To the Moon - Total Recall-meets-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

There's a very (in)conveniently placed boulder in the forest area NE from the car.

I loaded it up just now, and realized what I missed.

IMAGE(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/ziffel66/gaming%20pics/moon.jpg)

I didn't see those as being stairs, but my eyes just saw that area is just being part of the rock wall.

Thanks for the reply though.

Aww. I think some moon dust got in my eye or something.

Finished this at 6am in one sitting. Just like reading a good book that you don't want to put down.

Very very well done. Soundtrack is awesome too.

Love how the clues and signs are all there early on but the true significance of items and motivations of characters become richer as the story unfolds.

Falchion wrote:

Love how the clues and signs are all there early on but the true significance of items and motivations of characters become richer as the story unfolds.

Absolutely agree. Also, they aren't completely obvious or in your face about it. I've been looking out for clues right from the beginning, but I totally did not see where it was going in the end, which I very much appreciate.

I read on their forums that the developer is trying to get it on steam. Really hope he succeeds, I want a lot more people to play this game.

Tobisas wrote:

I read on their forums that the developer is trying to get it on steam. Really hope he succeeds, I want a lot more people to play this game.

I really hope they do reach terms for it to be on Steam. Bundle it with the soundtrack and keep the same price point and I'll be giving it away like Christmas candy.

When I mentioned the whole Steam thing on the freebirdgames forum, it sounded like he had thought about it but never got around to trying. Hopefully he can eventually work something out with Valve. I don't know if he'd have to put a lot of effort into changing things to make it Steam compatible.

The overlay doesn't work with his current client, so I'm sure he'd need to change some things. It would definitely be cool, though. I'd probably buy it again, to be honest.

Hyetal wrote:

The overlay doesn't work with his current client, so I'm sure he'd need to change some things. It would definitely be cool, though. I'd probably buy it again, to be honest.

I would buy it again as well.

Edit: I found the thread where Reives (Kan) submitted the game to Steam. Hopefully he can get it up on Steam.

I wish there was something we could do to help. It really deserves a spot on Steam.

It really does. And it's kind of disheartening to me that after I had maybe the most emotionally moving gaming experience in a decade, all the talk I get about it is with 5 other people on a forum which is rather disposed towards these kinds of games. Damnit people of the world, stop playing your battlefields and your skyrims for a second and dine on this exquisite piece of storytelling, it's only a few hours!

Anyways, I did have something from the game that I wanted to talk about. While it's not super spoilerish concerning the main story, I'll put it in spoiler tags regardless:

Spoiler:

What was it with Watts' addiction to painkillers? It comes up after you find his bottle of pills (though you can actually miss this event, I've tried to replay it and if you don't pick up the bottle you don't actually confront him), and I think they make a reference to it at the very end of the game, but I'm not sure where that was supposed to go. Maybe it's a remainder of a scrapper storyline? Or were there other events that I missed which explain more about this backstory?

Tobisas wrote:
Spoiler:

What was it with Watts' addiction to painkillers? It comes up after you find his bottle of pills (though you can actually miss this event, I've tried to replay it and if you don't pick up the bottle you don't actually confront him), and I think they make a reference to it at the very end of the game, but I'm not sure where that was supposed to go. Maybe it's a remainder of a scrapper storyline? Or were there other events that I missed which explain more about this backstory?

It's a pretty clear set up for a

Spoiler:

SEQUEL,

I thought.

Tobisas wrote:

It really does. And it's kind of disheartening to me that after I had maybe the most emotionally moving gaming experience in a decade, all the talk I get about it is with 5 other people on a forum which is rather disposed towards these kinds of games. Damnit people of the world, stop playing your battlefields and your skyrims for a second and dine on this exquisite piece of storytelling, it's only a few hours!

Anyways, I did have something from the game that I wanted to talk about. While it's not super spoilerish concerning the main story, I'll put it in spoiler tags regardless:

Spoiler:

What was it with Watts' addiction to painkillers? It comes up after you find his bottle of pills (though you can actually miss this event, I've tried to replay it and if you don't pick up the bottle you don't actually confront him), and I think they make a reference to it at the very end of the game, but I'm not sure where that was supposed to go. Maybe it's a remainder of a scrapper storyline? Or were there other events that I missed which explain more about this backstory?

