T w e n t y S i d e d

I have written before about Lifeless Planet, one of my favorite games. It’s short, not difficult (although I still haven’t tried to get the achievement with no lives lost; I really don’t think I can do it. Likewise the speedrun, although I’m more optimistic about that one) and has a fantastic sci-fi story. A crew of three American astronauts in a post-Apollo pre-end-of-the-Cold-War alternative timeline travel at twice the speed of light for 15 years (i.e. 30 Light Years away) to a newly-discovered green and oxygen-rich planet. This is a one-way mission (as far as you, the main character knows) to verify a habitable planet reachable by Earthlings. However on arrival your capsule crash-lands and you discover a barren, lifeless world. Having been left for dead by your colleagues, you follow their footsteps and soon discover that this world appears to have been *already settled* (barely) by the Soviet Union! You learn as you explore the planet and the Soviet structures present that the U.S.S.R. discovered a “portal” in Siberia in 1974 that transported them instantly to this lush green planet. The Soviets immediately began quietly establishing themselves here before announcing the discovery to the world. They also discovered that the green moss or algae that covered EVERYTHING was actually a power source! They learned to tap into this substance for UNLIMITED POWER! They discovered artifacts from the alien race that created the portals, including the remnants of other portals and many other devices, and a portal that let them return to Earth. Unfortunately soon after switching over to the “green” substance as their power source, all life on the planet began to die. The portal from Earth became unstable, destroying anything sent through it. Yes, including people. The portal that returned the Soviets to Earth suddenly changed to show an alien city full of tall skyscrapers and round portals. Also the Soviet scientists realized that time passed on this planet much more quickly than on Earth. Minutes on this new planet equaled months on Earth. As the Soviets died off, one scientists expounds that the alien city visible through the “return” portal isn’t an alien city at all; it *is* the Earth…the Earth as it would appear hundreds if not thousands of years in the future. You, the American astronaut, having been guided through all this by a Soviet woman who somehow hybridized with the native life energy and sacrificed herself to bring life back to this world, knowing the final portal is the only way forward to save his life, steps through the portal to a lush world and an unfamiliar city. The End. (there’s also a sub-plot about letting go and living your life to the fullest, but honestly it’s not that important)

TEN YEARS after Lifeless Planet was released, a spiritual sequel called Lifeless Moon was published. That was last year; I even mentioned buying it I think. It’s a “spiritual” sequel because the game was produced by a different studio long after the first game, and isn’t the sequel most people expected. For many years players figured any sequel would feature “the astronaut” exploring the new planet shown in the portal, but what was presented was definitely *not* that game. Or is it? We’ll cover that.

The opening video for the game is foundational to the story; unfortunately I couldn’t get that movie to play on my Linux installation. Everything *else* works fine; no glitches, no slow downs. Just the opening movie soft-locks. It could be solved by switching to full-screen; something I haven’t tried simply because I didn’t want to mess with killing the game from a full-screen lockup if that was necessary. The opening movie simply describes the Cold War space race with attention to North American X-15 test flights, the death of test pilots, and the Apollo missions. There is a reason they jump from one to the other. Some accompanying narration informs the player that you, as an American astronaut, are part of the Apollo moon landings. The other astronaut you are with discovered a light anomaly, touched it, and disappeared. So, you did, too. The best you can tell you have both been transported through time and arrived at slightly different points. Thus, you occasionally see your partner and hear them over your helmet radio, but mostly you are alone. On the Moon. Your oxygen supply is limited and your Moon Lander is nowhere to be seen. You are tasked to find your way out of the crater you find yourself in after encountering the anomaly. A canyon seems to lead out of this area, but dead-ends in a wall of rock. A sudden earthquake-like rumble causes time to flash, and suddenly the crater behind you is filled with rock outcroppings (that you can conveniently use to jump your way out of the crater). Upon leaving, you are met with this:

Florence’s Diner, which you are clearly meant to be drawn to, is locked; you must find the key. Searching the town reveals another locked door at the back of what appears to be a school, and a machine shop you can enter. The Machine Shop presents a broken radio but also immediately lets you know it can’t be fixed, as well a note from someone who had already found the radio and the dead machinist who is *not* present now. However, visiting the Machine Shop resolves your existing task of “Explore{ing} the Town” and instructs you to find a way to “Restore Power to the Town.” This is a bit confusing considering many things *are* powered, but we’ll just dismiss that as irrelevant for the moment. Once we move behind the town-like area, we see another lit area not far ahead, that is faintly green. And surrounded by what appears to be the remnants of a portal from the first game.

