’t you ever done that as a kid? Walk around a RPG village and wonder about the minute details of the citizens’ lives? It’s such a compelling argument for why we feel so nostalgic for some childhood games, and yet when we revisit them as adults, we may find them far more barren then we remembered them. As adults in an increasingly hectic landscape, we have become so task-oriented that it’s hard to muster that same childlike wonder because we’re just in a rush to get to the next game in our ever-expansive backlogs.

“Love” is what makes the world go ‘round here, and while it could be taken from a very literal perspective on sharing kindness with others, I think it does mean a bit more as to how we interact with games. After all, we often get back as much as we are willing to give to a game. The more invested I feel, the more I’m willing to read between the lines, to ponder the significance of dialogue and find meaning in places possibly not even intended. That could be aptly described as “giving love” to a work. Umineko flashed through my head as the word “love” was repeated so many times - there are many, many differences, but one common thematic thread between the two of them is the usage of “love” as a tool for interpreting a text.

So this could just be a game about how awesome video games are, earnest yet self-indulgent as well, but that’s not what moon has settled for. moon subtly establishes boundaries for itself as a work of fiction through its metatextual presentation, not truly “another world” to be lost in. It anticipates the potential for a toxic quasi-parasocial relationship to be formed between the player and its characters, aiming directly for it in the ending sequence, because no matter how much life you infuse in these characters, they are still but lines of code created by people who know nothing about you. It’s an interesting message that the game balances very well, both affirming the positivity of deeper meaning in games while cautioning not to dwell on them, and it all comes from a place of affection for the medium.

I’m definitely more in love with the concept and message than the actual execution in some places; sadly, I didn’t collect all the Love in the world because there’s no way in hell I’m going to keep grinding at the fishing contest until I’m lucky enough to win, but maybe that’s what the developers wanted? When it comes to those last few darn Love points, the game stopped sparking joy, and I probably got the most out of my time by avoiding the task-oriented mindset of completionism, dipping my feet as deep as I felt comfortable doing before retreating. You’re not supposed to sink countless hours into moon - you understand the love the game is trying to convey and then carry it with you elsewhere, and I am assuredly going to think about this for a long time both in the context of media as well as my own life.

P.S. really glad I finished this minutes after midnight so I didn’t have to edit my top games of 2021 list, lol

when taking into account all the flaws and masterstrokes in each game touched by the love-de-lic spirit, their totality making every one of them interesting in their own ways, let it be said that this game is kinda incoherent in how its constituent parts are stitched together. i like chulip more for making the town and its residents the center of the world, and how it feels more grounded of a story. even the ways chulip is a mess are more compelling to me than the ways in which moon is a mess.

that being said, in terms of raw passion of its developers and the heat of the moment in which it was made, moon hasnt been touched. its strange, insular kind of innovation came out of testing the hypothesis that video games must be worth /something/, its developers (a fucking SUPERGROUP of a team) expressing their love for the artform by changing the rules so drastically, to surpass everything holding them back. by changing an RPG into an adventure game, by having the player practice patience with the flow of time to understand others, by having the world's characters all driven by this thematic force that the designers desperately wanted to impart on you as something that must exist both inside AND outside the game, despite what other games in its time would have you believe. its "what if games were nice instead of mean" type message may come off as precious and hokey but i think the history around its development as a console game in 1997, and the genre-ambiguous space it establishes—built on later by other love-de-lic games, chulip, endonesia, nishi-directed games at skip—gives moon this mysterious and captivating aura, as well as a radical sincerity to explore into the core of what games really are and what they could be. the final sequence is incredibly poignant to me with this in mind

basically there is no other game that just...radiates heart as glowingly as moon, you can see it and hear it and read it and feel it. this game is the untold spark of so much, as the root of highly creative game design legacies from the names attached to this project. they can possibly make better games in different settings, but moon only could happen this one time.

todas as mais tocantes histórias do mundo e nenhuma delas tem a ver com você. um observador ativo, alguém que permite e causa a felicidade dos outros sem receber curvas deterministicas em troca; ver as mais variadas (bonitas, feias, tóxicas, diligentes, zelosas, malvadas) formas que o amor tem de se manifestar e permitir (e até possibilitar) que elas aconteçam sem atribuir uma carga moral às próprias ações, afinal, é seu trabalho, como o de um diretor, ou o de deus. alguns deuses guardam o julgamento silencioso para o fim dos tempos e alguns são manifestações de todas essas mazelas humanas por si só, abraçando a própria natureza como verdade com v maiusculo como demonstração de Ser. qual desses é o menino de moon? qual desses é o jogador de videogame?