Spoiler:

I think it's just a bit of character development that doesn't actually go anywhere yet. Neil mentioned going out with his dad on "camping" trips which were actually stargazing trips. He said that that is what started his addiction to coffee. I don't think that's related to the beta blockers/painkillers, though.

I didn't know you could actually pick up that bottle. I'll have to try that next time (I've already played it twice).

Hopefully the game manages to get up on Steam. Reives hasn't mentioned anything about the submission being rejected or accepted as of yet. If it gets up on Steam, I'll be gifting it like crazy. I agree with you that it's frustrating that hardly anybody will give this game a shot even though the response to the game from people has been overwhelmingly positive.

Edit: I typed too quickly. I had to go and fix some typos.

I was lurking in the Freebird Games forum and posted this in a discussion about the dialogue between the two doctors. Some people find it immature and distracting from the story. Since I haven't really posted anything of a review, I figured it would be nice to post some critical thoughts. I'm going to spoiler tag it because there are very slight spoilers.

The immaturity of the doctors does a number of things that enhance the game's story.

Spoiler:

1. It breaks up the very mature, serious, and complex themes in the game. Doing this gives the player time to contemplate the heavy events that occur throughout the story. If you didn't have those breaks, the story has the potential to quickly get heavy handed and predictable.

2. The immaturity enhances the character development of the two doctors. For example, we see a flippant Neil grow to earnestly care about what happens to the patient by the end of the story. We also see Eva take serious risks at the end of the game in order to help John die at peace.

3. The immature dialogue is a way to develop the relationship between Eva and Neil without getting in the way of the very mature and complex relationship between John and River. In the end, the story is about John and River, and not about Eva and Neil. However, developing some sort of relationship between Eva and Neil must be done to keep the story from getting boring.

4. Extending thought number one, it's a way to add some comedy into the game and make the player smile.

This type of story telling device seems to be used much more in anime than in other media. I suspect those who have watched a lot of the mature, complex anime didn't think twice about the dialogue between the doctors being strange, immature, or awkward.

As to the gameplay being difficult, I'm not sure where that is coming from. The little zombie bit at the end added a little urgency to what was happening in the story. It was also amusing.

Spoiler:

Game play *difficult*?!? Uhhh. Ooookay.

On the painkiller thing: I agree that this is a setup for future stuff. Particularly since the two places it appears are: a) When Eva finds the pills, and b) At the very end, when the screen flashes red for a second (?) and then Neil takes some pills. And of course, the "Episode 1" checked off thing makes it pretty clear there's more to come.

I'm somewhat reminded of the Blackwell games, where each game has touched on the backgrounds of the main characters a little bit, but focused more on the backgrounds of the characters they're trying to help.

I should have taken out that "difficulty" bit for the purposes of this thread. That was a carryover from agreeing with someone on the freebird games forum.

RPS did ANOTHER write-up on the game. Don't read it unless you've played it. I guess that means only about 5 of us on here can read it.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

RPS did ANOTHER write-up on the game. Don't read it unless you've played it. I guess that means only about 5 of us on here can read it. ;)

Yeah just came here to say this..

Btw, do you think it would be possible to get the news on this game to someone from the podcast crew? Think they are pretty open to these kinds of games, and it might help it reaching a bigger audience.
On the other hand, I can guess that they would get pretty tired of people E-mailing them with E-mails like "hey you should really play this game cause I liked it" and as a new member I don't want to be that guy.

I'm going to do something I never do, but considering the onslaught of new members these past few days:

Bump.

Tobisas wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

RPS did ANOTHER write-up on the game. Don't read it unless you've played it. I guess that means only about 5 of us on here can read it. ;)

Yeah just came here to say this..

