T w e n t y S i d e d

In late 2017, the (then, and now formerly) celebrated independent game publisher Fullbright released its second game, Tacoma. Riding high from the incredible success of their first game Gone Home, Tacoma was a well-received second effort. While Gone Home is set in a large, barely-understood house that tells many underlying stories in addition to the main narrative driven by notes left by the protagonist’s younger sister, Tacoma evolved into a somewhat simpler tale about a future in space with misbehaving companies and AI, and some minor underlying portraits of the characters involved, rather than stories; set on an Earth Lagrange Point space station recently abandoned due to a mysterious accident. Only a few months later a “small group of developers” called “The Station” published the game “The Station.” About a mystery on a satellite orbiting the Earth at some point in the future. There was some accident that caused the staff of the satellite station to shut down and possibly abandon ship. Both games advertised use of an “augmented reality” system to explore the environment and figure out what happened.

Other than that, neither title actually has anything to do with the other. No, really; they tell entirely different stories from different points-of-view. The augmented reality systems are different. In fact, The Station‘s AR is…kind of pointless, honestly? You could have done the entire game without even mentioning it was a feature, as it doesn’t use the “augmented reality” functionality for anything important. By contrast, exploring the augmented reality records of Tacoma is central to the gameplay.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Two Space Station Games of Christmas 2017”

Paige Francis He/him

Ok, I guess I answered the big question I posed previously. I want to talk about the story and compare it to the story of Lifeless Planet, but I should let you know what I found out after I finished the game. While Lifeless Moon was released a decade after Lifeless Planet, and by a different studio, it was written by the same creator. A short FAQ on the game’s website (that I could have looked at before I played the game, to be fair) made it clear that the story of Lifeless Moon is essentially the original idea for Lifeless Planet. It was that first game that was modified in the creation process. Unfortunately, *in my opinion*; Lifeless Planet is much better for those changes, and is a better game overall. I’m not going to claim Lifeless Planet is unique; everything is derivative in some way. The point at which a product differs enough from its collective inputs to make it sufficiently “new” is obviously a point of contention more often than not. So, Lifeless Moon is *not* a sequel *or* a prequel…it just takes some of the same elements of Lifeless Planet and uses them for something different. If you *want* the two games to be related, space is left for that, even if the nature of “portals” is different.

Lifeless Moon is not only shorter and easier, showing much closer adhesion to the “walking simulator” idea than Lifeless Planet; but the story is quite frankly something we see a lot in especially action movies that are trying to have a story underneath the action. Lifeless Planet is pretty good sci-fi; Lifeless Moon is a bare-bones melodrama used to flesh out a very simple game mechanic. It’s also poorly constructed (the story, that is, not the game) leaving one entire subplot effectively abandoned (not technically, but effectively) and basic questions with unclear answers.

TO BE CLEAR: this is a perfectly adequate walking simulator that only takes a few hours to experience. Price is subjective, but I would describe Lifeless Planet as giving you more than you pay for at its normal price of $9.99; while Lifeless Moon is worth half that at most. There just isn’t the same quality *or abundance* of content. But just to complete the circle…yes, Lifeless Moon has fantastic visuals. Very dramatic environments.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Finished Lifeless Moon: The Not-Sequel”

Paige Francis He/him