In Driftmoon, you wander the world, helping people along the way, as you follow the trail of your missing father. Most progression is through talking people through their problems, solving puzzles, and finding things. There are lots of fights, but no grinding, and all attackers have a clear agenda. The worldbuilding is...odd, giving the game a quirky humor, but it is charming rather than sarcastic. Cons: You can move the camera, but only slightly. This drove me a bit nuts. This is a linear game with no randomness, if that is not your thing. Fighting. The special move animations are just okay. There is no way to coordinate with your team, and your companions frequently don't get the message that combat has started. Pros: Modding. Mods can be installed simply by clicking on them in the main menu. I tried the Sister mod, which allows you to play as a female (more or less--a few text references were unchanged), and it was as simple as starting the game. Characters. Even the briefest NPC encounters were filled with personality. Items. There is a lot of well-written text in this game. Each item has a backstory. Lots of books are around. (But not one word on why you live on a moon.) Mood: A silly background allows serious use of black-and-white morality, which surprisingly gives the story a lot of weight. Your character is a hero instead of some thieving jerk people inexplicably trust.
You know, I absolutely loved this game. I had never heard of it before GOG, somehow, and I picked it up on a whim. It is just oodles of fun. Your character is at a training camp for Psychic kids. Each level is the mind of another character, where you fight against their neuroses, hidden memories, or other mental blocks. There's a little bit of puzzle-solving and a lot of jumping and running around in cool environments. There is a lot of exploring you can do on the side and lots of collectibles to find. (Make sure you find them early or you may get caught up in ENDGAME, which is surprisingly long, and be unable to go fetch them.) Meanwhile, in the actual storyline, your character is constantly learning new tricks that make moving around even more fun. This is a little weird because it makes most of the game feel like a tutorial, and then THE END happens. The difficulty ramps up a LOT in THE END. One jump in particular was very hard for me. I tried it off and on for two days and finally had to watch a Lets Play on Youtube very carefully and memorize the exact movement. There was a patch released recently that decreases the difficulty of this spot. It appears to be only available unofficially for the GOG version. Whether you have it or not, it is possible to complete the game. Just keep trying!
I've decided to ramble on a bit, so allow me to sum up in advance. A score of 3 is considered average (not bad) in my scale. This is a divisive game that some people will love and some loathe depending on which elements are important to them. Puzzles: 0/5 Story: 3/5 Characters: 4/5 Dialogue: 1/5 Art/Style/Music: 4/5 Controls: 3/5 The only "game" in the traditional sense you will find here is a series of sliding block puzzles. They require exactly no thought to complete. If you don't look at the screen at all and click randomly, the solution will eventually happen. (I did this at one point...it broke the game a little, as my move tally was thereafter listed as "infinity.") The puzzles are not integrated at all with the story and feel out of place. The story is the main point of playing. You are a technician at a dying-wish-fulfillment charity (or company?). Your job is to alter the distant memories of a dying man so that, in his more recent memories, he would have chosen a different course for his life. You can probably guess where the dying man wants to go from the title, but the game concerns itself most with why. Most of the game is spent watching scenes from the man's life. The story is well-arranged with time moving back to allow us to wonder about mysteries that are cleared up in earlier memories. However, the story is too neat for the "wandering through memories" theme. The only events in previous memories are those that relate to later memories. It gives the impression that this is a very shallow man to whom nothing at all of importance happened for decades at a time. Since the game is about realizing his character traits, it is too bad he has so few. At one point early on, you get to pick which of the two technicians you will control for one scene, but the game switches your control to the other character sometimes. Unfortunately, this is the only choice you can make during the game. You can choose between things like, "Yes, I want to continue," or "No, I want to wait." If you choose wait, you can stare awkwardly at the screen until you decide it's time to choose again. This is not really a choice. There are no dialogue options while you watch the man's life. You can usually not even move your character around. You will just click, click, click, click, click, for a few hours until the game is over. You have to click exactly on the speech balloons to progress the dialogue, which is annoying because clicking is required very frequently, and the dialogue balloons move around a lot. You will not look at and enjoy the scenery or watch the little pixellated characters emoting while viewing the man's life. You will be watching your mouse cursor instead, to make sure it is in the right place for the clicking. The story of the game is very emotional. I felt while playing that I had suddenly stumbled upon the gamer's version of the Lifetime movie. You will end up liking the old man and remembering him fondly, even though he, and the rest of the characters, use the word choices and cadence of college-age boys, despite being scientists, doctors, astronauts, cleaning women, old ladies, little girls... The two main characters are "funny." Allow me to demonstrate: ha. You will also like the man's wife, who is a nicely mysterious figure. She has a not-too-rare disorder which you may have heard of. The characters in the game refer to only in indirect terms as if its name must not be uttered. Okay? On the whole, I'm afraid this was not a great game, even though it seems to have won some awards. The uninspired puzzles were uncomfortably mingled with the story, which, although an interesting concept, was hampered by insufficient scope and flat, unconvincing dialogue. The playable characters were juvenile and annoying, a strange contrast with their characterization as professional humanitarian workers. On the other hand, the game does a lot with its music and within the limitations of its art style. The color choice is evocative and suitable for the changing moods of the game. For me, these things are not important enough in a game to improve the score. For many people, they are the most important elements. If that is you, you could end up loving it. Me, I think it was worth the $2 I paid for it in the 5 for $10 sale, but I do not intend to recommend it to friends.
