Retrospective 2021

God Damn was this year bad. 2020 deserves a big fat F; 2021, I’ll be more lenient and give a D-. Yes, we’re still dealing with Covid-19. In fact, it’s probably gone endemic, meaning that we’re never going to get rid of it now, and we might just have to learn to exist with it. Perhaps we’ll even reach a point where we treat it like just another disease and not the cause of constant stress and fear that it is now. And hey, we have vaccines against it, and the research in vaccine science over the last two years has opened doors towards treatments for other diseases that have been troublesome for decades, if not longer. As an example, we’re allegedly making progress in the fight against cancer, with some of the discoveries made as of late, with this crisis to thank for it.

Unfortunately, idiots reared their heads and made everything worse for everyone else. The less I say about those, and all the flavors they come in, the better. The people who are pushing back against anything that could help in this crisis, due to wrong beliefs, unbridled selfishness, or a complete disregard in science. But I really should move away from that topic.

Well, I once again didn’t catch Covid-19 all year, and I worked most of the year at my current job (I had 6 weeks off during winter due to a post-Holidays confinement decreed by Quebec’s government – I hope this won’t happen again in 2022). And while we’re not entirely back to normalcy (which is impossible, this is the new normal; the best we can do is a better new normal), things are looking up and I’m carefully optimistic. Heck, I went to see something like 4 or 5 films in theaters this year.

Blog-wise, I think I’ve never reviewed this many games in a single year before. Two sets of Quick Reviews, which both covered nearly 30 games each, made that possible. In fact, I reviewed a grand total of 65 games this year – more than one a week! One thing I like is that I’ve moved on to a new form of format where longer reviews are split in sections, and I try to make a good point about the thing being reviewed in each of these sections. I’ve found that it makes reading them easier, more pleasant, and also more interesting. I hope you agree.

And since it’s the first article of the year, I’m due for a retrospective on everything reviewed since January 2021.

My favorite reviews of 2021

I didn’t have a lot of reviews that stood out from the others, so I’m going by some of the ones I liked writing the most and why.

10. Disneyland Adventures. This one, and the next two, are reviews that were written in January where I desperately needed to pass the time, and as a result I put a lot of care into fully playing these games and covering them through and through. Visiting this virtual Disneyland wasn’t perfect, but it definitely helped while I was stuck at home in confinement.

9. American Truck Simulator. I had already played that one a lot before covering it, and I had fun writing about it. In fact, I returned to it now and then during the year. I’m happy to say that I now have two garages, more employees, and a steadier stream of in-game revenue, meaning that the business is improving nicely!

8. Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan. While this is a shorter review, I loved discussing this game, the history of its developer, and promoting it – anything to talk about indie studios from Quebec!

7. Portal. The downside to Quick Reviews is that it usually doesn’t lead to reviews that stand out in style. As a result, very few of those make it to my “fave reviews of the year” list. However, it does allow me to play games I had been looking forward to for a while, and Portal is one of them.

6. WarGames. The only movie review of the year, and one that I felt was extremely interesting. Not only is it the second fiction movie ever made about video games, it’s also a very interesting foray into hacking as it was presented in the 1980s. I feel it was a great study.

5. Paper Mario. I swear that game had been like eyeing me forever in the memory of my Wii’s SD card. It was grand time I reviewed it, as it was the last Mario RPG that I needed to cover on the blog. What will be this year’s anniversary review? Even I don’t know yet…

4. Untitled Goose Game. Not much to say aside that, as the final review of the year, I wanted to end on a funny note, which this game perfectly matched. I came up with the surprise ending (of the goose showing up to steal part of the review) on the fly.

3. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator. While I’m glad to be done with everything FNAF, I am glad I ended on that note: A review of the sixth game that covered all the bases and actually dropped a lot of references to the series’ lore and overarching plot. Seriously, go back to read it, and try to spot everything that’s a reference to an element of the series or an acknowledgement of some secrets in that very game.

2. Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. While not as awesome as the game that preceded it, American Nightmare was an interesting chapter in the Alan Wake series. I really love what I did in that review, constantly masking the name of the villain, as the game itself did. I couldn’t skip a chance to do the same with every utterance of Mister Sχρατχh – dammit, it’s doing it again!

