海报
The Mirror Lied mini game
艺术设定集
music selections from other Freebird games
Holiday Special Minisode
Holiday Special Minisode 2
Holiday Special Minisode 1 (Mac)
Holiday Special Minisode 2 (Mac)
Holiday Special Minisode 1 (Linux)
Holiday Special Minisode 2 (Linux)
Holiday Special Minisode 1 (Windows, German)
Holiday Special Minisode 1 (Windows, Ukrainian)
Holiday Special Minisode 2 (Windows, German)
Holiday Special Minisode 2 (Windows, Ukrainian)
I think it has been said everything who could be said about this non-game: good visual impact, great soundtrack, touchy story, very poor gameplay.
The only thing I feel I need to add is about the "adultness" of the story. Yes, there are themes like death and illness, but travelling to the moon is a childish wish. Everybody who was born in the '60s '70s or '80s dreamed to grow up as an astronaut an go to the moon. And most of us who had no real chance do become astronauts simply grew out of this. I find difficult for an old man still dreaming a space flight - most of them would wish something more realistic and able-to-purchase, like world tours or a house in the countryside.
And the plot have a serious hole: why John should sue the two doctors if they won't implant the moon travel into his mind? F**k, he is DYING! Is suing someone really an old man's last wish?
I cannot praise the story, music and presentation of this game enough. No other game can make me cry like a baby as much as this one does. I won't go into detail about those, because other reviews have already done it.
Aside from those things, the gameplay is underwhelming at best if not annoying. You only do 2 things: searching for specific items and solving puzzles. And IMO both things can sometimes get tedious and interrupt the story and, therefore, ruin the overall experience. Another thing is that there's no branching story whatsoever. I'm not saying it should have branching story from a design perspective. My point is that the lack of branching story makes most of the gameplay even more pointless. I think I probably would have enjoyed the story even more if there was less gameplay, or if the whole game was just a straight-up movie.
To The Moon is a game where you play as two scientists progressing backwards through a dying man's memories, trying to alter his life and motivations so that he can have the experience of his dying wish: to go to the moon. Along the way you also learn about his complicated past with his wife, friends, and family.
As a video game, To The Moon is awful. You have to walk around every level trying to find which random object you can interact with or which specific location you have to stand on to get a point towards progressing to the next level. Then you have to do this same boring puzzle at the end of every level, which neither makes sense in the story or gameplay. Just bad mechanics all around.
However, as a story, it is very well done, and this is where To The Moon really shines. Although the objects that count for points feel rather arbitrary at first, the devs do a really good job of stringing them together across levels, so there will be random moments where you say "oh, that's where this random item came from!" And it is evident the writers put a lot of thought and effort into setting up the life of the main character and connecting it across just a handful of moments, as well as designing the environments around the memories (like how the sprites of less memorable characters are fuzzy and less detailed). Some of the plot was a bit cheesy or just bad, but overall it was very well done.
7/10 would cry again
The Game is pretty good and it's worth the money. One problem I had was that I was forced to disable DEP on Windows 10 otherwise the game shutdown immediantly after start. I hope this gets fixed.
As many have already stated, there really is scarcely any gameplay to be found within this "game." It could best be described as a console-style RPG that had virtually all the gameplay stripped out of it, leaving you with just walking, clicking through dialogue, and occasionally clicking on random objects to advance the plot. Basically, imagine someone played through FF6 and decided to make an entire game out of the part where Celes tries to kill herself. Which is not necessarily a bad thing....
But it does create another issue. Aside from Planescape: Torment, there are really very few games out there whose writing is strong enough to support the whole gameplay experience by itself. Game mechanics are tremendously useful at reinforcing narrative elements (as in Planescape) or simply helping the player elide weak spots in the writing itself. Goofy dialogue is much more readily forgiven when you're in the midst of awesome game-play. When you strip everything else away, any flaws in the writing and story-telling are laid-bare to the world. So you'd better bring it....
So does To the Moon bring it? Mainly yes. When all is said and done, this is an engaging, memorable, and touching experience. It's also a somewhat amateurish one - though that itself is a rich source of its charm. Clearly the makers poured a lot of love and themselves into the game. They also poured a lot of maudlin sap. The sense of melancholy that permeates the game can at times be oppressive, and you get the feeling that the one goal the makers had when they set out to create the game was to make the player cry at all costs. Nevertheless, if you don't mind a game almost physically reaching through the screen to consciously jerk at your tear-ducts, and don't mind the fact that there really isn't much game to actually be played, then you'll find To the Moon to be well worth the few hours and dollars it takes to experience it.
