Brian Zhang

3192232

VISM-2006-301

2023/12/8

Individual Research Project

With the release of Shadow Factory some time ago, To The Moon, the first game

in the series from the Chinese game maker, has returned to gamers' attention twelve

years after its release. As a game that has won numerous awards for best plot and

excellent storytelling, its subtle and outstanding spiritual connotations are capturing a

new group of game storytelling fans. Although To The Moon is presented in 16-bit

flat pixel art, its well-constructed sci-fi plot and full-bodied characters are far ahead of

some of today's popular HD storyline games in terms of the thoughts and feelings

they bring to the players. About life, about love, about time, about death, To The

Moon gives players the uniqueness of an interactive fiction game through its touching

story design and amazing game music.

To The Moon is a typical plot-oriented game. In the game, the player takes on the

role of two scientists from the same company who provide Johnny, a dying man, with

memory editing services in order to help him "die without regrets". The game is quite

simple, players only need to operate the game character to explore the map, talk to

NPCs, collect memory fragments and then the game can move forward smoothly. The

entire process of the game is not designed to solve puzzles and battles and other

interactive links have a certain threshold but like a real novel in the plot to set up
suspense, laying the seeds. The author utilizes the unique elements of the game, such

as the size of the explorable area, the intensity of the map's light and shadow, and the

ebb and flow of the background music, to complete the guidance of the player's

feelings until the climax, and then return to the calm with a high degree of rhythmic

control.

The title of the game, "To The Moon", is the wish of Johnny, a dying old man,

but Johnny himself can't tell why he wants to go to the moon, while his family hopes

that the two scientists won't modify the content of his memories too much, so that

Johnny can remember his real family and joys in reality when he finally passes away.

Although motivation was difficult to determine and there was no good entry point for

the work, the scientists carried out their mission with great care. They try to find the

right pieces of Johnny's memory journey and plant the seed of a wish.

It's one of those games that looks unimpressive yet has garnered a 97% positive

rating on Steam and an 8.9 user rating on Metacritic. It took home GameSpot's 2011

Story of the Year award in one fell swoop (competing against it were such great titles

as Portal 2). Every player who has cleared the game has constantly recommended it to

every friend around them, including me. Even if the friends don't touch the game

much.

Kan Gao, the producer of this game, is a Canadian-Chinese. He was born in

Shandong, China and moved to Canada at the age of 11. Due to changes in his living

environment and language, he became extremely introverted and became obsessed

with writing stories and playing the piano. This work was started when he was a
sophomore in college. As a game producer who also writes stories and music, the

soundtrack of this game is an excellent example of a game that fully serves the

plot.The game's theme song is called "For River", composed by Kan Gao himself.

You can hear it when you first arrive at the old man's house. "River" is the name of

Johnny, the old man's lover in the game, and Kan Gao's screen name is also "Rivers".

It's a very beautiful piano piece, and even every time I play it, I can't bear to leave the

game and listen to the soundtrack over and over again. In the game, Johnny has to

carry the piano up to the second floor bedroom so that he can play the music for

River, who has limited mobility, forever. The beautiful notes are full of the innocent

promise of "going to the moon", and the deep melody makes this ordinary love story

unforgettable. I believe that every friend who has passed the game has a vivid

memory of this melody. I even have a friend around me who have devoted himself to

learning the piano in order to play this song well.

My friend was practicing the piece For River and looked for its piano. He said he

found an interesting little detail that only people who know music can see. I think it's

a testament to the game's soundtrack that the author used it to serve the plot.

Usually a song ends with a whole note. It's the equivalent of a period at the end

of a sentence, as in the case of Canon and other famous pieces, which end with a

whole note. But the main theme of this game soundtrack ends not with a whole note,

but with a quarter note and a half rest. When he first started to play it, he thought it

was a bit strange, it felt like it was in the middle of a song and then it just stopped. It's

like the words aren't finished. I don't know anything about music, but I've studied the
plot of the game. It's a very clever idea that fits the story of the game. The music stops

before it's finished, just like Johnny's dying dream and his love for River. The game

ends with the sound of the heart monitor stopping. This sound signifies the end of life,

but in Johnny's dying dream, he is holding River's hand as he flies to the moon. Their

dream of being together forever was still going on, and although Johnny's life was

coming to an end, his love for River didn't end just because his life was ending. Their

love for each other transcends the boundaries of time and space and of life and never

ends.For River ends not with a period but with an ellipsis of words.