1. Alan Wake. Another one of those games I had touched long before I actually reviewed it, and it was actually getting more and more tempting every year. Well, I finally gave it a go this year. I’m surprised at how good of a hunch that was – not only was a new edition of this game announced while I was posting the review, but an actual sequel was also announced for release (hopefully) in 2023. I was inspired to name some sections in that large review (5 parts!) with song titles due to the game’s own use of an eclectic soundtrack comprising a lot of famous songs.

The 10 worst games reviewed on the blog in 2021

10. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Okay, full disclosure, this one isn’t actually all that bad, but I could barely find any interest in the game proper – a textbook example of how everything around a game is more interesting to me than the game itself. However, the games I reviewed afterwards – Sister Location and Pizzeria Simulator – redeemed that.

9. Size Matters. I maintain that there is an excellent idea behind this one; you shrink, and must hurriedly create an antidote before it’s too late. However, the controls and camera made it very poor in execution, something that I still wish gets corrected down the line.

8. Rock ‘N’ Roll Defense. In a year where so many amazing games were reviewed, it’s unfortunate that a fair title that happened to be someone’s first game would make it to this list. It’s not bad, but it pales in comparison to everything else… well, other than the next entries here.

7. Idling to Rule the Gods. If there is one thing I would change about this year, it would be to make myself never touch this damn game on which I’ve wasted entirely too much time. Sure, that’s the nature of clickers… they’re addictive. I made it a goal for 2022 to stop playing it. I’ve removed it from my Steam library and account already.

6. The Hat Man: Shadow Ward. If you want to talk about games that feel dry, this one is a contender. It had very little of interest, any scares repeated themselves, the story was pretty bland, and for a horror game it failed to even produce a single chilling of the spine.

5. F.E.X. (Forced Evolution Experiment). I should have covered that one during October, I still think so. The basic idea isn’t half bad, but it’s presented rather blandly, and much of the game is one annoyance after the next. I can still remember the sounds made by the monsters, that’s how often I heard them while I tested F.E.X..

4. Face it – a game to fight inner demons. So little of this game stands out in my mind… doesn’t help that I reviewed it in February. Still, I remember again how poor the design was, and how much of the psychological commentary felt tacked on. Carl Jung's works can inspire some pretty fun pieces of media (they inspired a few TOOL songs, as an example); this isn’t one of those.

3. Blockstorm. One peculiar aspect of this year is that I covered a lot of games where the focus was on multiplayer. Most of those games also had single-player options, so they weren’t dead in the water. This one, however, was long past its prime, and I never got to experience much of it, although I did try. Some ideas here sound pretty fun; imagine a shooter in a blocky world where everything can be customized or destroyed. Good luck finding any players nowadays, though!

2. Wasted Pizza. Did I ever manage to actually play this one? Let me check… Ah, right, I couldn’t! In this case, it’s literally because nobody else was playing it, there was no single-player, there was no way to do anything while waiting in a lobby… oh, and the game broke in all kinds of weird ways if you tried to leave a lobby you were waiting in. That says a lot about the actual quality of the product… but at least, I got further than…

1. Offensive Combat: Redux! Yeah, that was the biggest pile of crap this year. I could not even reach the main menu – the game simply couldn’t connect. I had a hunch that what I was gonna get wouldn’t be glorious, but I had no idea that I would literally get… well, nothing! I’ll repeat myself: If the game literally does not fucking work, pull it from the store!

The 10 best games reviewed on the blog in 2021

For the record, I reviewed so many great games this year that I seriously considered making a Top 15 instead. This was a very tough list to make, and it almost broke my heart not to include some of the titles I chose to leave out. Putting these ten games in order was tough, as well.

10. Grow Home. A charming game by a Ubisoft sub-studio, which captured my attention for a lot longer than I thought it would. Excellent replay value.

9. Untitled Goose Game. So damn hilarious, but also super well-made and offers a lot of challenge to those who wish to complete its various tasks.

8. To the Moon. I’ve seen firsthand now why people say it’s one of the best RPG Maker games ever made, and I wholeheartedly agree!

7. Skullgirls 2nd Encore. Between the very awesome look of that game and the gameplay that’s just as awesome… well, I was certainly tempted to play it over and over!

