Going into a game review completely blind is always an interesting experience. You never know what you are going to get; is it going to be something I am interested in? Will it be good, terrible, somewhere in between? Such were my thoughts as I booted up KeokeN Interactive’s Deliver Us The Moon. Outside of the title implying something space-related, I had no idea what to expect from it. Upon watching the intro cutscene and 5 minutes of gameplay I was hooked into a nonstop 6-hour journey that I couldn’t put down!
Story
Review Copy for PC was provided for review
Set in the not-so-distant future, the Earth has run out of natural resources and is desperate for a new source of energy. Salvation seemed at hand when it was discovered that Helium-3, an abundant resource on the moon, could be used to power the planet. After years of building a powerful microwave transmitter (MPT) to send this energy to Earth, the energy crisis seemed to be at an end. For years things returned to normal as moon colonists worked to mine Helium-3 and power the MPT. Then one day, the MPT went offline and contact with the Moon was lost. What happened to the colonists and the MPT? Not willing to accept that the MPT was lost for good, a small group of scientists prepared for one last mission to space. Sending up a lone astronaut, it would be up to them to discover the truth behind the darkness and maybe even deliver us the moon.
Gameplay
Deliver Us The Moon is a game about discovery at its core. This isn’t a shooter or survival game but rather an experience that plays out from both first and third-person perspectives depending on the scene. You start out on Earth and prepping your ship for launch. Through scattered newspaper clips and audio dialog, you begin discovering more about what conditions on Earth are like in the 5-year absence of the MPT’s energy transmissions. The planet has constant dust storms that threaten to make most of the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. The unsanctioned mission you are about to depart on is potentially the only shot left at saving the population. That is an insane amount of lore to digest in the first 10 minutes of gameplay and I love it!
Things get even better once you get to space. There’s no gravity in your ship or the space station attached to the moon, you also get to deal with managing your oxygen supply. Movement can be truly disorienting as your sense of up and down mean virtually nothing to the hallways of space. It was really well done and I must applaud how well that sense of disorientation was portrayed. Your character’s spacesuit comes equipped with thrusters to allow for your traversal through the halls. On the space station, you get one of your few upgrades in the game in the form of a cutting laser that becomes essential in solving many of the game’s puzzles. The space station is a great training ground to showing you how a majority of the rest of the game will play out. There are numerous puzzles to solve and info to find about why the MPT has shut down.
Eventually, you will descend to the moon itself and everything is eerily pristine and there are no signs of damage to any of the facilities. Yet everyone is gone; the emptiness of what you find there really makes you begin to feel alone. There is a substory playing out as you explore the moon colony following what happened to a software engineer named Sarah Baker. Sarah and her partner Rolf were originally stationed at the space station but came down to the moon to see what happened immediately following the blackout. Through various clues and more audio logs, you get to experience the moment Sarah was left alone on the moon to wander alone.
The moon features a few different varieties to gameplay including low gravity areas, full gravity areas, a moon rover to drive around in. A little bit further into the game, you get access to a robotic helper called an ASE. This robotic companion becomes another essential piece to puzzle solving throughout the rest of the game. Assuming control of the ASE you can explore areas previously blocked to the player and open new paths. The ASE has another useful function in allowing for holographic replays to occur in areas one has been recorded. This is yet another lore building tool to let you discover what happened on the moon. Each time a new holographic replay would appear I couldn’t help but get excited to see more about what happened!
There are some seriously crazy revelations that playout in your journey to discover what happened to the MPT and the moon colonists. There is one especially big shocker right before the final chapter of the game that I was thoroughly applauding! I can’t praise enough just how much I loved the pacing of each new discovery as it took place. Discovering every little thing I could was a true joy for me. I also loved all the Moon Man comics, that seemed to parody the journey of your character, scattered throughout the game to find. Seriously, there is a ton of lore to discover!
Visuals
While it isn’t the most graphically pushing game, Deliver Us The Moon is a very pretty game. The moon and the vast emptiness of space are conveyed in a stunning matter. The empty halls of the stations are equally well done and despite not using many different colors seems like an accurate representation of what such a place could look like. Deliver Us The Moon also supports RTX lighting and it looks quite stunning! Sadly I couldn’t play with the effects on due to not having an RTX card.
Audio
Deliver Us The Moon might have some of my favorite sound design of 2019. The ambient sounds of the space station and moon are creepy and constantly convey just how empty and alone you are. Segments where you are out on the moon has audio muffled to convey that audio doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Sure it should have been completely silent for realism but I loved the approach used here a lot. The game is also accented with an incredible soundtrack that fits the moods of what’s happening perfectly!
Replayability
In my playthrough of Deliver Us The Moon, I was able to discover most of the games unlockable lore items. Thanks to a chapter select function, you can go back and replay certain areas of the game to try and find anything else you may have missed. There are also a number of other newspaper clippings, comic books, and drawings to find that aren’t part of the games collectible list that can further drive lore and finding all of those has been fun for revisits!
What It Could Have Done Better
About the only issues I came across with Deliver Us The Moon was a broken resolution selection switch, and one puzzle where my energy tank required for completion disappeared. Otherwise, I encountered no major glitches or bugs.
Verdict
I loved my time with Deliver Us The Moon. I loved everything from the story to the wonderfully portrayed atmosphere. Gameplay and puzzles were perfectly paced to keep me engaged throughout my entire playthrough. There are a few things I wish could have been touched on more from the in-game lore but hopefully, we will see more from this universe in the future. For the asking price of $25 on Steam and a console version coming soon, I consider Deliver Us The Moon an unmissable experience!
