Really doesn't deserve the hype for two main reasons. First, the story actually is very weak. Second, I knew to expect no gameplay but you still have to interact with the game quite a lot to move it forward and that part sucks terribly here.

People are crying over a love story full of massive plot holes, zero character depth and no love expressed between the characters. They have nothing together and shouldn't have been together in the first place. It didn't move me or affect me deeply in any way.

The dev bamboozled the players and possibly even himself with time travel, recurring items that symbolize things (every artsy fartsy movie director's favorite) and a few table spoons of confusion. It gets praise in part due to the way the story is told in that it keeps the player guessing despite being told backwards - and that IS clever - but in terms of tying everything together correctly the ball is dropped pretty hard and right from the start of the game too, confusing you through no fault of your own. Even though half of it made no sense, in the end the game plays sad piano music, the normies start crying and presto: best game ever. Puhleaze.

Autism spectrum disorder could and should also have been represented better with a lot more care. Players unfamiliar with it may well get the wrong idea.

I had to google how to progress at one point despite having been trying to do exactly what the game wanted me to do to progress, but it hadn't worked because of the bad interface, leading me to waste my time repeatedly re-exploring the area with the belief that there must have been something else to find. The game puts you on a horse with no ability to dismount. Then to be able to click an NPC to progress you have to get right on top of him, horse and everything and click in just the right spot. Movement in general is awkward. You frequently have to click the same object 6 times in a row, this is by design. Obviously that's bad design. The game will make you wait a second after every click before the next click can be registered. Why not let the player hold the button down instead of clicking over and over?

I did appreciate the overall creativity, the beautiful piano music, the witty dialogue and you do get the sense that the dev tried to get the most out of RPG Maker, creatively going as far as for example portraying a day/night transition where the sky turns red when the sun comes in. In a game with a 3D engine the engine can generate the lighting transition for you in realtime. In this case you have to appreciate that it's done with hand made pixels.

Later in the game however, the dev takes getting the most out of RPG Maker XP a few steps too far. While the story builds, so does the frustration. A confusing looping action sequence with enemies, floor spikes to avoid and 'shooting' is thrown in, something that the engine isn't suitable for, causing a climax in the frustrations just before the actual story's climax where it does the most damage. It felt out of place in a game that outside of this part is like a walking sim all the way through.

There's no settings and that's bad because the music is so loud and the graphics are too pixelated for fullscreen that it defaults to. You have to figure out on your own to press Alt+Enter to switch to windowed mode and the window you then get is far too tiny. You then drag the window's edges to make the game an acceptable size. When you relaunch the game it's back in fullscreen mode and after Alt+Enter the window is tiny again.

I don't always necessarily regret playing a game that I write a negative review for. In this case I do and I wish I could get my 6 hours back. The majority of Steam users are casuals with low end systems and on average they are suckers for easy to play games with a "cutesie" 2D art style that will run on a potato. That factors into the overall rating quite a bit. If what you're looking for is a story that'll make you cry then pick up Highway Blossoms. It kicks like a mule compared to this.

After finishing To The Moon I thought: "What the hell, dev.... did I miss something here?". Looking for the answer to that question I found this video uploaded 5 years ago. Huge spoilers so only watch it after you've played if you're still interested in playing.
https://youtu.be/67npeQIRVLU
I didn't miss anything. The one on the left is an actress who is generally more emotional and emotive than I am and probably has higher emotional intelligence. She gets really into social dynamics between characters in games, yet her experience in To The Moon matched mine pretty much exactly. She speaks my mind with every single point she makes including the ones I didn't write about. I just understood more quickly that what the game was trying to portray with one of the main characters was autism.

Really doesn't deserve the hype for two main reasons. First, the story actually is very weak. Second, I knew to expect no gameplay but you still have to interact with the game quite a lot to move it forward and that part sucks terribly here. People are crying over a love story full of massive plot holes, zero character depth and no love expressed between the characters. They have nothing together and shouldn't have been together in the first place. It didn't move me or affect me deeply in any way. The dev bamboozled the players and possibly even himself with time travel, recurring items that symbolize things (every artsy fartsy movie director's favorite) and a few table spoons of confusion. It gets praise in part due to the way the story is told in that it keeps the player guessing despite being told backwards - and that IS clever - but in terms of tying everything together correctly the ball is dropped pretty hard and right from the start of the game too, confusing you through no fault of your own. Even though half of it made no sense, in the end the game plays sad piano music, the normies start crying and presto: best game ever. Puhleaze. Autism spectrum disorder could and should also have been represented better with a lot more care. Players unfamiliar with it may well get the wrong idea. I had to google how to progress at one point despite having been trying to do exactly what the game wanted me to do to progress, but it hadn't worked because of the bad interface, leading me to waste my time repeatedly re-exploring the area with the belief that there must have been something else to find. The game puts you on a horse with no ability to dismount. Then to be able to click an NPC to progress you have to get right on top of him, horse and everything and click in just the right spot. Movement in general is awkward. You frequently have to click the same object 6 times in a row, this is by design. Obviously that's bad design. The game will make you wait a second after every click before the next click can be registered. Why not let the player hold the button down instead of clicking over and over? I did appreciate the overall creativity, the beautiful piano music, the witty dialogue and you do get the sense that the dev tried to get the most out of RPG Maker, creatively going as far as for example portraying a day/night transition where the sky turns red when the sun comes in. In a game with a 3D engine the engine can generate the lighting transition for you in realtime. In this case you have to appreciate that it's done with hand made pixels. Later in the game however, the dev takes getting the most out of RPG Maker XP a few steps too far. While the story builds, so does the frustration. A confusing looping action sequence with enemies, floor spikes to avoid and 'shooting' is thrown in, something that the engine isn't suitable for, causing a climax in the frustrations just before the actual story's climax where it does the most damage. It felt out of place in a game that outside of this part is like a walking sim all the way through. There's no settings and that's bad because the music is so loud and the graphics are too pixelated for fullscreen that it defaults to. You have to figure out on your own to press Alt+Enter to switch to windowed mode and the window you then get is far too tiny. You then drag the window's edges to make the game an acceptable size. When you relaunch the game it's back in fullscreen mode and after Alt+Enter the window is tiny again. I don't always necessarily [i]regret[/i] playing a game that I write a negative review for. In this case I do and I wish I could get my 6 hours back. The majority of Steam users are casuals with low end systems and on average they are suckers for easy to play games with a "cutesie" 2D art style that will run on a potato. That factors into the overall rating quite a bit. If what you're looking for is a story that'll make you cry then pick up Highway Blossoms. It kicks like a mule compared to this. After finishing To The Moon I thought: "What the hell, dev.... did I miss something here?". Looking for the answer to that question I found this video uploaded 5 years ago. Huge spoilers so only watch it after you've played if you're still interested in playing. https://youtu.be/67npeQIRVLU I didn't miss anything. The one on the left is an actress who is generally more emotional and emotive than I am and probably has higher emotional intelligence. She gets really into social dynamics between characters in games, yet her experience in To The Moon matched mine pretty much exactly. She speaks my mind with every single point she makes including the ones I didn't write about. I just understood more quickly that what the game was trying to portray with one of the main characters was autism.