This review contains spoilers
To The Moon was one of those games I've heard about here and there before playing it, more than most other RPG Maker games I've been playing over the past few months. It makes perfect sense why: a well-made heart-wrencher of an indie game right at the beak of the indie boom is a recipe for acclaim. So here I come 12 years late to the party, thinking this is just some quaint story that handles autism well and seeing the game has spawned 2? 3? 4? 5 (kinda) sequels????? And one of them is called Im-im-IMPOSTER Factory??? What could be going on here! Frankly, I'm still not sure what's up with Imposter Factory, but To The Moon has left me very interested to find out.
Gonna be honest, my first play session was rough. The WASD keys did nothing and the game prompted me to click to interact with stuff... a point and click RPG Maker game? A lot of devs have wrangled a lot of different things out of the engine, but this I was really unsure about. Having to wait to see my character trawl across the screen had atrocious feel as opposed to just moving them manually. After about 20 minutes of playing, I put it down for the night, wanting to return but feeling unsure if I could stand the control scheme...
...then 2 minutes into my second session I realized the manual controls were mapped to the arrow keys. Oopsies!
Still, with all that said of my misleading interpretation of the game feel, it's not like there's much game here! Even compared to many of its RPG Maker contemporaries, the gameplay here is incredibly straightforward. Even during the short "exploration" segments, I don't think I ever had to double-back because I missed something, large in part thanks to the mouse cursor showing you interactable objects. There's a tile flipping puzzle repeating more times than really necessary, though one that's too brief to cause any pain, a sparse few segments that change up the gameplay a bit, aaaaand... thats about it. Everything here is laser focused on the story.
Which is perfectly fine by me, because the writing here is wonderful. It explores the relationship of couple John and River in a montage of memories spanning their entire lives. Each scene offers a unique perspective into their relationship with absolutely beautiful dialogue that manages to feel extremely real. Bolstering it is the incredibly novel way in which their lives are shown —reverse chronologically—watching the layers of their relationship slowly peeled back to reveal what brough them to where you saw them previously in the story. It's truly hard to overstate how well developed John and River feel, and how compelling it is find out more of the mystery behind who they really are in such a genuine way. My only real wish is that more time was spent with the older versions of the characters, which is by design the focus of the earlier portions of the game, but the stuff I felt was ultimately the most compelling. Peppered in is some commentary from the scientists scrubbing through these memories, which despite a select few bits of writing that feel distinctly early 2010s, remains charming and complements the emotional core well.
I know I added a spoiler warning for the review, but considering how much of a story focused game it is, I want to talk in depth about the ending from here on out. Second spoiler warning! It's genuinely a story worth experiencing and is on sale on Steam for like $2 if you're reading this within 4 days after I write this... or y'know... whenever there's a Steam sale... but you do you!
The reverse chronological playback of memories takes up the first act of the game's labeled three acts, which feels odd considering the second act lasts all of 15-20 minutes. As the game rockets towards its climax, it starts to focus more on the logistics and the ethics of tampering with memories. The emotional core is never lost, but I myself felt a bit lost as the game tried to explain some of its timey whimey (memory schmemory?) to me and it just kind of... mostly making sense I guess? There's a part towards the very end where one of the doctors suddenly starts making decisions without the input of the other doctor, and the game frames it as a heel turn of sorts. Of course, it ends up that she had a very specific plan of altering memories such that everything would turn out well. What was the plan? Um. Erm. Don't worry about it.
—Hi, Poochy about to post this here. Let me bundle my kinda-nitpicky comments on the game together by mentioning that for some reason the sole "beat the game" achievement simply does not seem to unlock. Weird! Good thing I don't care about achievements! Anyways—
Truly, don't worry about it. I wasn't worrying as the final scene played out before my eyes. Watching John and River fulfill their dreams of heading out to the moon, seeing their rocket pierce the gleaming sunset. Them getting their last moments of happiness together, at this point multiple lifetimes of memories. Hearing John's heart monitor steadily beep in the background, hanging on it its last moments out of sheer willpower. Everything is just as it should be.
Then, his heartbeat goes flat.
Then, credits.
Everything is just as it should be.
Gonna be honest, my first play session was rough. The WASD keys did nothing and the game prompted me to click to interact with stuff... a point and click RPG Maker game? A lot of devs have wrangled a lot of different things out of the engine, but this I was really unsure about. Having to wait to see my character trawl across the screen had atrocious feel as opposed to just moving them manually. After about 20 minutes of playing, I put it down for the night, wanting to return but feeling unsure if I could stand the control scheme...
...then 2 minutes into my second session I realized the manual controls were mapped to the arrow keys. Oopsies!
Still, with all that said of my misleading interpretation of the game feel, it's not like there's much game here! Even compared to many of its RPG Maker contemporaries, the gameplay here is incredibly straightforward. Even during the short "exploration" segments, I don't think I ever had to double-back because I missed something, large in part thanks to the mouse cursor showing you interactable objects. There's a tile flipping puzzle repeating more times than really necessary, though one that's too brief to cause any pain, a sparse few segments that change up the gameplay a bit, aaaaand... thats about it. Everything here is laser focused on the story.
Which is perfectly fine by me, because the writing here is wonderful. It explores the relationship of couple John and River in a montage of memories spanning their entire lives. Each scene offers a unique perspective into their relationship with absolutely beautiful dialogue that manages to feel extremely real. Bolstering it is the incredibly novel way in which their lives are shown —reverse chronologically—watching the layers of their relationship slowly peeled back to reveal what brough them to where you saw them previously in the story. It's truly hard to overstate how well developed John and River feel, and how compelling it is find out more of the mystery behind who they really are in such a genuine way. My only real wish is that more time was spent with the older versions of the characters, which is by design the focus of the earlier portions of the game, but the stuff I felt was ultimately the most compelling. Peppered in is some commentary from the scientists scrubbing through these memories, which despite a select few bits of writing that feel distinctly early 2010s, remains charming and complements the emotional core well.
I know I added a spoiler warning for the review, but considering how much of a story focused game it is, I want to talk in depth about the ending from here on out. Second spoiler warning! It's genuinely a story worth experiencing and is on sale on Steam for like $2 if you're reading this within 4 days after I write this... or y'know... whenever there's a Steam sale... but you do you!
The reverse chronological playback of memories takes up the first act of the game's labeled three acts, which feels odd considering the second act lasts all of 15-20 minutes. As the game rockets towards its climax, it starts to focus more on the logistics and the ethics of tampering with memories. The emotional core is never lost, but I myself felt a bit lost as the game tried to explain some of its timey whimey (memory schmemory?) to me and it just kind of... mostly making sense I guess? There's a part towards the very end where one of the doctors suddenly starts making decisions without the input of the other doctor, and the game frames it as a heel turn of sorts. Of course, it ends up that she had a very specific plan of altering memories such that everything would turn out well. What was the plan? Um. Erm. Don't worry about it.
—Hi, Poochy about to post this here. Let me bundle my kinda-nitpicky comments on the game together by mentioning that for some reason the sole "beat the game" achievement simply does not seem to unlock. Weird! Good thing I don't care about achievements! Anyways—
Truly, don't worry about it. I wasn't worrying as the final scene played out before my eyes. Watching John and River fulfill their dreams of heading out to the moon, seeing their rocket pierce the gleaming sunset. Them getting their last moments of happiness together, at this point multiple lifetimes of memories. Hearing John's heart monitor steadily beep in the background, hanging on it its last moments out of sheer willpower. Everything is just as it should be.
Then, his heartbeat goes flat.
Then, credits.
Everything is just as it should be.