To the Moon

It is the near future and Johnny is dying. His last wish is to have visited the moon. Not to visit the moon, but to have visited the moon. He wants the memory of stirring the sands of the lunar desert with his feet, of seeing Earth from afar. He doesn’t want to die with regrets.  Fortunately, there exists a technology that, wielded skilfully, can be used to rewrite Johnny’s failing brain with those memories. He may not physically visit the moon, but he’ll go to his death convinced that he has. That is, if all goes to plan.

This is a concept that fascinates me. What are we without memory, or memory we can trust? My life is so dependent on the consistency of my own narrative: every perception and thought is flavoured by what went before. The thought of who I might be or what I might do if I remembered even one thing differently sends chills up my spine.  I could name countless books and films with memory central to the plot, enough even that it might seem as worn a conceit as time travel.  Someone could have made a game about Johnny going back in time to right past wrongs, but it wouldn’t be the same. There’s a poignancy about redeeming one man’s memories rather than altering reality as a whole: a sad, consensual solipsism.

Two memory technicians arrive at Johnny’s clifftop manse, called in by his doctor. He doesn’t have long left. Doctor Watts is an irreverent nerd, whose dialogue consists largely of snide comments and wisecracks. Doctor Rosalene is more sober, often playing the straightwoman to Watts’ jester, though not completely devoid of humour. They’re rarely separated throughout To the Moon and their continual dialogue colours and gives perspective to the narrative. This being a nostalgic love story, Watts’ lack of sentimentality and Rosalene’s pragmatism both serve to dilute a lot of the inevitable schmaltz that the plot throws up. It would be a lonely experience with only one protagonist, I feel, particularly since the bulk of the tale has you invisibly wandering an old man’s bittersweet memories.

Starting from Johnny’s last cogent recollection before taking to his death bed, the Doctors work through his memories in reverse chronology. Linking each memory is an object of significance that acts as a trigger to an earlier situation. These range from a stuffed platypus toy to stinking roadkill. Finding them entails wandering around in the lovingly rendered pixel environments while sweeping the area with your mouse until the looking-glass or speech bubble icons pop up. Each object requires a number of ‘memory links’ for it to unlock. The links are found through a similar process of clicking and exploration. The final step is to complete a simple puzzle that involves flipping tiles to reveal a picture. I had expected more variety in how the memory links are found, since the objects come in so many forms, yet I soon resigned myself to repeating the same process right up until the end of the tale. The search for objects is meditative at best, dull at worst.

One of the reasons I was interested in To the Moon to start with was that it looked like an unusual SNES-style RPG, yet barring one parodic sequence, there’s no turn based battling and no leveling up. Now I realise that kind of thing wouldn’t fit with the style Freebird went for, yet I would have loved some of the set-piece minigames and puzzles to feature more prominently.

Even though the process is lacklustre, To the Moon never wants for feeling and atmosphere. It’s the strongest example of Snesploitation I’ve seen: the pixellated houses, flora, and fauna did their own memory trick on me, transporting me back to playing Chrono Trigger as a child just as the Doctors’ machine transports them through Johnny’s memories. Two frames of sprite animation to depict the clasp of hands might not represent the pinnacle in animation nowadays, but I’ll take it over LA Noire’s uncanniest valley for charm every time. The design of the interiors and fashion also reflects a sort of America that never existed outside of Japanese video games, with massive wood-panelled houses, ugly dresses, and Johnny’s perpetual jeans’n'jumper combo. There’s even a prominent mention of Animorphs. Is it finally the 90′s turn to be cool again?

The music is likewise targeted, though it isn’t always as successful as the graphics. The largely piano-driven tunes remind me of Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy compositions, with catchy arpeggios in a bittersweet tone and the occasional bit of walking bass. The one voiced track, however, was too twee even for To the Moon, though I’m sure many would disagree with me on that.

Johnny’s story is one of love at odds with grim reality. While I was glad that To the Moon avoids a Nolanesque pseudo-intellectual treatment, the cheese is sometimes overpowering. Most of the time I could live with it, yet there were certain scenes that, in concert with cloying melodies, made me feel like Spielberg was injecting me with sugary pathos while John Hughes held me down. Maybe that sounds worse than it is. I could see the same plot being a wildly successful film or even a TV series. I’d probably watch it whenever I felt a bit delicate. The two Doctors are well developed and have a solid dynamic throughout, yet I never really felt a strong sense of Johnny’s personality, despite exploring his mind from dotage to infancy. Perhaps it was intentional to have Johnny be something of a blank slate: interesting things happen to and around him, yet he never seems to have a great deal to say or think, which leaves plenty of room for the player’s imagination to work.

To the Moon is a lovely little game. I can live with its inconsistencies: the lack of variety, the schmaltzy sentimentalism, the occasionally naive writing. I can forgive all that stuff because an irrepressible smile stretched my face when the end credits rolled. To the Moon has heart and a great concept that I hope Freebird will continue to explore in future titles.