Deliver Us the Moon (Xbox One)
In the year 2030, mankind has drained the Earth of all of its natural resources in its efforts to keep up with its energy demands. Turning their eyes towards the stars though, humanity realized its moon held a special resource known as Helium-3 that could fulfill their needs, and using revolutionary technology they are able to beam the energy directly from the moon to Earth. For almost twenty years all went well and humanity had bought more time on its home planet, but one day, the moon base devoted to this task stopped sending the energy back and none of the crew manning the station could be reached. With its lifeline cut, Earth turned into a ball of dust.
After many years of pain and suffering following the worldwide blackout, a group of individuals with ties to the old moon program attempt one last ditch effort to learn what happened on the moon and see if they can reactivate the energy system so humankind won’t go completely extinct. With only the time and resources to launch one rocket with one astronaut on it, the fate of humanity rests on the shoulder of the player as they’re sent off into space with one instruction: Deliver Us the Moon.
Deliver Us the Moon begins with a compelling start, the stakes high, the science fiction technology intriguing, and the mystery of what happened on the moon base carrying the player forward through the hectic set up for the launch. In some ways Deliver Us the Moon is a narrative exploration game, the focus of the adventure mostly on navigating detailed areas to take in the environments and pick up details from objects left behind like notes or holographic recordings. However, there are plenty of small puzzles and brief bits of time-sensitive action along the way, so it’s not the kind of meditative mystery solving that would place it in a similar situation to Tacoma, another mystery game set in space. Setting up for that initial launch can be rather immersive despite a few moments like a breaking ladder and needing to move a staircase onto an elevator making it feel more like a video game puzzle than an authentic complication. Things do lean back into feeling more realistic as you start flicking the switches in your rocket with some thankfully clear instructions, and as you watch Earth drift behind you through the windows and approach the space station above the moon, the introduction invests the player by moving at a good speed while still allowing you to bask in the majesty of leaving Earth’s orbit.
Once we get aboard the Pearson Space Station though, things start to slow down. Drifting around in zero gravity is nifty at first, but soon the game starts focusing more on puzzles and action segments that are decent enough but rarely a matter of figuring things out. Sometimes you need to move power cells around and that requires figuring out how to make sure you have energy in the right place so automatic doors open or other systems work, but a lot of segments involving moving forward and doing rather obvious tasks. You get a little laser that you use to cut the obvious yellow hinges on objects, and later in the adventure a small floating robot known as ASE can be found that you can take control of to fly into areas you can’t reach to open a door or notice a passcode. There is a decent level of puzzle variety even if many of them are simple, these working more as decent barriers to making progress and often opening up opportunities to indulge the more simulation oriented side of the experience on occasion. Drifting around outside the space station and driving a vehicle around the moon’s surface hit that note of providing the experiences you’d hope to find if you were visiting our nearest celestial neighbor, so the ease with which you can get through the puzzles at least means it’s not holding you back from seeing and experiencing its more impressive moments.
The action segments could definitely use some work though. There are a few points where you’ll need to run under pressure of a timer or jump around a location to make progress. Some of these use limited oxygen as the external pressure, some use the threat of death if you touch something dangerous, but a few are very bland or annoying concepts. One section involves sneaking around automated defenses in a random bit of stealth that you need to pass through a few times due to the power cell shuffling puzzle in that area, and there’s a point where you ride a monorail and need to press the displayed buttons with perfect timing or you’ll die. Some moments of intensity are effective because the potentially lethal situation is less artificial and ties more into the realities of being on the moon, but even if you’re willing to get on board with the moments more appropriate for an action movie they’re still rather basic and often seem a bit too eager to kill you. The platforming can also be a bit stiff when it is relevant, the astronaut sometimes needing to make a small leap but finding it spaced so you can just barely miss it if you jump a little too early.