6. GRIS. A lot of games this year were fantastic visual experiences, and this title deserves all the accolades it received after its release. It’s drop-dead gorgeous, and a lot of fun to play on top of that.

5. Portal. I had been repeatedly told of how great this game was, so I was hoping to try it eventually – well, that time came this year, and while it did not reach the high expectations, it came close enough to deserve a place here!

4. Alan Wake. I dedicated five friggin’ parts to this game because I had so much to say, and it speaks volume that in spite of the flaws I found I felt it more than deserved its place among the best of the year. It is genuinely an excellent experience that I recommend, especially for those discovering the series after hearing the announcement for the upcoming sequel.

3. Journey. A gorgeous, meditative, contemplative experience in which the friends you make are but temporary, befitting the theme that the journey matters more than the destination. That is another game from this list that received numerous accolades on release, and after playing it, I could see it deserved every one of them.

2. Layers of Fear. This one might surprise, as it’s an unusual choice for a high spot on the list. Well, it’s not just one of the best games I played this year, it’s one of the best horror games I’ve ever played, period. Every single section worked perfectly. A must-try if you’ve never heard of it before.

1. Paper Mario. Am I biased towards Mario? Hopefully not. But as far as great gaming experiences go, Paper Mario has long been considered one of the best Mario games, and deserve s that reputation. I was happy I could finally cover it this year.

The 10 goals I had for the blog this year, and whether they were accomplished

10. An anniversary review – I did it! It was Paper Mario, with its 5 parts published throughout July.

9. Two sets of Quick Reviews – I did it! However, while it means that I reviewed a TON of games this year, I didn’t publish a lot of full-length reviews, and both sets were long to get through, almost exhausting after a while. I’ve realized that two sets like this is too much in a year. I’ll dial it back for 2022… but Quick Reviews aren’t going away, rest assured.

8. A redesign of the site – Not achieved. Alas.

7. Update the other bonus pages of the blog – Only semi-achieved. I’ve kept the Archive updated, though sometimes with some lateness. I don’t remember if I actually made any changes to the other pages. However, I had the great idea to create an Index page in July, and I did. It’s getting updated alongside the Archive, and makes it a lot easier for someone to search whether I reviewed a game.

6. A Halloween Special – sort of achieved? I didn’t do one big review for Halloween or two reviews to fill out October, however I spent the month doing horror-themed Quick Reviews and that was a pretty decent trade-off.

5. Produce at least one full video for YouTube – I haven't done one. That said, I did publish something over there – a video where I, finally, get rid of two DVDs I should have thrown in the trash years ago. You can see it here. However, I don’t think it counts as a full video.

4. More reviews of Ubisoft games – only partly achieved. I finally covered something I owned on UPlay, but it was a single game – Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, to be precise. (Grow Home is a Ubisoft game, sort of, but I don’t know if it would count for this point. Even if it did, it would be just two games this year…)

3. An M-Rated Month – Nope, didn't do that. I still have a lot of M-Rated games in my collection and I should probably look into playing and covering some of them.

2. A review of a mainline Pokémon game – Not achieved. However, I’m fairly confident I could do it in 2022.

1. More streaming - ?????. I honestly don’t know whether I actually did stream more this year. In points, it feels like I did, but I’m not entirely sure. It would be interesting if I were to set a schedule for myself. Other than that, well… I can always try to do this again this year, seeing as I’ve been building an audience.

And now, 10 goals for 2022

10. Do a set of Quick Reviews. It’s pretty much guaranteed by this point; all I know is that I won’t be doing two.

9. Redesign the blog. Promised multiple times, failed multiple times. I have no idea if it will ever happen – but I’ll be happy if it does happen. I might even be able to get some help for it.

8. Update the other pages of the blog – I’ve got a few things to correct in my Archive and Index pages (namely: Edit every single link so it opens in a new tab), but the other… er, other pages need some love as well.

7. A review of a South Park game. Between games for my reviews in December, I picked up The Stick of Truth again, so I might cover that one sometime in the year.

6. Review the two LEGO Harry Potter games. In part due to stuff revolving around the Harry Potter franchise that’s been going on as of late (…since 2020, even), I feel like these games are becoming more and more of a “Better do them and be done with them” sort of deal.

