Impostor Factory has been described repeatedly by developer Kan Gao as "To The Moon 3(?)", complete with paranthetical question mark. Whatever the reality in terms of its plot, it definitely forms a trio in terms of theme and tone, closing out the series with another melancholy, pixelated adventure. It's out now.
]]>An ominous shadow falls across the Earth, cast by a tentacled beast that reaches out to grasp the planet. Impostor Factory, the final game in the To The Moon series, is not effing around. Whatever journey the game will take you on, it involves the apocalypse, a time-travelling bathroom, and reliving lives. It is a “wholesome celebration of the bloody end of the world”, as the new trailer shows.
]]>Impostor Factory, the closing act of pixellated memory-hopper To The Moon, is starting out on some bizarre feat. Matt was sceptical after the teaser dropped this March with nothing but a lady with an umbrella and the promise of "a series of bloody murders."
Was that scepticism earned? Maybe? Freebird Games released their first full trailer for Impostor Factory today and like, yeah. It's daft. It's full of dabbing. But maybe, behind the goofs and gaffs, there'll be some well-earned closure for the tear-jerking lunar odyssey.
]]>Fans of To The Moon and Finding Paradise, rejoice: developers Freebird Games have announce-o-teased their new game. Though maybe don't rejoice too much, because the new game is "a time-resetting thriller-mystery that involves a series of bloody murders". That's right, no more ethically questionable memory meddling until people believe they've fulfilled their dreams. Only murder now.
It's called Imposter Factory, and a teaser trailer awaits below. "Teaser" being the operative word.
]]>Kan Gao's tearjerker To The Moon, a game which affected our John so much that he still daren't open the curtains on clear nights lest he be swept away in a torrent of his own tears, is becoming a full-length animated movie. It's the story of doctors travelling through the memories of a dying man (with the aid of a fancy machine), seeing his life and creating new memories so he can have sort-of lived his dying wish: visiting the moon. At this point, John is hammering on the door as a brook flows down his body, so I imagine we'll need to employ Ludovico Technique eyespreaders to make him watch it.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>To The Moon is one of my favourite gaming experiences. No game has made me blub as hard, or as often, and it earned those tears through a funny, passionate, emotionally complex story. Finding Paradise, a direct sequel after a number of smaller asides, didn't make me cry. It made me laugh, think, wonder, and finish with a sad smile on my face, but no tears. But games aren't measured by how much they make you cry, people, come on.
]]>I can’t check my inbox without being slapped in the face with press releases about games threatening to make me cry and feel grotesque human emotions. It’s awful. To the Moon and Finding Paradise developer Freebird Games feels the same way, which is why it’s now introducing 2 the Moon, a definitely real sci-fi adventure with loot boxes and monsters and all the things video game boys and girls love. Watch the heart-pounding trailer below.
]]>Here's some news that could make you cry: Finding Paradise [official site], the follow-up to the tear-jerking adventure game To The Moon, has been delayed.
It was supposed to come out this summer, but due to "personal circumstances" it's been pushed back until the end of the year.
]]>To the Moon follow-up Finding Paradise [official site] will launch in summer 2017, creator Kan Gao now says. He was a bit hazy on that when he announced the tearjerk 'em up earlier this year, unsure whether it'd launch this year or next. He's seemed set on summer 2017 for a while but hey, I've only just noticed so you likely haven't either.
In these uncertain times I can't say for certain what will drive the social currency of 2017 - the vibrancy of your Union Jack jacket, perhaps, or how many teeth you've ripped from the jaws of foes. But maybe it'll be a return to the simpler time of 2011, when the coolest kids were those who cried most at To the Moon.
]]>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).
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Truthfully, I don’t remember all the ins and outs of To The Moon's [official site] lackadaisical storytelling, but perhaps that is funny in itself, considering how important decaying memory is to the tale. But the enduring feeling of the game is one of wistful melancholy. Is “wistful melancholy” a thing? Yes, it is. If RPS was to have a list feature titled “Ten Games Wot Made Us Somewhat Lumpy-Throated”, this game would surely hang within the upper echelons.
]]>You know that there are adventure games, and you know that some of those adventure games are better than others. But do you know which one is best, and which one is twenty-fifth best? Well, at last you can find out, with our definitive, unimpeachable breakdown of adventure gaming's best moments.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>I am going back and playing one of my favourite games this weekend, RPS readers, one of those games I return to once every year or so to remind myself why I play games. I'm going to smile, I'm probably going to cry, I'm going to throw myself back into To The Moon.
To The Moon is one of those games you can just tell was made in RPG Maker. Much of it's bones are those of your standard RPG Maker creation, from the menus and dialogue boxes to the very core of how the game feels to play. But there's no battles to be fought, just a world to gently explore, interact with and watch unfold. It's a game I play for lethargy. It's there to help me relax, to cleanse the palate and shake off some of that cynicism we can find trailing behind us.