For River is one of the most impressive soundtracks for players. Some players

even came to try the game because of the song. I was checking out To The Moon's

OST (original soundtrack) when I inadvertently noticed a 4-second background

soundtrack. It was a variation of For River. It's less than a line but is an integral part

of the game, Dr. Watts' cell phone ringtone. It's one of the two scientists we're

operating as. It's a detail that's hard to notice at first play but one that's puzzled me for

a long time is why the cell phone ringtone is a variation of the piano piece they hear at

the end of their mission. Neither the timeline nor the story line this ringtone is not

supposed to be there.

And so the mystery begins, For River is a tune Johnny wrote for his love interest

River yet it becomes his cell phone ringtone before Dr. Man hears it. I can't help but

wonder what if Dr. Watts is a Johnny himself? The male and female doctors in the

game are the younger versions of John and River, maybe there is no true love between

them, but that kind of life and death attachment in the memory is not a kind of love,
and why should the unusual relationship between John and River be regarded as only

the simplest love? The memory is Johnny's story alone and River is programmed. In

reality Johnny spent many subsequent years alone as well. For both Doctors, the male

Doctor takes painkillers for injuries sustained in the car crash at the start of the story

while the story never mentions him undergoing any treatment. This is just my guess

from a 4-second piece of game soundtrack, so maybe the reality is just one man's

story. There is no male Dr. Watts in reality, and there is no Dr. Watts in the mission, all

the memories come from the female Dr. Watts herself. Her heart has always had the

deep dependence and love for Dr. Watts that she never put forward on her lips. Isn't

the biggest program she implanted in Johnny's memory Dr.Watts himself. If the

original song of For River is the touching and long love between Johnny and River,

then the 4 seconds of For River is the short and short love between the two main

characters.

The two Doctors in the game have two very different personalities, but that just

goes to show that the "two" are one and the same, and that the male Doctor may not

be there at the start of the game. This proves that the male Doctor may not even be

there at the beginning of the game, and To The Moon is not only Johnny's wish, but

also a To The Moon for the two Doctors, and from this perspective the story line

becomes a two-pronged one. Decades ago a silent but deep love turned into a deep

dependence but never able to speak. The intertwining of the two gave me a great

shock and moved me.

It is a pity that this deeply hidden emotion is just like River in the eyes of
outsiders, but how many people can understand it? I think this is what the story is

really about.

In retrospect, isn't the real Dr. Man and Dr. Woman the players who have seen

the whole story with their own eyes? Perhaps the creators of the game didn't tell us,

but after experiencing the game as a whole, we realized that we were the ones who

worked at Memory. Decades later, an aging Dr. Watts returns to the place where she

once found love and wants you to grant her wish and join Dr. Watts in seeing Johnny

fly to the moon to fulfill his long-cherished dream. So players put on the device to

receive brainwaves and went into the memory of Dr. Watts to create the Dr. Watts in

her memory, and we carefully arranged every conversation, every solitude, every

episode for them. This is where the player's story begins. Not only for the protagonist,

but also for every player on this journey to the Moon.

All of these guesses are also my judgment by the soundtrack in the game. I can't

vouch for the accuracy of these guesses but just 4 seconds of the game's soundtrack

can give me so much to think about. It just goes to show how much a good soundtrack

can enhance a player's gaming experience. When the soundtrack is related to the plot,

it's as if the author is telling the story of the game in a melodic way. I just hope more

game producers will pay attention to the importance of game soundtracks!

 Work Cited

Aamir. “To The Moon Review (Switch).” Switch RPG, 27 Jan. 2020,
switchrpg.com/reviews/to-the-moon-review-switch/.

Musescore. “‘for River’ - to the Moon.” Musescore.Com, 8 Feb. 2020,

musescore.com/exotic_butters/scores/3318136.

Parker, Laura. “To the Moon - Postmortem Q&A with Kan Gao.” GameSpot,
GameSpot, 5 Dec. 2011, www.gamespot.com/articles/to-the-moon-postmortem-
qanda-with-kan-gao/1100-6347050/.

“To the Moon , by Kan R. Gao, Feat. Laura Shigihara.” Reives.Freebird,

freebirdgames.bandcamp.com/album/to-the-moon-ost. Accessed 8 Dec. 2023.

“To the Moon: Freebird Games.” To the Moon | Freebird Games,

freebirdgames.com/games/to-the-moon/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2023.