Deliver Us The Moon (2018)

What should have been a small game that was to pass some time became so much more to me in the course of playing it. Deliver Us the Moon is a story about how the Earth receives energy from harvested resources on the moon. Suddenly and without warning, that power generated from the moon disappears. There has been a mutiny from the workers on the Moon, and the space station and moon base has gone dark as well.

You play as a specialist to go find out what happened and go start back up the generator and keep life on Earth alive.

As I started the game, I didn’t really have any expectations, but quickly after taking control I saw the main story beats and started comparing this game to Tacoma, another space narrative based game about a space station that had an issue and you are sent to retrieve information about what actually happened. And Tacoma isn’t even the first game to do that either, so not only was my expectations low, I didn’t even really care about the story from the beginning either.

I threw the game on late in the evening when I was just bored, but it was always a game that intrigued me a bit from the 5 minutes of gameplay that I saw. The game continually tries to do something new every 20 minutes or so, which breathes a ton of life into it. Start out playing first person, then get thrust into third person exploration, then a bit of platforming, stealth, puzzles and throw in some vehicle sections as well. It really has a lot of different gameplay mechanics, in a very short amount of time.

You’d think it wouldn’t be very good, but honestly, it works pretty well. It’s not perfect, but it does it well enough without getting stuck on anything or becoming frustrated. Blending the game into a mash of different ideas keeps the game moving at a quick pace without ever getting boring.

The beautiful simplicity of the ambient soundtrack keeps in line with the atmosphere of being alone on an abandoned base in the middle of space. At times it becomes almost haunting and others times it’s intense.

Games have really pushed the boundaries of movement in space, and Deliver Us The Moon perfects being able to move in a full 360 degree of movement with a controller. Lone Echo in VR is the only other thing that I am able to compare it to, and it works just as well here in Deliver Us.

Even though the game really profits from many other abandoned space station games; like Tacoma, Lone Echo, Adr1ft… Deliver Us The Moon stands out as something that feels like a really personal game. That might just be reading too much into the “Based on an idea” by the game Director’s family member (probably their Dad). The ending was so wonderfully paced and captivated me in a way that I was not expecting. The stinger at the end of the credits sealed up a really well done story. I didn’t want to spoil anything in this game, that is why I didn’t really talk much about it. It’s such a short game and one that deserves more people to play it.