To the Moon is an adventure game about using technology to fulfill a dying man's last wish. The game has an excellent story with some genuinely touching moments, but there are hurdles to fully enjoying the entire experience in the form of weak main characters and gameplay elements that feel out of place.

To the Moon was built in RPG Maker XP and it's clearly inspired by the classic JRPGs of the 16-bit era. The player controls two scientists who work for a corporation that specializes in creating artificial realities using technology.

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A Dying Man's Wish

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The story of To the Moon follows Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts, who have been dispatched to the home of a dying man named Johnny Wyles. Johnny's last wish to go to the moon, but no one is exactly sure what he means by this. It's up to Rosalene and Watts to use their technology and enter his memory starting from the end of his life, in order to learn the meaning behind his last request and fulfill it as best they can. The two must experience his life backward and piece together the story from there.

The graphics of To the Moon are basic, but functional for the story the game is trying to tell. The game really stands out in regards to its music, as it has an incredible and often moving soundtrack, which might be the highlight of the entire experience.

Laurel & Hardy

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Rosalene and Watts are easily the weakest elements of To the Moon. They feel like displaced MCU who spend most of the runtime quipping and making pop culture references. To the Moon has some genuinely sad and shocking moments, but these clowns are always on hand to diffuse as much emotion from the scene as they can. This isn't to say that every moment in the game should have been a downer, but a few less Dragon Ball Z and Street Fighter II references would have been welcome.

Dark Side Of The Moon

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In order to travel through Johnny's memories, Rosalene and Watts need to find items that are significant to him around the environment in order to learn the meaning behind his final words. The gameplay loop of To the Moon involves collecting items around the stages and solving some very basic line-up puzzles. To the Moon would have better served with the puzzles removed, as they are a combination of the worst elements of fetch quests (with the player aimlessly wandering around the environment) and busywork. The other extreme would have been to make the puzzles actually present a challenge for the player, but this might have slowed things down and made people frustrated, as the intention of the game is to tell a story.

The other issue with To the Moon is its length, as the game will take roughly four hours to complete. It's up to each player to determine whether a game's length is a major factor in a purchase, so it's worth bringing up for those who are curious about the game.

No Crying Until The End

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It's difficult to talk too much about the story of To the Moon, as doing so would involve spoiling the game, and the short runtime means that there isn't much to spoil. The story of the life of Johnny Wyles is fantastic and even the most stone-hearted gamers will struggle to make it to the end credits without being moved at some point by To the Moon. The game is very much in the camp of titles like Gone Home and Sea of Solitude, in that it offers a short, narrative-based experience that is light on gameplay and heavy on exposition. To the Moon is well-worth experiencing, so long as the player knows what to expect going in.

A Switch copy of To The Moon was purchased by TheGamer for this review. To The Moon is available now for Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Linux, OS X, and PC.

To the Moon

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