As many other Sci-Fi stories tend to do, Deliver Us The Moon starts with telling you that Earth is on the brink of total destruction, as a result of humanity's mistakes. They set up an energy source on the moon to buy them more time, but when the alleged Blackout happened, that energy source got cut off. Years later, a group of dedicated people managed to send someone up there to find out what's wrong and fix it. That's where you come in. In this story driven game you'll be pushing buttons, forcibly opening metal lids, carrying objects, and doing all sorts of small-scale exploration as you navigate your way through the Moon bases and find out what truly happened there.

The gameplay is mostly puzzle solving, and while none of it are particularly challenging, they're just engaging enough to keep the game going. Most of the puzzles are based on figuring out how to unlock the way to the next area, like finding a keycode for a door, dragging a ladder around in order to reach a higher platform, or looking for power sources to power a door. There's no combat to speak of, although you can technically die in some sections. There's decent variety in the kind of things that you need to do, and there's also vehicle riding and time limit based objectives that adds to the variety. The progression of the puzzles' difficulty is barely noticeable. Still, they serve their purpose well enough.

The main driving force of the game is the story, and it's a pretty good one. Most of it is told through audiologs or holograms depicting certain past events, with decent writing and voice acting performance to back it up. It never got to a point where the game is flooding your senses with texts or dialogue, and every time you get something new, it does feel exciting because there's not too much of them to find in the game. It's a restrained yet effective effort that I appreciate, and the story is well told as a result. At its length (about 8 hours) it neither drags out or suddenly stops.

The game does have some rough edges. The movement can feel a bit too slippery at times, and certain sections later on can feel annoying because of it. I have also encountered 2 bugs that required restarting the game in order to get through.

There is a story worth experiencing here, and thankfully the game does a good enough job of setting it up for success. Consider the Moon delivered.

Reviewed on Jul 29, 2022


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