A note left there (for some reason) tells us someone was able to connect power from “the device” to “the building.” The conduit before us runs up and over the hill in front of us to a building. Is it “the” building? Following that conduit a shape looms in the shadow to our left, and we take a look:

Well, that’s silly. THAT shouldn’t be on the Moon. Inside this new room, which is mostly destroyed, we see; are some damaged generators (they have giant pipes jammed through them) and some kind of structure that the useless generators connect to, and surrounds a ladder down and the continuing conduit. The scene shifts to an underground cavern that honestly looks pretty familiar. There is scattered equipment, an elevated Control Room, and a mahoosive round steel door at the far end of the cavern. The door is labeled “Vacuum Chamber.” We are able to turn on a few bits of equipment; a cut-scene lets us know we have restored power to the Water Tower in town, which will give us access to the Water Tower’s ladder. As in, we can now climb the Water Tower. Doing so gives us a key to the school. That’s it.

HOWEVER; between the “underground lab” and the school, which has a gymnasium full of frozen dead bodies covered by sheets, we learn what *appears* to have happened here. Some government lab called MUROC at the flight research center was researching teleportation based on the idea that Dark Matter was just normal matter moving backwards in time. Research along these lines had resulted in no results. One scientist proposed changing the power input parameters based on some Soviet research. This resulted in a run-away chain reaction that ended up TRANSPORTING THE LAB AND PART OF THE TOWN TO THE MOON. This would have been in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s?  I think they imply around 1971, but there is an open question on timing. After the translocation, the scientists who were in the vacuum chamber survived. The people in the town, obviously, did not. They all died rapidly from suddenly being on the moon unprotected. The scientists gathered up all the dead bodies and stored them, or at least some of them, in the gymnasium of the school. The gymnasium also yields the key to the Diner.

The Diner mostly provides the “guilt” subplot, which was also present in the first game. In the introduction movie, we saw an X-15 explode and we are told in the introduction many test pilots were lost in the early days of the Space Race. Well, it turns out you were in charge of some of that. The Diner draws you to the bulletin board in the corner to show you a photo of an X-15, which you pocket. At the far end of the diner suddenly a menu appears, glowing green. It seemingly provides no further information, but when you put it down *this* is behind you:

Mr. Space Ghost here tells you it was your fault he died; you *knew* he wasn’t ready for that mission. I think the implication is that this is the guy flying the X-15 that exploded in the intro. This encounter is quite spooky, to be honest. However, he disappears into green filaments (like the many other things, including your fellow astronaut, that sometimes appear. You saw a floating red chair in the middle of the school’s gymnasium) and leaves behind a key to the Control Room in the underground lab. Somehow.

Back in the underground lab you repair a control console and open the Vacuum Chamber. This gives you a key to the area where the previously name-dropped “device” is, the final pieces of the story of the town’s presence on the Moon, and your first look at the teleportation experiment by MUROC:

As the kids say, ERMAHGERD! This looks like a small version of the portals we are familiar with from the first game. Considering this experiment is from the late-1960’s, no later than 1971, the presence of this portal certainly supports the idea that the devices may actually originate on Earth. On the other hand, we are instructed NOW to get to the new underground chamber to see the “device” that the MUROC Head Scientist discovered on the Moon *after* they were trans-located here. And of course, when we reach this new area, we see an energy field that matches the energy from the first game.

Oh, and the Head Scientist tells us hopefully by using “this device” we can get away “from him.” “Him” being possibly whoever destroyed the generators? This isn’t clear yet. But it could just be emotional/psychological, as we’ve seen.

And that’s the first chapter of Lifeless Moon. It does indeed seem to be a mainline sequel to Lifeless Planet. We’re clearly dealing with the same energy and same transporters/portals. We have not yet touched on any “unfamiliar life,” as we were shown in the first game there really are living beings that don’t appear to have anything to do with humans involved with the story. Downsides: there is, so far, less jumping and platforming and the puzzle-solving is even less strenuous then the 1.5-out-of-ten puzzles in the first game. Hopefully this will change. These have been replaced (again, for the moment) with first-person areas that provide minimal interaction and use WAY too much of the “hunt the pixel” mechanic. You have to find the exact right area to click on or even hover over to discover you CAN interact with something.

For the moment, the story is carrying the game past these weaker elements, but I suspect this might be why I haven’t heard much about Lifeless Moon since it came out last year.

That’s it for now, see you next week!

Paige Francis He/him