Story Archives - Taro Omiya

Returning back to indie games, this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic is the main theme from the narrative game, To The Moon, developed by Freebird Games. The music is composed by the main developer themselves, Kan R. Gao. It’s an oddly optimistic track for a game surrounding around a creepy, privacy-intruding technology.

To The Moon is an interactive story starring Dr. Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts handling a dying wish of an old man named Johnny Wyles. As the title implies, Johnny wants to go to the moon…or more accurately, wants to believe he went to the moon. Naturally, Eva and Neil’s memory-rewriting machine takes care of exactly that: they can adjust Johnny’s past memory to cause a chronological domino-effect of other memories to be adjusted with this new detail. When the duo asks why Johnny wants to go to the moon, though, he answers he doesn’t know. Faced with such ambiguous details, the two attempts to rummage through Johnny’s past to find what convinced him to go to the moon, and what they can do to change his (internal) history.

Gameplay-wise, To The Moon contains very little interactivity. One can explore in an RPG Maker world and talk to characters to learn more details about side characters (and Johnny’s wife). Collecting the right thing, or speaking to the right person continues the plot of the story. A very simple game with a move-at-your-own-pace story and no lose conditions.

To The Moon is available on Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Today’s music is an upbeat song of excitement and adventure! It’s also 10-hours long. So…Let’s hike with the game, The Stanley Parable, with jolly cooperation! We’re Following Stanley (composed by Blake Robinson)!

Now, where to start with The Stanley Parable? Hmm, well, it’s about Stanley, that’s for sure. A man who happily pushes buttons as instructed by a screen monitor. Perhaps due to his tedious job, Stanley doesn’t operate well by himself, and even gets lost in his dreary, featureless office. Naturally, fate would have it that one day, he receives no instructions. On top of that, all of his coworkers disappears. And Stanley, not sure what to do, decides to venture out of his office, and into the depths of his company. Or so we are told…

The Stanley Parable is a walking simulator, a mid-life crisis simulator, a not-game, and a philosophy. The game shines best on its narrative, or more precisely, the awareness of the narrative. As you, the player plays the game, the game is playing you.

So I won’t mince my words when I say the game has minimal action. The enjoyment one gets from the game is entirely out of its narration, and holy cow does it feature one of the funniest, darkest narrator in the gaming history. The Stanley Parable is a rare gem that delivers a story in such a way that very few other mediums can properly portray. It stands as a shining example of how to tell a story when your main actor, the player, doesn’t have to follow the game’s directions.

The Stanley Parable is available on Steam for PC and Mac.

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Tag: Story

#WeeklyGameMusic: Main Theme (To The Moon)

#WeeklyGameMusic: Following Stanley (The Stanley Parable)