O que faz alguém jogar videogame? Digo, jogar mesmo, sem ver o tempo passar, ficar vidrado naquela tela, imerso naquele mundo fictício. Desde a exploração brilhante de um metroidvania à uma bossfight desafiadora de um souls-like. Qual é o nome? Engajamento? Hiperfoco? Compulsão? Vício? Por que tu continua jogando? Por que isso importa tanto? Quantos cliques tu precisa dar por hora pra ter valido a pena jogar aquilo? Por que tanta gente mede o valor monetário de tal jogo pela sua duração?

Nunca li livro algum sobre game design. Também nunca joguei nenhum Dragon Quest – e mesmo assim moon me encantou o suficiente pra me fazer querer entender ele. Querer dar valor também.

Ser ativo, fazer questão, interagir. É assim que videogame se expressa. Ou melhor, é assim que o player se expressa pelo videogame. É comunicação. Mas de que forma? Porque ao meu ver, muita gente se incomoda ao ter seu espaço de interação com a tela invadido, seu controle retirado, cutscenes, seções de walkie-talkie, momentos scriptados e outras convenções usuais da indústria de videogames.

Essa é a só a ponta do iceberg, provavelmente, porque muitos incômodos também podem ser gerados pela própria interação: teste simples, pergunta pra qualquer amigo teu se ele prefere os tiroteios do Arthur em Red Dead Redemption 2 ou as tarefas braçais do rancho de John Marston. Muito provavelmente ele vai preferir a parte onde a gameplay se demonstra mais ativa, pelo combate, pela velocidade, talvez? As atividades no rancho do John são extremamente demoradas, seja pela extravagância no capricho das animações do jogo e também pela tentativa honesta de captar a vida de um fazendeiro, muito do que tu faz nessa seção inteira é baseado em espera e recompensa. E a catarse da recompensa não existe, é apenas avanço na história seguido de diálogos casuais que integram aquela parte do jogo. E a catarse de um tiroteio? O impacto dos corpos agindo e reagindo, a satisfação em ouvir o som das balas, toda a composição de uma batalha frenética com uma provável trilha de fundo pra ajudar: todos esses elementos flutuando pela cabeça do player conseguem satisfazê-lo mais facilmente do que qualquer outro tipo de atividade no jogo.

Sobre a velocidade, é simples: numa mídia com receptor ativo, a tendência é que ele esteja SEMPRE na ativa. A demora é fatal, e a maioria das vezes que tu escutou/leu algo tipo “nossa, a gameplay de jogo X é bem melhor que a de jogo Y porque é mais fluída” a pessoa provavelmente tava se referindo à velocidade da gameplay e não tinha nada a ver com fluidez. Talvez seja por isso que as pessoas realmente acham o combate de Dark Souls III melhor que o do primeiro. Muita gente quer algo mais imediato, pouco diálogo, pouca cutscene, poucas mecânicas que façam o player esperar (e as vezes até pensar) porque ele sente que vai enlouquecer com isso. Até mesmo os jogos de turno tão sendo EXTINGUIDOS por conta desse tipo de pensamento. É uma visão bem equivocada, sabemos – preferência existe, mas até que ponto ela vai te restringir a experimentar coisas novas? Eu mesmo, tenho Ninja Gaiden II nos meus favoritos e sinto que minha casa explodiria se eu parasse de usar lifegems em Dark Souls II, talvez eu até esteja sendo hipócrita nisso, mas não vejo problema em preferir certo ritmo de gameplay, desde que isso não defina sua perspectiva e expectativas pela mídia – videogames – como um todo.

