To the Moon

An appropriately titled game

Why

• The memento puzzles are kinda neat brain teasers
• The premise of the game is an interesting concept

Why Not

• Somewhat incoherent story in a story-driven game
• They don't do as much as they could with the premise
• Nice pixel art ruined by constant filters
• Dialogue can be forced at times

Impressions

I've heard a lot of good things about this one but just don't get it. The premise is cool but underutilized in favour of a focus on characters who just aren't that interesting and their mountains of sad experiences. There's a twist(?) near the end which was somewhat surprising, but when I stepped back to think about it I couldn't think of a reason it needed to be in the story. It didn't affect the main plot in any way; just another bad time on the bad time pile.

It definitely has some positives, I did finish it after all, but I just don't see what makes it special. Without the expectations I had going in I would've just walked away from this thinking 'huh, that was ok I guess' but IMO there are much better narrative experiences in games these days, especially games which're exclusively story-focused like this. I also didn't like the ending, super hand wavy (expected given the 'ideal life creation' premise) but isn't it kinda terrible? Like he had a real life with his wife, sure it was tough but you're just gonna replace that with making yourself an astronaut and your wife is there too but given even less characterisation than she was in the real world?