5. A list of all the video game movies reviewed on the blog so far, ranked worst to best. It would include all the VGFlicks reviews, but also the reviews of films seen in theaters and not covered in greater detail yet. This one is all but guaranteed to happen, as I’ve already started working on it.

4. More reviews of Ubisoft games. Yes, once again. I definitely could, too. Actually, I think I might do a Rayman Month; that might do it.

3. A full month of Pokémon reviews. I’ve been meaning to cover Pokémon X for a while now, but I might also throw in a VGFlicks of a Pokémon movie, since I reviewed the first one several years ago and should cover the second one.

2. To grow the community around Planned All Along. I’ve already taken some steps towards this goal, now here’s hoping that I can do it better this year.

1. Make a video for YouTube. Yet another thing I keep promising, yet I never really get around to it. Maybe 2022 will allow it.

Another month with nothing but VGFlicks reviews may also be in the cards, but look at the number of theme months I’m trying to include this time – it might not be doable.

Another yearly thing I do with these retrospectives is to select a very small number of games to remove from my collection, with knowledge that I likely won’t ever play them again, even if I originally gave them a positive review; and after those are taken out, I go through all the games I reviewed on Steam and make a new list of favorites, which are games I would gladly play over and over – like a mini-collection of games I would never remove.

The five games I’ve removing from the collection this year

Castle Story

EM: Shader Attack

Out There Somewhere

ReThink

Tower of Guns

The new list of favorites, with roughly 1/5th of the Steam games reviewed so far

That’s it for this year’s retrospective. See you around for the next articles.

Quick Review: Untitled Goose Game

Once more, let’s close a tough year with a very funny game.

Freedom (and mischief) lies beyond the gate!

Developed by House House, published by Panic and released to PC on September 23rd, 2020 (and released to other platforms, the Switch most famously, the year prior), Untitled Goose Game is about a Goose… who’s an utter asshole. The avian, a flightless one, has only one (apparent) goal: To wreak havoc. For this, in every area, you have a to-do list with objectives, all of which you must complete in order to open the path to the next area. The game itself is described as an adventure game, but there is heavy focus on puzzles (as you must use the items around in order to achieve said objectives), and stealth. See, most villagers really hate the goose for some reason, so it has to be sneaky.

Nope! The radio is mine now!

This is one of those games that are, on PC at least, designed with unusual controls on purpose. You left-click somewhere on the screen to make the Goose waddle there, or double-click and it’ll run there instead. Hold down the wheel to zoom out, which is useful to see what the humans are doing in the vicinity. Right-click to grab an item with the beak. Press the left Tab to check the to-do list. Hold Crtl to bend down, as items on the ground cannot be picked up otherwise. Hold X to flap the wings, which serves very little purpose other than to annoy and attract attention. Last but not least, press Space to HONK! You got that right: A dedicated HONK! button.

What? Geese need to shop too!

The game is spread across four “levels”, each with its to-do list. Some quests are pretty simple, others are tough; each area has a “collect X items and bring them to place Y” mission. There are paths between the levels that you can open to create shortcuts to previous areas. And, let’s be clear: You have to fulfill every objective to move forward. No skipping. You know the meme, “peace was never an option”? Yeah. You have to scare the boy into a phone booth, drop a bucket on a guy’s head, and make a human destroy a vase. You are, indeed, a horrible Goose, and there’s no denying your nature. There’s no pacifist run possible here.

This sign can't stop me because I can't read!

Even after completing the main story (which packs a nice twist, for the record), you unlock multiple new pages of to-dos. Most of those involve interacting with items across levels. One mission involves putting on a show in the fourth area, with an item that can be put on the Goose in the third. You also have speed challenges, where you have to complete each original to-do list on a timer, with the ringing of church bells denoting when the time has run out.

Hide the duck statue out of sight, then take its place.
She'll only find out once it's too late (or she sees you
while you're doing this)

Ring the bell while the guy is drinking.
You know you want to. No, wait - steal the
soap! Or take the duck's place again!

