The Game Boy: Best Games You Missed in 2011 – To The Moon

My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So instead, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. Previously, I turned into a quivering pile of mush on BioShock 2: Minerva's Den and The Binding of Isaac. And now, a game that may very well top both of them: masterful indie heart-breaker To The Moon. 

To The Moon made me cry. Like, eight times. And I don't mean in the “single dramatic tear meandering down my cheek” sense. I'm talking about gushing waterfalls of salty face liquid. You'd have thought everyone I'd ever known and loved acted like they never knew or loved me and then promptly died. Of a disease whose main side effect is tragic irony.   

And that's weird, because I figured myself one who'd be impervious to the game's barrage of gut-wrenching sadness bullets. I mean, its two controllable (notice I didn't say “main”) characters often turn humor into a weapon of mass face-palm-worthy irritation, and – aside from largely unneeded end-of-area puzzles – there's hardly even any interactivity to speak of. You walk around and click on predetermined objects. That's it. I'm a gamer. Why should I care about any of that? 

However, if nothing else, let To The Moon serve as a lesson on why reductionist thinking is Bad and Wrong. Because if I'd given the game the cold shoulder over those concerns – or even just written it off as another tear-jerking, smile-seeking indie missile – I'd have missed out on one of the most genuinely heartfelt stories I've ever experienced. Videogame or not. 

The gist of the game is as follows: You “play” as – or really, experience events from the perspective of – two Future Doctors, Rosalene and Watts, with a machine that allows them to grant people's dying wish by altering their memories as they lay at death's door. In this case, it's an old man named Johnny who's dealing with a rather pesky, er, coma. He wants to go to the moon, but here's the thing: he honestly doesn't know why. So you hop inside his head and go on a big scavenger hunt for items from his past that might reveal the origin of his oddly uncharacteristic desire.

Basically, it's Inception meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But there's that pesky reductionist thinking again, and as before, it doesn't hold water. To The Moon's conceit is just a vehicle for incredibly nuanced characters and a story that unfolds, well, backwards. But it still somehow feels like it's moving forward. Ultimately, the game explores characters' entire lives from finish to start – acting as the boat-rocking cannon blast to games like Dragon Age II, which have merely dipped a pinky toe into exploring their timestreams. I'm pretty sure its creators are story wizards. 

Moreover, unlike, say, Final Fantasy VII – whose most-revered moment is undoubtedly its Shocking and Unexpected Death Scene – To The Moon prefers to extract all sorts of tears for all sorts of different reasons. Whether in action or storytelling, most games know only one language: brute force. To The Moon, on the other hand, applies a far gentler touch and runs a full gamut of emotions. It's not really about the tears at all; it's about the moments in between them. That, above all else, is key, so let me explain.

(SKIP THE FOLLOWING IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS.) To The Moon first made me cry when I realized why there were so many origami rabbits. Before she passed away, Johnny's wife, River, obsessively crafted mountains of the fuzz-free fuzzballs, but her intentions were a complete mystery to Johnny. Ultimately, he wrote it off as yet another quirk that arose from River's rather severe case of autism, which – for obvious reasons – always put a strain on communication in their relationship. Slowly but surely, however, the game peeled back the layers of meaning surrounding River's excessive obsession. 

The large-scale arts and crafts project began after – when they were middle-aged adults – Johnny confessed the reason he first asked River out way back in high school. He thought she was unique, and he wanted to use her to avoid being another “typical” person. “Points is, I know what I need,” he had told a friend over lunch. “And she has it.” It was, admittedly, sickeningly self-serving, but he was a dumb kid at the time. Clearly, that wasn't how he felt anymore. From that day forward, however, she became an origami machine – right up to the day she died many years later. And Johnny kept each and every rabbit – right up to the day he finally joined her. 

(SPOILERS CONTINUE.) So, mystery solved? Hardly. Rabbits appeared elsewhere in Johnny's memories as well. On Johnny and River's wedding day, the mostly happy couple encountered a bunny that'd lost a rather lopsided battle with a truck. River refused to leave the flattened, obviously flat-lined animal's side even though she and Johnny sort of, you know, had something of an important engagement to attend. It didn't make any sense. The memory ended with Johnny simply pleading for River to join him instead of mourning some random forest creature. That, however, didn't bring Rosalene and Watts any closer to the bottom of the rabbit-themed rabbit hole. 

Stumped, they nearly gave up on fulfilling Johnny's last wish. But then Watts discovered that – for reasons a bit too complicated (and messed up) to go into here – Johnny had been put on memory destroying drugs as a very young child. So Rosalene and Watts managed to force their way into memories Johnny didn't even remember. And, among other things, they discovered the real first time he met River. 

Johnny had wandered away from his mother during an annual festival. In doing so, he discovered a cliff-side with a positively glorious view of the stars. “Hey,” a voice rang, piercing clean through his moment of silent awe, “that's my spot.” It was, of course, River. Eventually, the two began to discuss stars – specifically, what they were. In confidence, she revealed that she believed stars to be lighthouses – shining and beautiful, but individually separate from all others. Though she never admitted it, the implication was obvious: she identified with them. Her autism alienated her from other people. She was alone.

She quickly changed the subject to tracing constellations, presenting Johnny with a puzzle: what did the moon and its nearby star clusters form? He studied it intently before reaching an age-appropriate loud and overjoyed conclusion: A BUNNY. “...And the moon is its big, round tummy!” Then Johnny's mom came a calling. Before he fell in step behind her, however, he made a promise to River: he'd meet her same time, same place next year. “But what if one of us moves or gets lost?” she asked. “Then we'll meet on the moon,” was his exuberant reply. 

And then everything clicked for me. The origami began when River realized that Johnny didn't remember the first time they'd met. Rabbits always meant so much to her because she linked them to her love for Johnny. But he didn't get it. And she didn't understand how to express it. And she died without being able to do so. As soon as the lightbulb went off in my head, I put on a waterworks show that probably could've put Seaworld out of business. (SPOILERS END HERE.)

And that's barely even touching on all the incredibly happy moments in their relationship that To The Moon depicts. Or the myriad of other equally important items the game constantly references. Or the entire third act, which could have told me I'd won the lottery and the chance to punch each and every person involved in the creation of SOPA, and I'd have still started bawling. Or the ending, which is one of the most happysad things I've ever seen. I still can't even read about it without tearing up. 

But there's one commonality between all those events: They are by no means flashes-in-the-pan. To The Moon builds to them meticulously. Item-by-item. Moment-by-moment. It rarely spells things out for you, though. This is a game that expects your brain to flex its cortexes and do some very heavy lifting. Don't take that to mean, however, that To The Moon blindly shoves you into shark-infested waters and expects you to sink, swim, or cry so hard that the sharks actually evolve a conscience. It's not merely some ill-fitting story masquerading as a “smart” work of “art” –  a square peg forcing its way into the gaming medium's round hole.

To The Moon works well as a game precisely because it so thoroughly focuses on one gameplay element. You collect items. Over-and-over-and-over. That's pretty much it. But in doing so, I became extremely well acquainted with each and every one of them on an individual basis. I was better able to remember details: when, where, how, why. As a result, I rarely had to short circuit my brain to understand more nuanced plot points. The entire process was shockingly natural. In its mechanical simplicity, To The Moon is utterly brilliant. It is not, as one might say, rocket science.

Neither, might I add, should be your decision to buy this game. Even my spoiler section hardly scratched the surface of what makes To The Moon so wonderful. Play it. Experience it. Love it. Oh, and don't forget to bring some tissues.