O jogo do AMOR, mais conhecido como moon, se comunica com o player diante de alguns objetivos. O primeiro é fazê-lo ODIAR JRPGs a ponto de jogar todos só pra chegar e falar “haha moon é melhor” O primeiro é satirizar RPGs japoneses da época, apresentando um cavaleiro que mata diversos monstros com o objetivo de derrotar um dragão que sumiu com a lua daquele lugar. O combate não é jogável, é assistível. E a narrativa se subverte a partir do ponto em que a mãe do protagonista manda ele desligar videogame e ir dormir – até que ele é sugado pela TV e obrigado a virar um NPC daquele jogo: moon: Remix RPG Adventure. Sim, NPC mesmo, o real “protagonista” é o cavaleiro que te apresentaram e no momento ele se aventura, grindando (quem diria) pra conseguir chegar até o dragão que ele tinha derrotado antes – exato, isso já tinha acontecido antes, na lua falsa, mas o real jogo que mostra a perspetiva do protagonista, do herói daquela história. Em moon, esse mesmo herói em poucos minutos de jogo tem suas atitudes questionadas, e o player tem a tarefa de coletar pontos de amor pelo mapa, seja conversando com NPCs, fazendo quests e, principalmente, salvando as pobres almas dos animais que o cavaleiro assassinou – ou seja, sendo o verdadeiro herói daquela história. Seus pontos de amor servem pra aumentar suas ações por dia, vulgo a stamina do jogo, e se ela acaba: é game over. O savepoint do jogo é sua cama, dormir restaura energia, e também transforma pontos de amor em pontos de ação. Sim, o jogo refutou a frase “dormir não dá XP”.

Há muitas coisas que esse game quer comunicar aqui, e o valor que ele tem é comunicar todos seus objetivos de forma mecânica, pela interação. O núcleo de gameplay do jogo está na espera, estimulando o bom coração do player pra explorar melhor cada ciclo de dia e noite e a rotina de cada NPC que ele encontra. Acho que é por isso que o amor vira stamina, o fato de você jogar e se abençoar com “a arte de dar a foda”, digo, o fato de você querer fazer questão do jogo e do que acontece naquele mundo fictício é um ato de amor pela mídia, e serve de estímulo pra tu continuar fazendo isso, até mesmo no sentido mecânico. Todos os NPCs, apesar de caricatos, são simpáticos e tem sempre algo legal e agregador a dizer. Todas as quests são memoráveis, o player tá sempre por aí vagando e fazendo uma boa ação pra salvar aquele mundo, voltar para o mundo fora da tela e pra reconsiderar o fato dele estar jogando um videogame. E o player sabe disso, ele sabe que tá dentro de um jogo (dentro de um jogo) e mesmo assim consegue dar fodas o suficiente pra espalhar seu amor pelo mundo.

Limitações no design do jogo também são fatores relevantes, porque elas conversam com suas ideias e até com features que tão implementadas na gameplay. Os diálogos com os NPCs expiram, fazendo com que eles pareçam menos reais e acabe com a graça de se aprofundar naquele mundo: mas isso é realmente um problema? Moon nunca tentou sugar o player pra dentro de seu universo, moon não tenta ser necessariamente imersivo ou coisa do tipo: moon quer unir suas três dimensões. Questionar a suspensão da descrença e integrar a casa do player (protagonista) ao mundo real do jogo e ao mundo do player do outro lado da tela. O mundo de você, o mundo de eu, o mundo de qualquer um que jogue essa merda autoentitulada anti-rpg. Uma feature legal do jogo que reforça esse meu ponto é o toca-disco: o jogo não tem música ambiente. Se opondo aos JRPGs da época, provavelmente, que sempre integram uma música bonitinha de fundo pra dar o clássico sentimento de aventura. Em moon tu se aventura quieto, a não ser que você, como player, queira escutar uma música de sua escolha pelo toca-disco: fun fact! Um dos discos do jogo é uma música BRASILEIRA chamada A Meu Pai Peço Firmeza de Padrinho Sebastião. Não cheguei a encontrar informações o suficiente pra saber se o resto dos discos são inspirados em músicas/bandas reais, mas é um toque muito genial deixar a música ambiente do jogo nas mãos do player.

Toda essa aproximação entre os mundos da experiência de moon, acabou me desconectando um pouco do jogo por um motivo bem específico, o que acaba me levando de volta à primeira linha dessa review: por que alguém jogaria moon?

O jogo me conectou, desconectou e me conectou de volta em diversos atos ao longo de minha jornada, me fazendo apreciar cada detalhe daquela experiência e fazer questão de continuar jogando, jogando o suficiente pra coletar todos os pontos de amor do jogo, até chegar no nível máximo (que é 30). Fiz isso tudo com sorriso no rosto porque, mesmo com ajudas externas, sabia que minha gameplay não era um passatempo de grind ou uma aventura curtinha que eu poderia ter zerado antes do ano novo pra dar nota no backloggd e esquecer o jogo: eu resgatei cada um dos animais e fiz cada uma das quests do jogo por amor. Exceto uma. A pescaria. Foi aí que eu me desconectei de moon.