This entire package of comedy and mischief is delivered through an utterly adorable art style, cute and pretty, with just enough detail. The music is also cleverly applied, consisting solely of a piano that doesn’t play one precise track, and instead accompanies or “reacts” to what’s going on. It’s a trend of old cartoons that I didn’t think would translate well to a video game, and yet this one pulls it off. Also good to mention is a two-player mode, added on September 23rd, 2020, where a second goose with a redder beak can be controlled to come and aid the first in making the villagers’ lives Heck.

I am allowed one (1) wholesome moment that
actually fulfills a quest in this adventure.

I can hardly think of a flaw in this game – it’s all brilliantly executed. It’s comedic, it’s plenty fun, the puzzles are interesting, and there’s some genuine challenge, especially in the post-game quests. The final to-do in the main story is a perfect closer to the story, as well. It’s fun to interact with the humans, even though most of them are dumber than bags of rocks. Okay, perhaps it’s a bit on the short side, even while taking into account all of the secondary missions. I would have taken more, but as it is, it’s pretty great entertainment. I recomm

Hey! Get back here with the end of my review, you little bastHONK!

Untitled Goose Game HONK! is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD, but currently for 9.99$ due to the Winter Sale-HONK! You come back here!

Quick Review: TSIOQUE

This princess don’t need no savior!

I don't care if the wizard said not to make
noise. I'm gonna, because he's a meanie.

Developed by OhNoo Studio and Smiled, published by the former, and released on November 7th, 2018, TSIOQUE (pronounced “chiock”) is about a young princess in a difficult situation. Her mother the Queen left to hunt the monsters endangering the Kingdom, leaving the castle in charge of the court wizard. He immediately took over and transformed it into a dark place, full of demonic guards, and imprisoned Princess Tsioque into the dungeon. It’s up to her to escape and flee, always while being careful with her every step… for the wizard, hard at work on his nebulous plans, requests the utmost silence.

Reminder: This very young princess is fighting
some guy that throws other soldiers at her.

This game follows the formula of point-and-click titles: Look around a room to pick up items, make items interact with the surroundings, solve puzzles to progress. The difference, here, is that most of the game is done without dialogue. Some characters talk during cutscenes, especially the wizard and the framing device of the story book, with the tale told in rhyme. However, no word is ever said by the princess, though she does offer commentary and advice, the usuals from a point-and-click: “Nothing left here”, “I am still missing something”, “this won’t work”, etc.

Why does this guy remind me of a villain I've seen before
in a cartoon from the 2000s?

I don't think she signed up for helping the guards
training with crossbows.

It’s also fully animated in 2D. The game looks fantastic, I have no issues with the look itself. The downside is that, as this is a point-and-click, you’ll be going back and forth a lot, looking for the next item needed to solve a puzzle, and none of the animations can be skipped, making the game a tad slow to play as a result. It’s also not always clear where you can go or what you can pick up or interact with, unless you carefully inspect every detail of each screen. It is, however, very interesting to watch, especially as the castle changes through Princess Tsioque’s quest.

She's going to need that magic bag very soon!

Several puzzles are clever; in one instance, after getting a broken magic bag that can hold anything, you have to repair said bag, leading to a sewing mini-game. In another instance, a chase down a staircase becomes a skill test in which you click buttons on the screen like QTEs. One thing I wished I had known early on (and only learned with a guide) was that, in some animated sequences where the inventory isn’t available, sometimes it will appear mid-scene… and as a result you have a very limited window of time to react with the right item. That sort of scenario comes up a couple times, usually in response to attacks from enemies.

This one is such a charming title. Between the hand-drawn animation, the engaging soundtrack, and the various challenges, we have here a high-quality product that offers a pretty singular experience – not without its small number of flaws (some which I’ve covered in previous paragraphs), but not enough to detract from its strengths. The plot seems simple at first, but it has a couple surprises in store – and the ending is excellent. The animation is really cool, and impressive in places.

First rule of a wizard duel: Don't be in the middle
of a wizard duel.

Suddenly, QTEs. Good luck!

