#oneaday Day 755: WHY CAN’T I HOLD ALL THESE FEELS

I properly broke down and cried at a video game tonight. That’s never, ever happened before. I’ve had games that have brought a tear to my eye, games that have profoundly affected me emotionally and made me think about them long after I’ve finished playing them, but I can usually hold back the tears and prevent myself from looking too foolish and/or compromising my hairy, manly exterior.

This was not the case with Freebird Games’ To The Moon, an independently-developed, narrative-heavy game created with popular game making software RPG Maker XP, whose final scenes utterly destroyed me. (In a good way.)

To call To The Moon an RPG is to do it a complete injustice, as it’s not one, despite appearances, not to mention the software with which it was created. It most closely resembles a point and click adventure with Chrono Trigger-style top-down 16-bitesque visuals, but that, too does the game an injustice. In fact, discussing game mechanics with regard to To The Moon is almost irrelevant — it is a story first and foremost, albeit an interactive one in which you, the player, participate.

I shall try and minimise spoilers in this post, but in order to understand some of the things that are interesting about this game, you at least need to know the basic concept. So here it is.

It’s the future. Exactly when is never specified, nor does it matter. What does matter is the existence of a technology which allows for the rewriting of memories. This is used by our heroes of the hour, Drs. Watts and Rosalene, in order to grant the last wishes of the dying — at least, so far as they remember in their final moments. Their patient in To The Moon is an old man named Johnny, who is slowly losing his grip on life. He wants to go to the moon. It sounds like an impossible, inexplicable wish, and much of the story revolves around understanding this desire and attempting to make it come true — at least so far as his memories are concerned. That’s all I’ll say on the plot.

Unlike the “sit back and read” nature of Katawa Shoujo, To The Moon sees you directly controlling the game’s two protagonists. The nature of the game’s story, however, sees additional layers being added on top of the traditional “player-protagonist” relationship. Drs. Watts and Rosalene work their way through Johnny’s memories largely as invisible, relatively passive observers. Meanwhile, the player is sitting another layer back from these two, observing their reactions to everything that is going on, and reaching their own understanding of the events that are unfolding. It’s a really interesting narrative technique, and the doctors’ glib comments throughout are a perpetual source of dry amusement in an otherwise fairly serious narrative.

It’s not a difficult game to play — there are a few puzzles, but they’re relatively incidental — nor is it a long one. But that doesn’t matter — the important thing is the story and how it is presented. And somehow, through some sort of magical combination of 2D pixel art and a gorgeous, melancholy soundtrack, To The Moon manages to provide an incredibly intense emotional experience.

If you’re anything like me, you may not feel it at the beginning, but by golly you will feel it at the end. If you have taken the time to invest yourself in the setting, characters and narrative, you will likely find it a profoundly powerful experience. You may not find yourself full-on weeping at it as I did, but it would take a hard-hearted soul to be completely unaffected.

It’s for experiences like this that I, personally, play games.