Deliver us the Moon, which is not to be confused with the Lovecraftian horror title, Moons of Madness, has recently seen a release on Xbox One via Game Pass. The title, which is a story-driven adventure game baked in the ingredients of a walking simulator, tells a story about the survival of mankind, one literally on the brink of extinction as Earth has all but depleted its resources. The opening moments, which details its setup is enhanced by a fantastic score that sets the game up perfectly, in a way that I’ll admit, had me incredibly pumped to get to it in ways that most games often fail at trying to do even with vast and elaborate marketing campaigns or drastically expensive pre-rendered cutscenes.
In 2030, Earth descends into a devastating energy crisis, one that sees Earth all but emptied of its natural resources. This leads to the creation of the World Space Agency, whose sole purpose is designed on colonizing the moon to harvest Helium 3, a powerful isotope that can tip the scales in Earth’s favor and grant hope to its remaining survivors. This energy is then put through a process called the Microwave Power Transmission, through a massive tower that relays that power back to Earth. For a time, Earth was saved, but then in 2054, the transmission mysteriously stopped. With no contact to the moon, the WSA was shut down and all hope was abandoned. However; in 2059, a group of former colonizers have sent you to the Moon, to discover what happened and to try to re-establish that connection and save Earth.
Deliver us the Moon is at its core, a moody atmospheric walking simulator, complete with holographic displays of past moments, audio logs, and environmental storytelling. From the moment you arrive at the space station above the Moon, you are trapped in claustrophobic environments and left to fend for yourself as you track down clues and information on what went wrong. You’ll have to survive the harshness of space, and manage your air supply as you struggle to acquire O2 canisters in an effort to survive the next few steps in front of you. There is a great amount of tension built into these moments with some stellar set pieces that often have you barely coming out of them alive.
The game takes place in three overall environments; Earth, the orbital Pearson Spacestation, and that of the Moon’s surface. Each of these locations feel different from one another and offer up very different gameplay moments, even if your time on Earth is rather brief. These locations lead to the game being played through both third-person and first-person perspectives. As you explore the zero-gravity interiors of the station, you’re floating around in first-person, frantically trying to re-establish life-support, or through your droid companion, zipping through vents and activating power switches to unlock doors. Third-person is largely where the bulk of the game is played, as you explore the moon’s surface, taking part in a few light platforming moments and taking in the story all around you. Akin to something like Dead Space, you have a light meter on your back that allows for you to know the battery power of your flashlight, allowing that mechanic to be absent from the game’s natural UI, however; given how long the battery actually lasts, I’m still not convinced the flashlight needed a battery system in place.
Given the context of what a walking simulator usually is, there is no direct combat here since you are alone and isolated for the duration of the game. You do have a wrist-mounted laser attached to your arm, but that is solely for cutting away at specialized locks to open up doors or containers. Your only companions are a utility droid that is incredibly endearing, complete with a single emotive eye, and that of the holographic logs that detail events that transpired years ago. You’ll learn about the crew, discover audio logs and other storytelling devices to paint a better picture about how contact with Earth stopped. While I largely gloss over audio logs in other games, the acting here in these logs and the holographic scenes are superb, with some stand out performances that are extremely well performed. In fact, one of the final ones is so emotionally heartfelt that it genuinely made me emotional, given the context of the situation and the stakes at play for several characters.
Much of the 5-6 hour length has you re-establishing links between the station, turning on, or reconnecting the power to get the station and all its departments back online. You’ll be taking the Moon rover out on a few adventures to realign satellite dishes, to popping in and out depleted power cells to activate doors or used to solve several of the game’s engaging puzzles, several of which can be a bit obscure as to their solution, but never impossible to figure out. I will say that the final interactive moments of the game have a mechanic that resulted in several deaths that didn’t feel earned and designed in a way that just wasn’t fun. That said, once I solved it and took in the ending, my frustration almost immediately faded from memory.
While Deliver us the Moon isn’t a graphical powerhouse, it still looks rather impressive for a small team. The moody and dark environments truly make you claustrophobic and do a great job at setting the tone of being alone and isolated, often making you wonder if you’ll make it out alive. I did have a few instances of slowdown and some framerate drops, but overall the game ran pretty smoothly. The final moments of the game did glitch out for me, with a hallway filled with chunks of geometry just flooding the space, but a quick reload solved the issue.
Audio director, Sander van Zanten, had the challenge of creating the game’s audio to be believable in the vacuum of space, often relying on the impact of vibration through the body instead. This lead to some fantastic uses of sound to convey important moments of the game, including one that helped the game’s final moment resonate greatly. This is further enhanced with a fantastic score that compliments the emotion given to the game’s buildup and finale. While not memorable in a way that will have you humming it well after the credits, it still was very impactful at doing what it needed to do.
Deliver us the Moon certainly checks all the boxes for what we expect of a walking simulator, but its story and characters are leagues above with what we usually get from the genre. While I wasn’t initially sold on the protagonist not speaking, I understand why and eventually agreed with the choice. If you have the chance to download this through Game Pass, or on your own system of choice, I strongly recommend doing so as this is one hell of an adventure and executed to near perfection.
Deliver us the Moon was downloaded via Game Pass by the reviewer and played on an Xbox One X.
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X.