I had high hopes for Lifeless Moon back when I saw the first trailer during the 2022 Summer Game Fest. It looked like a kooky little indie weirdo game centering around an adorable little NASA spaceman, and I was hoping for a trippy, head-scratching ride. But after playing the first hour or so (thanks to a preview build provided by Serenity Forge), what I got instead was a strong desire to take a nap.
The basic premise is that the main spaceman character is on a walkabout on the moon when they get sucked into a void ripped through the spacetime continuum. When they regain consciousness, they appear to be in a huge crater somewhere else on the moon, though details on exactly where are a bit fuzzy.
You’ll spend the next several minutes moonwalking and jumping and finding pages of a diary (à la Alan Wake), though these diary pages don’t really help you make heads or tails of what is going on. At least they are fully voiced, and they reflect the thoughts of the protagonist or recordings of a lost scientist who once navigated the same void you now find yourself in. So now you must find a way to communicate to Houston, all while following the breadcrumbs left by the scientist who came before you.
At least I think that’s what’s going on; a malaise settled deep within my cranium early on, making me feel sleepy rather than instilling a feeling of dread or wonder. What followed was a series of:
- Get to place…
- Need a key…
- Go to another place…
- Turn valve…
- Power up a thing…
- Go back to thing…
- Find a key…
- Read a journal entry…
- Go to next place…
- Need a key…
I think you get the point.
The main problem I have with Lifeless Moon isn’t that it uses the same tropes or design language that other video games have peddled before. Although more-of-the-same can be dull, plenty of games rise above the individual parts to coalesce into something incredible. The issue here is that Lifeless Moon doesn’t seem to offer anything that is inherently unique or interesting or scary or action-packed or nerve-wracking.
The story and activities are just things told to you, or things that you are required to do. I never felt like I had really uncovered or solved or figured anything out. Even when I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, simply moving toward the only lit object in the distance is generally all it takes to get unstuck.
Look, I am still hopeful that Lifeless Moon will end up delivering something unique and memorable once it’s completed. Maybe it just has a glacial start, which doesn’t translate to a great demo. It might yet still grow into that “kooky little indie weirdo game centering around an adorable little NASA spaceman” that I wanted back in 2022. But so far, it’s merely a competent moonwalking simulator with an interesting art design (I suppose). But the full game is going to need to do a lot more if it wants to veer away from the groggy spacewalk on offer thus far.
Disclaimer: I was given a Steam code for Lifeless Moon, but the opinions expressed in this article are my own.
