This hit me hard
This game hit me hard. It hit me damn hard. There has been precisely two other times in my life which I have felt the way that this game made me feel.
The first was when I lost my Dog to Cancer
The second was.... well... I won't go into that.
To the Moon is not really a video game. Yes, you control a character, but there is no way to "lose" the game. The puzzles are incredibly simple. The controls can be cumbersome. It's not even really a game, more of a visual novel or interactive work of fiction.
It has also made an emotional wreck in ways that virtually nothing else ever has.
STORY:
To the Moon is about a dying man who wishes to go to the moon. Of course, being bed-bound and dying, he cannot achieve that wish, so (this being the future) he hires a specialist team of doctors to alter his memory to give him the life he wanted.
The Catch is, he can't even remember why he wanted to go to the moon, and without knowing why, the doctors can't adjust his memory. They need to travel into his past to find out why. The doctors visit different periods of time in his life, working backwards, to find out his reason and to help him achieve his dream.
It is a devastatingly emotional story, concerning a man and the woman he loves. It's about promises broken and kept, memories lost and the realization that life and love don't have to have a storybook ending to be well lived. The dialog is sharp, funny, and gut-wrenching at times.
I will say this - I actually disagree with the ending of the story. Many don't, I do, but that doesn't diminish how special this game, this story has been to me. The last story that got me anywhere near this worked up was "Grave of the Fireflies". If you've seen that film, know that this game is equal in its emotional punch to that film.
GAMEPLAY:
It would be a little bit much to call this a proper video game - you control a character and you click on things, but you can't die, you can't affect the story outcome and you can't "fail" at any point. The limited puzzles are easy to solve and there's no way you can fail them.
But that doesn't matter. Call this Interactive Fiction if you will, it doesn't diminish its power.
GRAPHICS AND AUDIO:
This game is 16-bit sprite based. The artwork isn't really much to look at most of the time, but it does a good enough job of conveying the scenes and there are one or two absolutely gorgeous scenes that the artstyle really suits. Even if they are sprites, they still convey emotion by the way they talk, the way they pause, the way they turn and look at people with the side of their eyes.
The Audio... I got the soundtrack. I can't listen to it for long. Because I don't want to diminish the impact it has and because if I think about it too long, I start crying.
OVERALL:
Play this game. Or experience this fiction. Just get this. And experience it. If you have even a single shred of humanity left in you, you'll respond to this game and in a big, goddamn way.
It costs 5 bucks on steam right now. I'd have been happy paying 100.