Btw, do you think it would be possible to get the news on this game to someone from the podcast crew? Think they are pretty open to these kinds of games, and it might help it reaching a bigger audience.
On the other hand, I can guess that they would get pretty tired of people E-mailing them with E-mails like "hey you should really play this game cause I liked it" and as a new member I don't want to be that guy.

I think they're at least going to do a "Fringe Busters" feature on it. That'll give it a little more attention. I don't know when they'll get around to it, though.

Bill Harris has a very positive write up on it. I guess I will give is a try sometime.

Don't suppose there is an iPad version in the works.

farley3k wrote:

Don't suppose there is an iPad version in the works. ;)

The game would be perfect to play on an iPad.

The only plans I saw on the Freebird forums were to hopefully get it up on Steam. It will be difficult to get it on to other platforms as it was made using RPG Maker XP. I was looking into it out of curiosity, and it looked one of the very few ways to translate it to other platforms would be to use RPG JS to redo the game in HTML5/Javascript. This would require a lot of work, as you can only reuse the maps and events from RPG Maker XP. From HTML5/Javascript, you could probably get it on any platform without too much trouble.

Anyways, who knows if they'll get it on anything other than a PC. I hope they can figure something out. There are a lot of language translation projects going on which is pretty cool.

farley3k wrote:

Bill Harris has a very positive write up on it. I guess I will give is a try sometime.

STOP NOT PLAYING THE GAME AND GO PLAY THE GAME DAMNIT!

Seriously though, whenever you'll get time to give it a go I bet you'll return to this thread to join our rabid fanboyism.

About iPad (or smartphone) version, I think it would suit the format perfectly and would be an awesome way to go... but I don't see this ever happening, since I don't think they have anyone who can do this on their team. I've went through the game's credits to update the game info on giantbomb, and it looked like most people were just students or people who have other jobs and just did some drawing or music for the game. And as tuffalobuffalo said, the game was just made using RPG Maker so I don't really expect them to have the expertise and manpower to do the iOS/Smartphone translation..

I want to play it but .... Skrim....Zelda... I mean could they have released at a worse time for me? I will probably buy it but I have no idea when I will play it.

farley3k wrote:

I want to play it but .... Skrim....Zelda... I mean could they have released at a worse time for me? I will probably buy it but I have no idea when I will play it.

It only takes 4-6 hours. It'd probably take you that long to figure out how to kill a Mammoth in Skyrim.

Goddamn you tuffalo for recommending this game and giving it all kinds of accolade, I wept like a school girl after playing it. I told myself that I wouldn't... but I FAILED miserably. Can't wait to see a sequel.

Took me about 4.5 hours to get through. I originally planned to play a few minutes before going to bed but I got completely sucked in and finished it in one sitting. No other piece of art has touched me so deeply this year, so I'll be following the trend of others by putting this as my GOTY.

Spoiler:

I was surprised how violently I reacted to Eva's feint betrayal, for a moment there I absolutely hated her guts. Of course that all gets turned around in the end but man was I pissed off for a good 15 minutes.

mr_n00b wrote:

Goddamn you tuffalo for recommending this game and giving it all kinds of accolade, I wept like a school girl after playing it. I told myself that I wouldn't... but I FAILED miserably. Can't wait to see a sequel.

Took me about 4.5 hours to get through. I originally planned to play a few minutes before going to bed but I got completely sucked in and finished it in one sitting. No other piece of art has touched me so deeply this year, so I'll be following the trend of others by putting this as my GOTY.

Spoiler:

I was surprised how violently I reacted to Eva's feint betrayal, for a moment there I absolutely hated her guts. Of course that all gets turned around in the end but man was I pissed off for a good 15 minutes.

Just beat it.

Jesus man. First time I've ever cried at a video game, and I'm a grown man. All these big publishers could learn a thing or two about atmosphere and timing.

Looks like something that would be right up my alley; I'll check it out sometime this week.

Vrikk wrote:

Just beat it.

Jesus man. First time I've ever cried at a video game, and I'm a grown man. All these big publishers could learn a thing or two about atmosphere and timing.

Until this game, I hadn't cried since I was about 13. *quietly takes a sip of bourbon to make sure manliness is restored*