To the moon (and don’t go back)
Here’s the straight dope: I like to write. I like it a lot. Does it sound like I’m bragging? I’m not. It’s actually quite the contrary; I do write, yes, but I do it in the most idiotic way possible. I put words next to each other when I should be doing something else. I’m not proud of it. I’ve downloaded a lot of free e-books to my Kindle. I should read those instead. I will. But I’m also gonna keep writing. I started to do it a long time ago. I’m too old to stop now.
I started to write when I was a kid. As many youngsters, I didn’t — I still don’t — have a lot of imagination, so I ran out of ideas quickly. I should have stopped there. I didn’t. I started to write about things that did not originate in my mind. I wrote about books. It felt weird. I wrote about movies. It felt less weird. I don’t know many things about movies. I moved to blabbing about video games. It actually felt even less weird. I didn’t own many video games at that time, so I played whatever I had over and over. The constant repetition made me feel like I really get the video games that I had. I poured what I got, or thought, about those video games into words. The ideas I got weren’t always really clear; texts were messy — Not that they’re much better now. I’ve written a lot of… essays, I think (?), about stuff barely related to video games. I still do it from time to time. It’s somewhat fun. However, I’m a big boy now. My dads give me a bigger allowance so I can buy more games now. However, I’m also not playing them as much as I used to. As I said, I’m a big boy, you see? I have other things to do, (mainly cooking and self-deprecation).
I don’t have that much time anymore, neither to play nor to write, about video games. I got plenty for writing bad fiction and bad nonfiction. Anyways, I gonna try to write fewer essays about video games that are only partially about video games. I’m going to keep writing all of the other bad stuff. I’m over 20 and I don’t like alcohol, so I don’t really have anything else going on ( i.e. I’m lonely).
I’m going to focus now. That’s the new rule. I’m going to enforce it right here and right now with this thing called To The Moon:
To The Moon
See, I don’t like to name-drop. I think that’s a lazy way to show off. Nowadays we have the Wikipedia and also the Google; names just don’t work as charms anymore. Everybody can search them and everybody can drop them. However, I’m going to use somebody’s name now: Kan Gao. There. I think it’s not name-dropping, though. Not if I can justify why did I bring that name into this metaphorical table? Here’s that justification:
To The Moon is something really close to a video game (more on that later, I promise! (so bear with me, please (so lonely))). It has animations. It has music and sound effects. It has a story. It has little interactive chops here and there. It was created by Kan Gao. He made the animations, with the help of a game creation program, but still, he drew the sprites and so on. He wrote, at least, a good part of the music. He also wrote the story. I suppose he also devised the interactive challenges. So I guess that it’s safe to say that Kan Gao is the creator of To The Moon and to understand this thing it’s necessary to be aware of the aforementioned fact.
I guess that to really understand To The Moon I should also understand Kan Gao. I don’t know the guy so I can say nothing about him. I suppose he has a Wikipedia page. You can check it if you want. The important thing is that To The Moon is his thing. And it shows. I know that his previous interactive project is somewhat similar to To The Moon. It’s about a bird. For the looks of it, the story is also tragical, but I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I want to say somethings really important: I haven’t said that To The Moon is a game yet. You know why? Because I don’t think it is.
Wow.
No, really. There’s so little interactivity in this thing that if it is a game, then choosing the nicest header for a work-related email is also a game. During the interactive experience, you move around the character in order to move the story forward. Every once in a while some other character stops you and tells you “go over there,” sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, and you go and something happens, namely, you find something or someone. You interact with that something or someone. That usually leads to another “go there” situation. This repeats over the full length of the game (+2.5 hours or so). Sprinkled between those “go there, do that” situations there’s a puzzle you need to solve to continue. You found the same type of puzzle every time. I don’t remember what they were about. I just remember that they were fairly easy. Like, really easy. You can just jerk around, moving the pieces at random for five minutes and YOU ARE DONE, puzzle solved. Now go talk to that guy.
That’s not how a video game works. Consequentially, To The Moon is not a video game.
Bum. Owned.
To The Moon is more like an interactive storybook. And let me tell you something: books are all about the story.
To The Moon is just an okay book. The story is a sci-fi drama with the trademarked sudden reveal at the midst and the tears provoking ending that you’ve come to expect from a movie under the “because you saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower” category in Netflix.
Seriously, though, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is better. Especially because I didn’t have to do a dumb puzzle every fifteen minutes. The story didn’t stop, and when it did, it was because I needed to go to the bathroom and that happened just once (it was also kind of my fault (I’d shotgun-ed a whole litter of water during the movie)). Also, there’s a cringeworthy character in To The Moon that kept spitting internet references. Oh, God. I just remembered that. It’s so annoying. That character said “hoduken” at one point. That’s video game argot. Did you get it? Ah? Aren’t you laughing (or lol (or hahaha) so hard, as the youtube comment section says)?
I guess it is not okay to be too harsh with this thing, I mean, it’s sort of a new approach to entertainment. It was also made by a single person whereas usual video games require a team of at least 2 guys. But come on, Out of this World is a truly wholesome heck of a game and it was also made by just one guy. And it was made, like, 20 or 25 years ago. With that in mind, To The Moon feels kind of a back step.
Really, guys, we’re never going to be on par with literature (or Netflix) if we keep doing this.
