To the Moon is one of the very best adventure games, our John will tell you – if he’s not too busy wringing you for confessions of weeping. The 2011 journey through a dying man’s dreams was a bit of a tearjerker, see. Following two intermission ‘minisodes’ and so-so tie-in A Bird Story, developers Freebird Games have now revealed a bit of the true second episode in the series. Named Finding Paradise, it’s due at the end of this year (or early in 2017, maybe).
To The Moon [official site] remains one of RPS’s favourite games. If all the tears this game has caused around the world were put in one place, that place would be a new ocean. Saltier than the Dead Sea. A lovely, charming, and deeply moving thing, about a pair of scientists who change a dying person’s memories to give them the life they’d always wanted, it has already been followed by one “minisode”. A free extra bit, simply called Holiday Special Minisode, it intelligently explored the relationship between the original game’s lead characters, as well as shining new light on the ethics of the company for which they work.
And now there’s a second free minisode, Sigmund Minisode 2.
RPS Feature Guano
Freedbird’s To The Moon is one of my favourite games. A beautiful, moving and intricate tale of memory and loss, it has made people weep in their thousands. This second game from Kan Gao, A Bird Story, is not a sequel, but apparently tangentially related. After a three year wait, I was pretty excited to play it.
A Bird Story is one of my least favourite games. It’s… I’ve no idea what it’s meant to be.
John probably wants you to cry at A Bird Story, you realise. He’s spoken before about his sinister habit of extracting confessions of tears from people who played To the Moon, and surely he’s got something more devious planned for the not-sequel. A Bird Story launched on Friday, and I would recommend that you first check your play area for e.g. funnels concealed in the surface of your desk connected to tubes which vanish out through your wall and underground to barrels in John’s lachrymose lair. The very setup is dangerously tearjerky: a boy finds a bird with an injured wing.
There’s no game I’ve written about on RPS that has been mentioned to me more often than To The Moon. I still get emails, tweets and even people coming up to me three years on, thanking me for bringing it to their attention. I always reply, “Did it make you cry?” And they always reply, “Yes.” And usually, “Three times.” It’s an astonishingly special and lovely little adventure game, available here.
Developer Kan Gao has been working on the follow-up, although not a sequel, A Bird’s Story for a couple of years now. And there is finally a proper trailer for it, and a release date. Ho boy. Grab the hankies.
RPS Feature Freebird Games does the chat
And so my semi-exhaustive attempt to chat to the makers of (almost) all the PC/Mac-based games which are nominated for Independent Games Festival awards this year continues. This time, it’s one of the boy Walker’s favourite games of last year, the backwards-storytelling, thoughtful sci-fi, and heartstring-pulling that is To The Moon. This point’n’click adventure is up for the Excellence in Audio prize. Here, Freebird Games’ Kan Gao discusses the autobiographical factors that informed the game, a few hints on The The Moon episode 2, groupies, chopsticks and the most important question of all.
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RPS Feature Lunar, see
Kan Gao’s To The Moon first came to our attention thanks to Laura “Plants Vs. Zombies theme” Shigihara. (I do hope for her sake she can lose the moniker soon.) Her involvement with the game’s music got us to take a look at early footage, and then it became something I desperately wanted to play. I was right to. No surprises here – this is an incredible game, and I’m going to tell you Wot I Think it is that makes it so.