Moon quer que tu jogue por amor, mas não havia amor algum em repetir a mesma tarefa diversas vezes, dependendo de sorte e jogando tempo fora por pura compulsão e complecionismo. O desejo insignificante de fazer tudo que há no jogo, mesmo na merda de um console que nem conquistas tem, caiu por terra quando eu percebi que eu não tava mais fazendo questão daquilo, só queria pescar 5 peixes de uma vez e zerar o jogo. Eu não amava aquilo, não amei a pesca, devo ter gastado mais de 5 horas só nesse minigame e eu não me orgulho disso. Serviria como uma recompensa ilusória de um perfeccionismo estúpido meu e talvez um agradecimento e congratulações da rainha da lua nos meus sonhos. Não vale a pena, moon me ensinou algo que ele mesmo se ofereceu para quebrar e me desfazer do que aprendi jogando. Sei que faltava literalmente apenas 1 ponto pra chegar no nível 30 de amor mas eu me sentiria culpado se tivesse conseguido passar do 29, então a primeira coisa que eu fiz foi desistir do concurso de pesca e ir direto pro Burnn comprar todos os CDs da loja. O último disco se chamava “moonfish”.

Zero o jogo. A desconexão é proposital, e a mensagem é transmitida da forma mais singular possível, fazendo o player praticamente engolir os temas do jogo, afinando tanto a linha tênue entre o amor e o ódio, quanto a linha de separação entre suas dimensões. Moon odeia o “jogar por jogar” e ama o player o suficiente para fazê-lo retribuir esse sentimento, de uma forma em que toda essa aventura é subvertida pelo que tu aprendeu enquanto espalhava seu amor pelo jogo.

Vou poupar spoilers diretos da história, mas lembre-se: o amor não pode ser expresso por simples números em um videogame.


29/30 :’)

"Whatever happens inside these scrunched, wrinkled fiber-bags of rotten-fruit-colored chopped hollow jumbo spaghetti bits is an accident of liquid physics. Our sentimentality is a coincidence. We are no smooth earnest factories; we are no diagram-perfect assembly lines. We are crowded hard bags of accidents down through which blood and other juices leak; we squeeze and our liquids spurt and rise. We must know the stupidity of this meat and we must permit it to terrify us. We must be afraid of this deadness. We must love each other. It is ridiculous if we do not"
-"just like hamburger;exactly like hamburger" by tim rogers

moon is a game that has been a phenomenon for many, many years, despite a whole lot of people probably having never played it until just this past year. my favorite game of All Time, undertale, owes a lot of its existence to moon's, and toby fox hasn't played it. before you play moon, you are immediately intrigued by moon and need to know more. it is a game that is equal parts obtuse 90s point 'n' click, social simulator and treatise on disarming ourselves and living (and more importantly LOVING) authentically. knowing about moon is a secret badge of honor among the in-the-know, or at least it was until its new translation and rerelease on modern hardware made the barrier of access 20 dollars instead of knowing japanese or using the gamefaqs guide to play a ROM or whatever.

but what about playing moon? a game that describes itself a remix rpg adventure makes it sound a little more complex than it is. it's at its core an adventure game that prides itself on telling you absolutely nothing and absolutely everything. a good portion of the game's puzzles require precise timing, memorizing patterns of both npcs and the environment, and the ability to navigate through surreal dialogue and cutscenes to work things out. but i think the developers also want you to collaborate as you play moon, as many games being developed in the early days of the internet wanted you to. part of my enjoyment of moon was reading along with a walkthrough, one with a writer sharing their own opinions and thoughts and strategies and victories and losses with me. they gave me their love in guiding me through this game, and this review is my best attempt at giving it back. gamefaqs user parrotshake, i love the living shit out of you.

