Moon's commentary on the nature of its hero, expressed not only through its narrative but also its entire suite of mechanics, is its toolbox for deconstructing the template of the JRPG. Learning it's a long-lost game from 1997, operating with the inescapable sentimentality and eccentricity of the modern indie scene, underscores how long it took the rest of the world to reach places Moon had already been. Even with its anachronisms, Moon is a surprising novelty.
In 1997, the same year Final Fantasy VII showcased the power of Japanese role-playing games, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure was wondering what it would look like if one was turned inside out. The former, of course, went on to launch the genre to the Western mainstream. The latter wasn’t localized and sold out of Japan until last week. Ironically, Moon’s sensitive self-awareness and understated sense of humor are better positioned to capture audiences familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Undertale, West of Loathing, and Nier: Automata. The appeal of deconstructing a genre only increases with time and experience, leaving 2020 and beyond as wide open space to explore Moon’s clever singularity.
Moon begins as a generic 16-bit RPG. It could be Dragon Quest V or Final Fantasy IV, or any title in which an objective protagonist slaughters their way through hordes of nefarious opponents in pursuit of a noble goal. Violence is a verb most commonly used for self-expression in the space of videogames, rendering the otherwise optimistic 90’s not so different from the hell world we’re in today. In any case, the heroic player is sent on a quest by a king to slay a dragon. In truncated sequences that condense a thirty hour game into about ten minutes, the player moves through the world and wrecks shop. Then Moon changes.
The paradigm shifts to a boy in front of a television playing a videogame. The boy is then sucked into the television. 16-bit pixel art is exchanged for 32-bit pre-rendered backgrounds, hand-drawn sprites, and clay-shaped monsters. As Moon embodies the guise of the contemporary RPG, the player embodies absolutely nothing. The boy becomes invisible, winds up at his Gramby’s house, and dons his favorite clothes over his invisible body. As the Hero in his game destroyed the world under the pretense of saving it, the invisible boy must save the world by demonstrating how much he loves and values everything inside of it. He must devote himself to the people of Moon.
While the protagonist dons his favorite clothes, Moon begins to shift its peculiar trappings. It steps away from the mold of an RPG and gets closer to rules and behavior of a contemporary adventure game. It takes about ten minutes for the player character to get tired and fall asleep. Once you fall asleep, it’s game over. This is harsh! You can stay awake longer by exploring the world, helping its occupants with their problems, and salvaging the souls of all the monsters the Hero killed on his legendary journey. Each one presents an opportunity to solve an environmental puzzle, work out a logical solution, and apply a weirdo item you collected in your inventory. Doing this earns love. Collecting enough love will enable the player to stay active for longer, even days at a time, inside of Moon’s ticking clock.
If all of this sounds bizarre and confusing, it’s because it is. Moon is from 1997, which was a time many of us read the in-game manual before we played games. Moon recommends players do the same thing here. A ticking clock, a day and night cycle, seven unique days of the week, and specific events that happen during those days and nights aren’t elements synchronous with the quality of life options we’re familiar with in 2020 (and they barely were twenty years ago, evident by the divisive nature of Majora’s Mask). Moon demands your time, sometimes more than necessary. It demands you pay attention, probably more than you’re used to. It demands you keep track of dozens of people, maybe with some notes on the side. Moon requires more of a commitment than we generally allow ourselves in the doomed milieu of 2020.
Resurrecting the creatures of Moon is a fast track to relief. When their physical body is located, it always provides a small hint of how or where to bring their spirit back to life. Spirits may only appear at certain times of day or after certain conditions are met, like in the middle of the night after Tao the dog whizzes on a tree. Mino, the President of the United States of Trash whose corpse occupies your house, must literally be fed some trash you found while fishing. Erik likes to listen to loud music, demanding a stereo steadily increasing in volume over the course of a precious ninety seconds. Few of these creatures come easy. Everyone is a puzzle. The joy of exploring Moon’s world is figuring out how everything fits together.
The same can be said of Moon’s citizens. One of the palace guards can be found on the castle balcony every Solarday, testing an RC plane for his son. You give him the confidence to make it perfect. Going on an extended island vacation with Yoshida, the tutorial bird, creates anxiety with the time it consumes but provides the player with the coveted monkey liquor to reach the end game. Tripping on mushrooms, always in a specific order, with the Kakunte Tribe helps solve Moon’s deeper mysteries. Moon is a vast network of people in a dozen different environments. They’re usually sweet and sometimes horrifying (my god, the Baker), but they’re all about making connections. Moon posits its community as a solution to the ills of its society.
While Moon’s themes and quirks slot nicely into 2020, occasional relics of 1997 manifest here and there. Adder’s challenges require the player to memorize sentences with slightly rearranged grammar, or sound effects with marginally different arrangements, and then picking consecutive multiple-choice answers correctly. Waiting around in the desert, for either night to arrive or conclude, is a bummer. The fishing contest with Umi and betting on birds with the guy at the canyon are both subject to the dreaded RNG, which can make both a waste of time and money. A particular minigame in Technopolis is also terrible. It wouldn’t be so bad if Moon’s ultimate outcome weren’t depending on doing almost all there is to do, but, as it stands, the player must suffer through some real duds.
Moon’s approach to music was novel for its time. Few areas have specific themes, allowing the player to create playlists of with MD’s (minidiscs! the 90’s!) found out in the world or purchased from Burn for 100g. It’s a staggering collection of eclectic tracks from thirty different artists. Bubbly idling pop, fast proto trance, harmonica solos, triumphant calls to adventure, sample-infected drum & bass, and dozens of other pieces helped shape Moon into one of the finest soundtracks of its generation. It all fits in with Moon’s objective of allowing the player to do whatever they like, provided they have the time.
There is a distinct sense of satisfaction in watching Moon come together. The player gambles their time by following leads. Either by intuition or methodical planning, it feels like a secret has been unlocked every time one pays off. It’s a dopamine hit that channels the better parts of 90’s adventure games, where the most absurd decision imaginable is what the game was demanding all along. More often than not, Moon rewards its player with one-off sequences—dance offs, concerts, dramatic soliloquies—that showcase the effect they have had on their world. It’s all weird and it’s all wonderful.
Before its first act is even properly started, Moon’s meta-commentary on the nature of objectives is laid bare. Moon isn’t a satire on the absurdities its medium, like Moonlighter or Viscera Cleanup Detail, but rather an honest reconciliation of spaces games leave behind. Every time you sleep, love is collected and exchanged for time. You’re told what you did is love. You’re also told what you’re given, and what you’re about to do, is love. Love is a verb and a noun and it’s Moon’s emotional currency. Moon dares to use the actions of its player as a solution for the typical sociopathy and psychotic behavior we perform in action games. Videogames are absurd by nature. They always will be. Moon suggests that absurdity, and typical venues of empowerment, can be used to improve the lives of its fictional occupants. That makes me, the real human player, feel like a valuable member of a world instead of the chosen one tasked with saving it.
Moon’s commentary on the nature of its hero, expressed not only through its narrative but also its entire suite of mechanics, is its toolbox for deconstructing the template of the JRPG. Learning it’s a long-lost game from 1997, operating with the inescapable sentimentality and eccentricity of the modern indie scene, underscores how long it took the rest of the world to reach places Moon had already been. Even with its anachronisms, Moon is a surprising novelty.
