UPDATE: This review of ‘Lifeless Moon’ has been updated to reflect a launch day patch that improves character movement and some more details on the game’s platforming challenges.
The deep and derelict confines of space are extremely attractive to writers. Its vastness of it is understood by everyone—we also understand that we barely know anything about it at all. Writers often use this “fear of the unknown” to their advantage, projecting humanity’s tendencies onto it in hopes of building mystery to everyday conflict. No spoilers here, but that’s what Stage 2 Studios’ and Serenity Forge’s ‘Lifeless Moon’ tackles in their latest adventure game ported to consoles. PlayStation and Xbox players will be able to experience a novel space odyssey complete with the human touch, clunky platforming, and long walks on the surface of the moon.
I’m not really into space all that much. There’s still lots to see on earth and I’m not particularly enthused to read about giant swaths of nothingness. And rocks. But space is a scary place and at first Lifeless Moon really leans into the bizarre. As the game starts, you and your partner land on the moon—albeit with complications—and very quickly things get strange. Your mate seemingly pops in and out of existence, being able to communicate with you and not much else. Lights fill the screen; odd structures start appearing out of thin air. Yep, in space no one can hear you scream.
Now mind, Lifeless Moon isn’t a horror game. Though things do get creepy when you come across your first bizarre sighting: a small American town sitting upon the surface of the moon. From here on out you’ll meet the strange and the bizarre, but more notably you’ll learn about the characters behind the “discoveries” that you make, learning about them and their desires and how they shape the world around you. Childhood trauma and personal struggles slash failures are handled quite well, and I think that’s the game’s best strength over the course of its four-hour runtime. However, the brunt of this story is also told through entry logs in your notebook and if you don’t ever open said log, it’s quite easy to lose the game’s narrative.
I liked Lifeless Moon’s interpretation of human struggle… But to get to it, you’ll have to deal with some rather clunky movement and platforming. Unfortunately, I groaned a bit doing the game’s very first platforming challenge—your playable astronaut can only walk in eight directions, not taking advantage of the analog stick’s full 360 range and jumping is as responsive as you’d expect from being on the moon’s surface. This sort of movement tends to falter in 3D environments where the camera isn’t at a fixed angle, such as ‘Frogun Encore’ or the ‘Crash Bandicoot’ series, causing jumps from moon rocks to random structures to feel cumbersome. And even though your movement range increases when you get the jetpack, the platforming ends up becoming even less ideal as you hover over large chasms, hoping you don’t overshoot your jump. You certainly feel like an astronaut, though I can’t say I enjoyed playing as one.
Mind, since the game has launched the developer has implemented full 360 movement and it works as well as you’d expect. Platforming has gotten easier, thankfully! The downside is that the platforming itself is still uninteresting and some levels almost feel like you’re skirting the out-of-bounds playing area of a game, where you’ll be skirting on tiny ledges of building rocks or floating into fire escapes clumsily.
Anywho, as you platform about, the game encourages exploration to find notes left behind by the scientists responsible for this mess and to progress the story. None of the levels are very big and if they do have endless boundaries, not to worry as invisible walls will block any attempt to leave the playing field. I liked the environment direction Lifeless Moon took, offering serene vistas of space, dusty ocean beds and what have you; it does the game’s narrative justice and leaves just enough out to be a creepy place. But it’s difficult to investigate, partly due to low resolution textures, a lack of guiding lights, and a camera that loves to zoom out.
Make no mistake, the game does a decent job of signposting your next objective through bright splotches of green light and, quite literally, tells you what you need to do next all the time, but ironically nearly all my discoveries in this game were by accident. I picked things up that I didn’t notice were there and usually stumbled into objectives unintentionally. If that wasn’t the case, I would wander around for minutes at a time until I inevitably find the trigger for the next scene.
Lifeless Moon also features some light puzzle solving. These usually boil down to moving around objects and shining lights into portal structures. There’s not many of these and they don’t require much from you, which I’ll admit coming off ‘Myst IV’ I’m more than happy to take something easier for a change. Usually when you enter a puzzle sequence or a building you are placed in a first-person view where you can scroll about and select objects to interact with and move to specific parts of the interior to do some more sleuthing. If you’ve ever played an old PC puzzle title, you’ll be right at home. Just know that selecting objects is finicky on a controller, partly because the hitboxes on selectable objects tend to be rather small or way off center.
Lifeless Moon takes on the challenge of describing the root of evil, taking to detail what the product of one’s environment is. And even though the game struggles to tell it, it’s a novel story set in the backdrop of space and time (and occasionally the pretty vista). If you can put up with weak platforming and light puzzle solving, you can knock this one out in an afternoon and have something to think about for the evening. ∎
Lifeless Moon
Played on
Xbox Series S
PROS
- Novel story set in space about people and why they become the person they are.
- Space offers some nice views and creepy environments.
CONS
- Platforming challenges are uninteresting.
- Environment exploration is difficult. Signposting only gets you so far, but it’s more likely you’ll accidentally bump into objectives.
- Meat of the narrative is shoved into diary entries.