It’s fun to see the young princess overcoming those incredible odds. There are scenes that are quite tense as well, because of the dangers she finds herself in. some of those scenes are possible because they're fully-animated, compared to other point-and-click games out there. Some screens are large – the Courtyard, as an example, has roughly 10 places the princess can go to, so part of the challenge will be to figure out which item to grab in which sector, and then, what to use it for. (Heck, the first time I got to the Courtyard, I can think of one or two paths I didn't know about – in part because there didn't seem to be a way for the Princess to go there, so I had dismissed them as unreachable, and yet they were necessary to progress.)

Alchemy For Children: A Beginner's Class.

You’ll be seeing some death/capture animations a lot, but thankfully the game is lenient and will take you back to the previous screen. The game is fairly short as well, and can be completed in about three hours, which is still pretty respectable for a hand-drawn title. There's a nice variety to the puzzles, and some recurring motifs help ground the story and the world it's set in. It’s a good gaming experience and I recommend it.

TSIOQUE is usually available on Steam for 13.99$ USD, currently for 7.69$ during Winter Sale.

Quick Review: Tower of Guns

That’s a lotta guns.

Lotta guns, and now a lotta enemies.

Developed by Terrible Posture Games, published by Versus Evil and released on March 4th, 2014, Tower of Guns is an attempt at combining three genres: First-person shooter, Roguelike, and shmup (sort of, for that last one). Its story is fairly simple: A mysterious tower filled with robots and weapons appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a village. What happens next in the plot? Doesn’t really matter, it’s randomized. What matters is that you must try to reach the top of the tower.

The game plays like a roguelike: You destroy enemies, finish the rooms, and collect upgrades to your stats. At the end of a level, you fight a boss, then move on to the next level. Before starting a run, you pick a weapon among those unlocked, then you can choose a perk that changes some details about the character. The first perk available allows you to jump in midair twice, the other cancels fall damage. You will see new rooms on each playthrough, per the randomized nature of roguelikes. The game keeps track of your number of deaths, upgrades collected, items found across playthroughs, and so on. On a playthrough, you can find coins to unlock new items; collect red orbs to replenish your health; blue orbs that counts as EXP for your gun, which increases in power as it levels up (getting hit will decrease its EXP, however); and so on.

Kill the turrets, too! Yeah, you can do that,
they're destructible.

The difference is that, unlike a lot of roguelikes, you play in first person, aiming at enemies and shooting to kill them. The shmup part comes from the sheer number of enemies that can attack at once. Several of those enemies are turrets that you can destroy as well. The boss at the end of each level even has a health bar! Unlike a regular roguelike, this game is split into proper levels instead of having a continuous world to explore (thus limiting exploration a bit), but the feel is close enough.

I’ll give it that, the game tries to have a lot of variety in weapons and settings – since any combo of gun + perk is possible, all sorts of crazy setups can be achieved. Notably, it includes a handful of weapons with very peculiar effects, such as one that gets weaker the higher in level it gets. One issue, however, may be that as your character’s stats increase, they may become difficult to control – with a speed too high far into the game, as an example.

This thing is quite literally trying to crash into me!

Okay, it looks like I might have a chance against
this one boss...

I personally can’t say I was wowed by what I experienced, but I can see why it’d be addictive for some. Randomization, a large choice of starting combinations, and a lot of secrets to discover – that’s the formula that helps make roguelikes so popular and replayable. I’ve tried a few (Quest of Dungeons in this set of Quick Reviews, I also spent a few hours playing The Binding of Isaac), and I can safely say I felt more at ease with the usual bird’s eye view than in first person. Doesn’t make the game any easier, but it’s simpler to deal with threats coming from all sides in bird’s eye view. I at least appreciate the attempt at putting that spin on the genre. As I’ve learned during writing, first-person roguelikes aren’t common but there’s still quite a few out there.

Okay, this is a bit intense even by FPS standards.

The other issue with roguelikes is that you need to spend a lot of time playing one to really have a good feel of the entire game. In spite of that, I’ve seen the wide variety of options before starting a run, including guns that are mechanically different. The “plot”, also randomized at every run, tends to be pretty silly. Several rooms and enemies are creative, and per the genre, you’ll see new places, enemies and bosses on every run.

I don’t really have a bad opinion of it, though I don’t know if I’ll play more – although it’s fun, it didn’t do a lot to stick out in my mind, and the high number of enemies coupled with my lack of skill in first-person made this game pretty tough for me to play. Still, if that combination intrigues you, do give it a look.