]]>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.
]]>It's almost hard to believe there was a time when we weren't being constantly bombarded with cheap games, but it's true. When I was a lad, I had to save up for two months, walk miles through snow to the nearest PC World, and turn my coins over for a game that probably wouldn't even work. Now every hobo with a bindle is buying bundles of games for only a single week's pocket money.
Humble Bundle X is the tenth bundle in the "main" series of Humble Bundles, and it contains To The Moon, Reus, Papa & Yo, Surgeon Simulator 2013, Bit.Trip Runner 2 and Joe Danger 2: The Movie. Which is a better, more interesting selection of games than I've seen in a bundle in a while. I've written more about each of them below.
]]>Over the holidays, while RPS was fighting crime off planet, Freebird released a minisode addition to To The Moon. More To The Moon! And for free!
]]>One of the best games of 2011, To The Moon, has finally had its sequel announced. Called A Bird Story, developer Kan Gao explains to us that it should be out some time around the Summer. This is what we experts call GOOD NEWS. *KRRRRKKKKKKKBZZZZZZTTTCHHHHHHHRRRKKKK* I interrupt this transmission from the Walkerdome with my own signal, cutting through like a blade of static and infoburst. I am the moon.
A Bird Story is a simple, surreal short about a boy and a bird with a broken wing. Despite being story-based like most of my games, there are essentially no dialogues throughout.
Well, that definitely won't tug at my heartstrings then. Not that I have heartstrings. I am the moon. I will admit that the music, which you can hear below, did cause me to fight back a lunar-tear or two.
]]>While some of the Indie Royale Bundles haven't been the strongest, the latest collection in its almost-pay-what-you-want pile is pretty strong. Featuring one of last year's best games, To The Moon, alongside Wadjet Eye's most recent Blackwell game, Deception, is Oil Rush, Reprisal, and something called Avseq.
]]>Dream life-exploring adventure/RPG To The Moon was one of John's favourite reasons to cry in 2011, and perhaps the same will prove true in 2012. Free Bird Games' IGF nominee is to see a brand new episode added, and ahead of that will arrive on Steam next week.
]]>Onlive and the IGF are spooning for a fortnight. The sensual lovers are celebrating the Indie Gaming New Year by giving you access to 30 minute demos of 16 IGF finalists. The alphabetically sexy list of games is: Atom Zombie Smasher, Be Good, Botanicula, Dear Esther, Dustforce, English Country Tune, Frozen Synapse, FTL, Lume, Nitronic Rush, Once Upon a Spacetime, POP, SpaceChem, To the Moon, Toren, and WAY.
]]>They said it would never end. And then, on Saturday, it did. We've been posting our series of chats with the many splendid finalists in this year's Independent Games Festival over the last couple of months, and, with the exception of English Country Tune (dev was worried about sounding boring), Mirage (dev didn't reply) and Fez (dev wouldn't confirm the possibility of a PC version) we managed to get mini-interviews with all the PC/Mac indie developers in the running for a gong.
In case you missed a few, didn't understand what the hell it was all about or just like looking at neatly-ordered lists, here's the complete series for your relaxed perusal. It's a fascinating and diverse bunch of games in the finals this year, and if nothing else, it's a rare chance to see what 18 different developers would say to the monsters in Doom if only they could talk to them.
]]>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.
]]>As we gather 'round the open fire, roasting our chestnuts if we sit a little too close, it's not unusual for conversation to turn to Christmases past. Remember the time when that bike-shaped parcel underneath the tree wasn't for you at all but actually contained Uncle Marty's new Zimmer frame and a couple of oversized hubcaps for his Robin Reliant? How we laughed! You enjoyed those new socks in the end though, once the crying had stopped. Ah, memories.
]]>As you may have noticed, we love To The Moon - a genuinely wonderful adventure game about memory, love and relational disorder. John's going on about it caused Adam to play, and so we've sat down to have a chat about how it hit us. The discussion below contains spoilers right to the very end of the game, so we strongly encourage you to play it first. Which you should anyway.
]]>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.
]]>To the Moon, the indie RPG/adventure game from Freebird Games John's previously talked about with a soundtrack from Laura Shigihara off of Plants vs Zombies has a release date, soundtrack and trailer. Which happens to be quite the thing, if you'll see below.
]]>Here's what I'd like to see/hear. An adventure game whose music doesn't begin with a long strained note on a violin. Seriously, every single one does it now. Nothing wrong with it - I'd just like some variation. Joining their numbers is To The Moon - a sort of RPG adventure thing that attracted me by its excellent name, and then - as it happens - that the violiny music is from Laura Shigihara, she of the Plants Vs. Zombies theme.
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