moon's narrative is probably the key reason most people are here, and seeing what there is to see here is like finding a stone tablet with an ancient language's alphabet and grammatical rules inscribed onto it. understanding moon makes me understand a good 30 years of japanese game devleopment much more clearly. a lot has been said about how the developers at love-de-lic disseminated themselves into other studios like square and grasshopper manufacture, and their influence can be felt in games those people never touched. there's obvious titles like deadly premontion and undertale, but i also think games like persona 3 and final fantasy x took some of this game's philosophy to heart. and what a philosophy! in moon, a boy is trapped in his television or dreaming or something and has to pick up the pieces in the wake of destruction left by a traditonal jrpg hero. the most impactful of this for me was bringing the various killed animals back to life, and how much of this game's world is tied deeply to animals. they're deities, they're lifegivers and they're friends. saving perogon or exorcising gramby's summonbeast left me feeling so completely content, to see these characters whose lives were torn asunder by forces beyond their comprehension doing things they aren't supposed to be doing, and then lifting them out of their misery or saving them from it is a joyous act that moon revels in.

the whole game is joyous, it begs you to explore at your own pace and figure out the main story when you feel up for it, if you feel up for it. there's rarely any major pressure and for the most part its equally beneficial to watch filby fly his kite as it is to assemble pieces of a rocket ship. it's less elaborate puzzle box and more a series of events that seem almost unconcerned with the player's intervention or not, even though the player always brings about positive changes and helps the people in the game. it's nice to help people, it's nice to love people, even creepy cultists in the woods who make you memorize their stupid faces or wannabe idols or your grandma who's losing it and isn't fun to be around anymore.

the machines we inhabit are only going to fail us, eventually we will all be out in the woods desperate for someone to sing and dance and recite poems with us or play rock paper scissors with us or walk out dog when we're sick to. moon taught me to love the machine, even when the machine fails me and the machine doesn't want to work and when the machine ends up snapping us in two over and over again. open the door.

I wrote a little review of this game a few months ago for my school newspaper when it was released on the PS4. It was one of the most memorable and touching experiences I've ever had with a video game. Here is a small section of that review:

" 'Moon' is fun and successful because it’s unafraid of being itself. While it criticizes the mindless nature of early fantasy games, it still celebrates video games as an expressive medium. The charm of actually talking and spending time with all the inhabitants of this 'Moon World' can reach heights that traditional role-playing games aren’t able to achieve.

'Moon: Remix RPG Adventure' quickly became one of my favorite games of all time when I played it during winter break. In a year with some great games, I found myself captivated by this relic from decades ago. There are a small number of nitpicks I have, but I can wholeheartedly say that this game is a masterpiece that I will not soon forget."

If you are on the fence about this one, or haven't yet sat down to play it, I urge you to experience it as soon as possible.

the Beautiful Game. a story told with refreshing earnestness. through occupying the world of Moon the player acquires experiences; through acquiring experiences meaning gradually trickles in until the game (and the player) overflow. Love. that which is as nebulous as it is ubiquitous, it is your vitality and the lifeforce driving this game. the world of Moon is deeply imbued with intention; no detail goes overlooked - EVERYTHING you uncover smiles and waves at you. it kisses you on your mouth and you wring the love out of it and bathe in it. you grow so full of it! this game is built atop a foundation of a zest for life, an attitude that is found in every nook and cranny of Moon. isn't it so nice to occupy this world? isn't it so nice to occupy YOUR world? this is some real life-affirming stuff! the world around you is so full of things, to be a cognizant participant is to be blessed (though L.O.L. explores this idea further, perhaps in a more interesting way...). the world around you is so full of people, to be active in your interaction with them is to be blessed (though I suspect chulip explores this idea further but I haven't played that one... yet). there is beauty to found in even the most profound mundanity, assuming one knows to look.

Moon is a game about sitting down until bird calls begin to seep into the grass alongside you. Moon is a game about staring at the clock, He who is pulling the strings. Moon is a game about chilling out and listening to rock and roll. or free jazz. or drum and bass. or shamisen. (Moon Fish appreciators sound off in the comments). Moon is a game about so many things, but perhaps most importantly it is a game about you and about the world. it is transformative in a way that only a video game can be. when the sun shines on me I think of Moon.

What starts out as a humble JRPG lampoon quickly becomes an engrossing, utterly unique experience of it's own accord. It genuinely brings tears to my eyes, seeing a game I fell head over heels for as a teen not only hold up a decade on, but have the exact same power over those playing it's very recently English version for the first time.

It's a high recommendation from me, and one best experienced as blindly as possible. Just know to rest often, take your time, and Open the Door when the time comes...

