Deliver Us the Moon

Story-driven games are my jam. They are the ones that you remember for years to come, and the ones you replay. See Journey, Symphony of the Night, or just play any Kojima-led game for details on what the hell I mean. Stories drive everything when it comes to longevity in gaming, and any good gamer that is well-versed in such can tell you that without a shred of doubt.

KeokeN Interactive’s Deliver Us the Moon scratches that surface. It’ a game that could be compared to the first draft of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, where maybe the experience was clear as day in the writing, but the details hadn’t been quite worked out all the way through. You know it’s going to be good, but you would have preferred to see other drafts just to see HOW good it could have been. Regardless of which draft, it still leaves a lasting impression that will still create water-cooler discussions.

Let’s dive into the game.

Story
The earth is on its last leg. Things have gone south, and quick. The ability to survive on earth is dwindling and your character is humankind’s last hope. Your job? Under the guidance and rocket power of the WSA, your character needs to journey to the moon and figure out what stopped Helium-3’s production and delivery to the earth, an element that kept the earth going long after it should have been dead. Take too long, the earth is toast, and you’re stranded. Other areas of concern? All communication has been lost between the moon and earth, so something terrible must have occurred. Discovering what happened and trying to restart the transference of H-3 is the utmost priority and narrative for this mission.

So much drama for such a little game.

The narrative design of Deliver Us the Moon is based on two simple elements:

1. Urgency
2. Fear

The urgency of the situation in the game drives player agency. You feel the need to move forward as quickly as possible through the first stage of the game, where you’re essentially trying to get a rocket going to the moon before a giant dust storm rolls in to scrub the launch. The game forces you through sound, through visuals, and through dialogue to feel the need to get in the air and get the problem solved quickly before it’s too late. It also forces you to invest in the situation, which is what creates most of the urgency. You also feel the urgency through mini-puzzles, such as trying to restart oxygen in a space station or trying to unlock puzzles to progress in the game, so you can save the earth. The game reminds you of this urgency in nearly every step you take to progress the story. Through audio left behind, through messages that appear to have half-thoughts, through a number of urgent pushes to explore and discover what the hell happened to break communication. The game constantly presses the sense of urgency through different means. It’s thick everywhere, as well as effective to create a heavy amount of consistent drama.

When you’re not solving puzzles, and being put through the emotional ringer, then you’re going to feel the overarching fear of the title. It’s like Saturn 3 had a baby with Aliens, where you honestly can’t say with any real comfort what happened to the residents of the space station you get to explore at the beginning, nor can you say what happened to them on the moon. You will discover something has gone terribly wrong, something I won’t spoil, but the fear of the unknown, much like what Hitchcock toted in so many of his films, is what keeps you glued to the set. The fear of the unknown is just as effective as the urgency to get things solved. Combined, it’s a beautiful atmosphere that most games like this one cannot achieve.

Those are the driving gameplay design elements for this title. While the end result may not be as great as your mind creates, the fact that you’re firmly in urgency/fear mindset from the beginning to the end is what makes this narrative memorable and well-crafted. It will certainly take you into the adventure and not give you back until you see the credits roll. I totally dig that, even if the payoff isn’t what I imagined, as getting pulled into the game is equally as important as the payoff by the end.

Along the way through this journey, you’re going to running into a variety of different ways to play. First, you’ll be going through simple to mediocre puzzles. In fact, you will see a lot of puzzles. This could be something as simple as turning on oxygen, or something as simple as turning on electricity (or both). The game doesn’t try to stump you, rather it just uses fear and urgency to push you. For example, the first level of the game wants you to try to find batteries to turn on the life-support system of the space station you encounter after launching from the earth. You have two batteries, you have three places to put batteries, and you have a time limit to figure it out. If you run out of time, you run out of oxygen, then you die. The game throws you some bones with oxygen tanks that extend the time limit, but those are finite. It throws you two batteries to fiddle with, but you need three. It essentially creates that action movie scenario of where you are trying to defuse a bomb before the timer gets to zero. It’s intense if nothing else, but honestly not that difficult when you calm yourself and look around. The first time around, I had no issues with it, but wow was that urgent scenario overwhelming, and they never really let up, even in small doses. Puzzles are just one element of the title, though, as you will shift to more creative elements of control, such as stealth (not a huge fan of stealth, but it still goes along with #1/#2 up there, so it works) towards the latter half of the game. The game doesn’t go over the top with this stuff, it just simply makes it uncomfortable enough to never let you forget.

Following the same motif as the above, the controls for Deliver Us the Moon are built for replicating the movements of zero gravity swimmingly. That matters a lot when you’re trying to get your players in the mood for being in space, being uncomfortable in a mysterious situation, and for showing how difficult it would be to navigate quickly in space if the moment arose. It not only adds a layer of challenge, but also a layer of tension, where you know that if you run into something, whatever ‘that’ might be, it isn’t going to be easy to get out of the situation. It almost makes you feel trapped and aware of your own limitations, which just adds another layer of the above discussion. Using the R1/L1 controls for Z-axis rotation, while using the thumbsticks to control direction, all of it combined just absolutely brings you into the scenario of being in the depths of space and somewhat out of control as you move around. Trying to navigate one’s self through space and get to where you need to go is a challenge as much as it is ‘putting the player’ in the scenario.

When your astronaut isn’t floating around, you’re in a different game completely with stealth controls, avoiding enemies and discovering terrible things that might have led to the destruction of the moon residents, and essentially just uncovering the story slowly. The game does a great job of giving you a variety of ways to play without trying to bore you. It does everything it should do, matching the controls with the game design, but never seems to lose focus of what it is from beginning to the end — a story-driven game that it wants you to experience and feel what it’s proposing.

All in all, the gameplay design is simple, uncomfortable (in a good way), and well-executed. This is a classic sci-fi film wrapped into a small gaming experience. It’s breathtaking at times, yet baffling when you see how effective it can be on a non-AAA budget.

Having said all that, the game does have some issues beyond its good story. One of the biggest is the long load times, which at times make you feel like the game has frozen, and some glitchy-ness here and there. There was a time at the beginning of the title where the game took about a 3-4 second load time before it snapped back into action. I seriously was concerned I broke the game, as there was no onscreen loading/saving indicator — it just simply froze so it could load. It was odd to see in action, even for a game that I was well-aware was more indie than not. The inclusion of a ‘loading’ logo in the bottom right or some indicator that everything was going to be okay would have been nice. It might freak people out otherwise.

Beyond glitches, the game is also gorgeous. There’s a lot to behold in its visuals, even from the first moment you look out the first space station’s window and see the large structure beaming from the lunar surface of the moon and stretching out into your viewpoint. Lots of good draw distance that does make it feel like you’re a small spec on a giant map. The devs at KeokeN Interactive did a helluva job with visually making this game as focused and immersive as possible. It’s quite a pretty game with some fantastic presentation features, such as the acting.

Overall, Deliver Us the Moon is quite good in its narrative design and atmosphere. The only real crux with this game is that it just needed some finer tuning when it came to difficulty and glitches. In the end, it’s still a good game to take a chance on, if not just for what it makes you feel along the journey it proposes.