Tower of Guns is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD, currently on sale with 70% off at 4.99$.

Also note that, due to the late release of this review, there won't be a review on Friday; instead, the last two reviews of this set will be posted next week.

Quick Review: To The Moon

Total Recall meets Inception meets bedside manners.

That's lucky, they didn't arrive too late.

A production of Freebird Games released on November 1st, 2011, To The Moon is a game made on RPG Maker. It features two doctors who specialize in a very odd form of service for dying patients: Implant in them a memory of a wish they never actually lived, so that they can die happy believing they’ve actually lived it. For that, doctors Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts use a machine to enter the memories of the patient, and work their way backwards in time through those memories to understand where that wish came from, so that they can implement it in line with the patient’s history. Their latest client, John, is a day or two from passing. His wish? To go to the moon. And yet, his memories are more closely linked to the lighthouse near the house where he lives…

I haven't seen visuals this impressive in an RPG Maker
game in a long while.

Unlike a lot of RPG Maker titles out there, this one does not focus on combat, but rather on exploration and taking in the story. Everything can be done with the mouse, moving and interacting with the surroundings in particular. (The menu can be accessed with the right-click or by pressing the ESC key.) Before the procedure itself begins, the characters meet the patient and investigate their home to gather information.

Sometimes, they even have to "roleplay" a
bit with the memory-people around them.

River? Probably her wife.
That's an unusual - but pretty - name.

In the memories themselves, things are a little more complex: In each scene, Eva and Neil need to gather five memory links in order to activate a memento that will let them travel further down memory lane. “We need to go deeper” and all that. Most of the time, they’ll simply have to find items that serve as memory links, but other times, merely exploring the surrounding area or listening to the characters will do. The doctors have a plethora of abilities provided by their machine while in the world of memories, like a God Mode where they can do use any effect on themselves or other characters.

When the memory links have been collected and used on the memento, the two must activate it through a tile flip puzzle. It’s the first time I see those in an RPG Maker title, and I’m impressed. Then, Eva and Neil can travel backwards in time to view older memories. And, from there, they can piece together the mysteries of this man’s life, so they can make him believe he went to the moon.

These puzzles aren't too tricky, but the further you go, the
more squares they cover, and the tougher they get -
not to mention that diagonal, which can make things tricky.

Also, several scenes are just beautiful.

Ah, this is such a good, good game! It speaks volumes that it’s often cited as the pinnacle of what can be achieved with RPG Maker. On the design side of things, every environment has a ton of details, more than what would be needed – and as a result, they’re interesting to explore, whenever exploration is encouraged. The music also helps a lot, with the soundtrack composed of original pieces that complement the story very well. Since the focus is on telling a story, there is no combat (barring a parodic example early on), and most items are limited to plot flavor. One element I like is the system of Notes, in which the scientists write down notes about the things, people, and settings they meet during their journey through memories, and regularly update those as details become clearer.

Ah yes, the mightiest attack of all.... "other shoe".

Wasting note space on this? For shame, Eva.

The focus is on emotion, as can be expected from the concept; the main characters travel to significant events of the man’s life, several of which are heart-wrenching. One gut punch after the next. It's also a very spoiler-heavy game that I want you to check out, hence why I give so little details about the story itself in this review. The two scientists we follow aren’t on their first assignment, far from it, and as such are either clinical and aloof (like Eva) or jaded and cynical (like Neil) about their approach, which gives them a lot of personality and banter. To be honest, there are times where banter happens where it shouldn’t, causing a bit of a mood whiplash. Sure, those moments are good to alleviate the mood, but they’re often jarringly-positioned. (Though Eva writing Neil down into the Notes as the “village idiot” after he does something particularly stupid in one memory will never not be funny.) 

You even get a moment where you get to ride a horse!

In the end, a very good game that I heartily recommend. Not necessarily a master class in game design, but most definitely an example to try out if you’re interested in RPG Maker and want to see what can be achieved with it. This game comes with two playable mini-episodes, and has had two sequels thus far. Oh, and there's also apparently a movie based on this game in production.

To The Moon is available on Steam for 9.99$.