To quote Prof. Hager:

What is love?
Does love in fact exist inside this world?
Does love in fact exist outside this world?
If I speak of crossing through the ceiling of this world, you might laugh at me.
However, I want to transcend that ceiling.
That is my love.

... and transcend that ceiling they did. And they did it beautifully, charmingly und just so full of creativity!

(Guide for the people who are stuck: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/573238-moon/faqs/50336)

Want to know what this game is about?

Good.


Don't lose that curiosity, kid.

the premise sounds a little tired at this point, but moon's promise of an RPG story flipped on its head is backed up with a sincere love for RPGs and games in general. no lame cynicism or tired parody here. everything in this game just makes me smile.

I think I would have liked to have played this much earlier before COVID, and maybe via a fan translation cos I like old playstation more than nintendo and it would make me feel a little smug about playing it, but I'm glad during a time like this it's now available in english for more western players to enjoy. please resist the urge to look up a guide, at least not until the end, and just take pleasure in this lovely adventure game. (remember to read the manual though)

my favourite moondisc is The Other Jet... or it might be Warp Wet Woods... or Silver Thread Spinning Song... actually I think it's

"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."

When I first started the journey, I wept when the grandmother recognized me for what she no longer had, but still loved. I didn't think too deeply on how much that would mean as the game continued, but I still accepted that love.

"Love is patient, love is kind."

When the feral kittens I cared for died, I wept when I found closure in saving the animals of the world of Moon. I saved every single one, not leaving a single life to chance to the "Hero". And a lot of it was waiting, patience is a virtue when it comes to understanding the lives of a world that walks on without you. Stories and people do not just come when called, they come around
to those who empathize and seek them out on their own time. And many of these moments are minor, small simple things that add on to something much bigger. Something that really encapsulates that feeling the adventure will call back to time and time again.

"But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."

When I finally did what accounted as a final homecoming to areas I had been, people I had touched, I wept once more. I may not remember every single individual moment, but I'll remember what I felt towards them, and they'll live on with me.

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face."

When I walked into technopolis, and so many of the earnest areas capturing the real mirrored reflections of our mundanity, I wept realizing that even in these hollowed out moments love still exists. People reflect on dystopian hells and find sorrow but there's light underneath those tunnels too. Even in its hilarious critiques of people it does not treat any of it maliciously or callously. Moon understands why we are the way we are sitting at the couch watching TV every evening.

"But the greatest of these is love."

When the game asked me to open the door, the one that mattered. With love in my heart, I went through.

(From the words of 1 Corinthians 13, thank you to a friend who showed a brighter way to see life. I hope you found love too!)

Tim Rogers - the translator of this game - often advocates for the concept of an 'I get it' button. The idea is that a good video game should always include a mechanic that allows the player to decisively prove that they understand a challenge that the designer has put in front of them and swiftly move on to the next thing. A skill-based fast-forward is something I can really get on board with, especially in the modern age of gaming where publishers feel the need to make even the most unremarkable gameplay last for 50 or more hours. Games are a little too fond of wasting our time.

It's ironic, then, that Moon is completely antithetical to the the idea of the almighty 'I get it' button. It's an experience that thrives on slow repetitions of the same concepts over and over and over... and over... again. By the eighth or ninth time I'd slowly trudged back to bed, the game's resplendent charm had worn thin and I began to feel friction building between myself and the world. The game feels all too much like a very cute child tugging on my sleeve every couple of minutes to show me another love-hearted doodle they've made, and it hurts to get annoyed at something that only has love in its heart.

Maybe the game takes some deeper turns or dives in its latter half, but after six hours or so I just couldn't stand to hear that little ghost kid's feet shuffle across grass any longer - it had become the softest nails I've ever heard dragged across a chalkboard. Sure, I get that this is all a deconstructive takedown metanarrative remix anti-adventure or whatever, but if you're gonna critique the flaws of a genre, at least try to make the game as fun as your intended target!

