Game Review: To The Moon

Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.

Stories Without Pages

To the Moon is another piece that I would file under being an interactive story as opposed to a game (to recap, my definition of a game is something with rules that has win and loss conditions).  It is a very linear experience where you only really participate by searching the areas for objects of interest that allow you to progress to the next story point.  It also doesn’t appear to have any sort of branching story or a way to get different endings.  This does give it a strong and consistent narrative experience, but I feel that it does limit itself a bit by doing so.  I’d like to see interactive media of this type use the power of the medium a little bit more in order to expand the art, but overall I was satisfied with how the story was presented.

 

The Mind is Malleable

The basic premise of To the Moon is that technology has discovered a way to view and alter the memories of people.  Instead of using this for some nefarious purpose, the application of this technology that we see is to alter the memories of people to give them more happiness about their lives.  Apparently this memory alteration is permanent, and so to be kind to the patients, it is typically done while they are on their deathbed and are unconscious.  This particular story follows a man who wants to go to the moon and the two specialists who arrive to fulfill his wish.  You get to see them attempt to go about this by gradually stepping back through his memories and looking for his reasoning for going to the moon in the first place.

It unfolds at a fairly predictable pace, with a few twists thrown in that make the story compelling.  Perhaps it is the Chrono Trigger inspired graphics that hearken back to some fond memories of mine that kept me glued, but I could easily see others wishing rather to read a book instead.  It is obvious this was done with minimal production values, as the movement is very grid based and confining, plus the “find objects of significance before moving to the next area” gameplay element feels a bit contrived, but the look is consistent and the music lends itself well to the emotion that it is trying to convey.  The banter between the two specialists is amusing, but there wasn’t really anything that I found to be particularly noteworthy with the writing (not that many games really do).

 

An Inbetween Experience

I’m still not entirely sure where To the Moon occupies in my head.  It was an emotional story that was presented in an interactive entertainment environment, but there was nothing that really made us of the medium.  It could easily have worked in a TV/movie just as easily, but the creators decided to use an interactive method instead.  However, I enjoyed the story and effort was definitely put into the areas that mattered most to enforce that.  I found it to not be particularly accessible (I played it with a gamepad), but it was serviceable.  It feels like they added some “game”-type elements to it in order to have it there to gate the players progression, so any exploration that you get feels like it is forced as you hunt down what you need to advance the plot.  There is also a simple puzzle component that you need to do between each segment, but after a few I figured out the trick and it wasn’t very challenging or interesting after that.  So overall I would have to say that it was a good story that you felt like you were a bit more of a part of due to the slightly interactive nature, but beyond that it left me feeling like I wanted more from it.