Mostly Deliver Us the Moon keeps its focus on pushing towards the next narrative clue, the mysteries around the moonbase and why Earth was cut off from the Helium-3 being the point where the game really needed to deliver. It’s not until you get ASE a little bit in that you can see virtual recreations of certain events the human colonists experienced during the key event in the past, but before then the game does place regular notes and the clear influences of whatever took place around the space station and moon base areas to pique your interest and introduce you to some key players. Perhaps a bit too early on we get the answer to the major reason things went awry on the moon colony and even though there are details to be fleshed in about it after the major reveal, it does feel like certain angles weren’t considered or were just brushed away by acknowledging such questions about the event could arise but with nothing done to truly address them. There is a message at least to the mystery’s solution for you to ponder and it does at least have a few extra layers to peel back as you learn a bit more about certain individuals or things that happened before the blackout, but for a detail that seemed like the core of the narrative it’s revealed perhaps a bit unceremoniously and the rest of the adventure wouldn’t have much to do after if it hadn’t introduced a few other aspects to pursue.
Besides the main idea of why the moon stopped sending Helium-3’s energy output to Earth, you have two more personal tales that have their own mysteries to unravel. Claire Johansen is your ground control for the mission, but her father Isaac Johansen was responsible for designing the systems you are now investigating and was on the moon colony during that pivotal moment in history. His fate and relation to the incident give you more to look into after the biggest reveal, but you also have a secondary story that builds up alongside it. Quite reasonably a team was sent to investigate the incident right after it happened, but the upheaval caused by the power shutting off on Earth meant the team had to leave before they could complete it. Unfortunately, one of their own was left behind, and a woman named Sarah Baker ends up leaving many of the important notes, audio logs, and holograms the player will use to piece together the parts of their own investigation. What happened to Sarah Baker after she was left alone on the moon becomes another plot thread to latch yourself onto, so while it didn’t handle its more important mystery the best, Deliver Us the Moon will keep you on board by shifting other questions to the forefront to carry the rest of the adventure.
THE VERDICT: Sometimes an immersive narrative exploration game set in space and others a shoddy action game with half-baked systems and mechanics, Deliver Us the Moon can provide both impressive simulations of traveling to and exploring the moon while making other moments feel schlocky as you do something that strains believability. Puzzles divide the story up well enough and the game is never hard even when it’s relying on rough mechanics like the platforming, but its gradual exploration of the plot’s core mysteries are where Deliver Us the Moon quality really cements itself. It has some personal narratives to keep the player invested in what happened in the moon base, but the game does give up too much important info a little too early, meaning the back half with a lot more of the action packed segments isn’t quite as compelling as its atmospheric opening segments.
And so, I give Deliver Us the Moon for Xbox One…
An OKAY verdict. In the same way many a player will be able to shrug off the simplicity of activities like finding passwords littered around the base or cutting yellow hinges, much of the action fits into that mold of being easy enough to stomach but not appealing in itself. Some moments might wow a player with their flashiness but others shows that Deliver Us the Moon didn’t put too much thought into how things should play when they involve more skilled input, but it’s the odd contrast with the atmospheric exploration that makes them stand out more. Much like the puzzle design it has some moments that are successful because they’re easy enough to move through without issue. The moments that play into the sensation of being in space do feel more effective because of their lack of pressure and the player being free to indulge any moon walking fantasies they might have, but the real make or break part of the adventure is the plot. The build up to the main mystery only for it to pay off too quickly does deflate some of the mystique of this adventure to the moon even if there are more details to be filled in, but key characters like Isaac and Sarah do still have important information to discover in those final areas of the game that make seeing the whole story still interesting enough overall.
While that initial sense of wonder at heading into space or walking on the moon comes across a bit in Deliver Us the Moon, the other aspects of the experience feel a bit more mundane. The narrative mysteries aren’t spaced out well in how they deliver key information despite there being some emotional moments and ethical quandaries baked in well enough, the puzzles are acceptable roadblocks but nothing too difficult or unique, and the action can sometimes feel corny or stiff due to how it introduces unrefined mechanics to the adventure. It’s hard to recommend against going to the moon in this often rather lovely indie game, but Deliver Us the Moon doesn’t fully deliver on the promise of its story and setting due to its uneven balance. Rather than its mistakes or highlights standing out as what defines the experience, it feels rather unexceptional even as you’re going on an impossible journey to outer space.