I definitely lost Love Points for posting this, but I have to live with honesty in my heart...

there's a moment in moon where the "HERO" is drunk at a restaurant, doesn't knowing how to advance. after killing all those "Bad Monsters", "helping" all those people, entering without invite in all those houses and taking possession of all those objects, he's lost. he is at the maximum level that he can obtain, but what then?

the "HERO" lacks of love.

in fact, everyone in moon's world is searching for love: consciously or not; for know what it is, what is for and who can possess it. love is a mystery and everyone wants to know how to discover it. you, the protagonist, is the one who help those thirsty for love by... living your life. you see, There Is Someone(s) that indeed knows what love is and want you to collect it - but i won't tell who! you do it by helping people in different ways: fishing, listening, catching their souls, telling that they actually are a robot (do technopolis habitants dreams about MOON: REMIX RPG ADVENTURE?) and all sort of different things.

they say you find love in small things, and perhaps someone would say that moon is a game about finding love in the minor aspects of our day. i wouldn't say they are incorrect, but a letter of love is A Big Deal to the one who sent it, as well to the one who received it. the size of what we love is measure by our heart perspective.

moon: remix rpg adventure is a small, old, indie game, but in my heart, is a gigantic thing that i love.

If you're as disillusioned with the state of video game comedic writing as I am, then I can't recommend Moon enough. The Undertale inspiration is beyond apparent, but, thankfully, Toby Fox-esque dialogue isn't. Instead, it's written more like a golden age point-and-click, in which every character subscribes to the same sort of backwards logic that you have to make sense of in order to progress. This degree of committal, to me, is what separates retro quirk from modern indie quirk, which typically means presenting the player with a series of jokey, half-sarcastic statements that more often than not clash with the setting rather than characterizing it. And the setting's really everything in Moon, which tasks some kid (who I named "Sirloin," for some reason) with collecting love from the citizens of Love-de-Gard through various means. The more love you get, the further you can venture outside without having to sleep, which gives you more leeway into tracking the villagers' day/night and weekly schedules and allows you to reach new locations on your own accord. The same giddy feeling of planning out how to be in the right place at the right time that would later make Majora's Mask great is present here, but it's also amplified by the fact that you have to earn the ability to even be there. You're not guaranteed three full days, you have to work your way up to that point first. Moon's other stroke of genius comes with it being solely composed of sidequests that all reward you the same thing. Hit a wall in a typical point-and-click and you're done progressing until you eventually flail towards the correct answer, but getting stuck in Moon simply means you get to pursue a different avenue to obtain love. Your character's slow movement speed also gives you plenty of opportunity to consider possible solutions, more or less diffusing the feeling of wasting your time that usually comes packaged with any contextual puzzle game. The cherry here is the game's story, which you really have to stumble upon all by yourself. It's all about collecting love, until it isn't, of course, and it's easy to see how railroading could defeat the entire purpose.

Where Moon succeeds on a mechanical front, however, it often disappoints in the satiric sense... or, at least, that's what the first few hours led me to believe. It starts off as a surface-level subversion of JRPG tropes, positing a protagonist that's really a bully and monsters that are misunderstood animals, but, eventually, the hero fades away from the story, allowing Sirloin to create one of his own. Moon isn't simply a base parody or some milquetoast statement on love being the most important power of all, but a past tense coming-of-age story, a portrait of a very specific type of innocence loss using the framework of video games. We've all been there. Believing that L was real, that the truck in Vermillion City was blocking something important, that Sephiroth could be recruited into your party, or that Sonic was an unlockable character in Melee. The idea that games extended beyond the walls of your TV, housing unexplainable worlds where anything and everything could happen. Judging by Minecraft's Herobrine, this is a phenomenon that transcends both generations and philosophies of game design. But, at some point, we lost the ability, or perhaps the willingness, to reenter this state of mind. Play enough games and you realize there's a limit to what they're capable of, that there are certain rules that all developers more or less follow. This is what the fake/real dichotomy on the cover art refers to, and it's also something that's baked into how Moon works at its core. Learn enough about this world and you begin to find out that there's more to it than meets the eye, doing this also gives you the ability (or, the desire) to spend more time here. Spend too much time here and the seams start to show. Routines become too predictable, dialogue repeats itself, and the solipsistic nature of video games fully sets in. What adds to this is how consistently it subtly hints towards the boundary between fake and real. Take, for instance, this line. One on side of the spectrum, it serves to characterize Minister's anality (think "always watching, Wazowski") but on the other, it's a nod towards his ultrasimple AI. After all, any game trying to create the illusion of real characters would certainly avoid directly stating that doing X will always cause someone to do Y. Moon's puzzles also frequently point towards this separation. In gamespeak, someone telling you to look at a painting means that the player is supposed to physically study its graphical asset for clues, but in Moon, you actually have to literally position your character in front of it and wait for a few moments. This one briefly stumped me- I had to come back to it after awhile to figure it out, in other words, I was effectively punished for being on the "fake" end of the spectrum. I could harp on how Moon could've given you a few more reasons to hang out in town, or how the clock stops feeling like it matters too soon, or how it contains the most banal fishing minigame yet conceived by man, but it's hard to argue against how elegantly it ties its themes into how it plays. There's a reason why the tone's so somber, and why so many of the characters are trying to reignite some long lost spark. The Sirloin that your Gramby knew and loved is gone, replaced by a ghost wearing his clothes, while she lies in bed, Claire de Lune softly playing in the background. Once that dragon's slain, there's no going back.

Stop browsing Backloggd, and go to bed!

"...それもラブ
...これもラブ"

Moon is probably the most frustrating 5-star game ever made, so I want to get that out of the way before I start this review that this game will most definitely require patience that some people can't afford, and I will say, even for me who considers himself pretty patient, it wore on me a couple of times too.

Anything annoying that can possibly be listed, Moon has. Tedious backtracking, a limited-time system at the start of the game, waiting for events to pan out that can only be triggered in certain timeframes, confusing and sometimes hard to read puzzles, and an economy that sometimes doesn't give you the cash you need to progress so you have to waste time playing a gambling mini-game. (but can only be accessed during the day, of course.). These problems are often listed when people criticize the game and can be factors to why people can put it down. These problems did plague my playthrough of Moon too, so I can't say these aren't valid reasons for why someone may drop the game a few hours in, I totally get it.

Here's the thing though: I can't hate this game even if I tried.

Even with all these problems, I kept coming back to the world of Moon because the game is just so inviting on the face of it. Moon breaks the traditional tropes of RPGs not to tell a darker story, but a brighter narrative. This is the game where you revive cute claymation creatures that the "Hero" of this game slain and you get "Love points" for saving these animals. This is the game where you can help out townfolks and follow along with their side stories to get satisfying outcomes. This is the game where your grandma bakes you cookies every time you visit her while you listen to "Claire De Lune" with your pet dog. This is the game where you can listen to bizarre yet catchy indie rock you bought from a guitarist on the side of the road so you can mute the ruffling grass noise you will constantly hear on your journey. You never know what you're going to get every time you boot up Moon, and Moon kept surprising me over and over again with witty yet lovely little outcomes.

Moon uses its surrealist aspects not to make its narrative more weird or dark like most games do, but to make the game more likable. Its constant enforcement on the themes of love and kindness rubbed off on me harder than any other game has. It's not the most mechanically sound game I've ever played from this genre, but Moon is probably the most likable and charming game I've ever played. Even at it's most frustrating parts, I kept wanting more and more from this weird wonderful little game.

If nothing else, Moon is a game that loves you, and hey, I love this game too.

While Moon has been cited as the inspiration for many experiences, most notably Undertale, it manages to be an experience unlike those games in very nuanced and surprising ways, especially considering how far back a progenitor this game is to video game genre deconstruction tropes and common themes. Normally when a game seeks out to satirise a genre it usually comes off as pessimistic, admittedly this is due to the nature of such satires bringing in meta-commentary about the disparity between the world in a video game and the world outside, but Moon struck me as a very optimistic experience despite its premise.

Yes, it features the classic genre deconstruction trope of classical style protagonists in video games coming off more murderous and psychopathic in a more realistic setting but it's not actually where the game chooses to focus, even that trope is played with in that most of the townspeople mock the hero for their behaviour and regard them as a general nuisance more than anything. When the game pulls back and allows you free exploration you find a remarkable ecosystem of characters with their own sets of routines, special events, and reactions to other events and items in a uniquely impressive way, doubly so in lieu of the time and platform it was originally developed for.

These NPCs are where the real optimism of the game shines through, with how they interact with one another and the player still coming off as lighthearted and, most of all, never meanspirited. There are mean characters for sure, such as the old man in the windmill and the hero but both are part of the protagonist's journey to find love, a journey that is the main focus of the game as you find love you also spread love which is a wholly beautiful and optimistic view on a more grounded and mundane kind of RPG quest. Overall, this game is a wonderful adventure, more point and click adventure style than RPG admittedly, that's well worth visiting even now as a timeless classic that will stay with you long after you reach the ending.