Ever since primordial man first gazed up at the cosmos and stretched out a trembling hand to touch the velvet cushion of the starry night, space has held a fascination for us that goes beyond mere words. The idea that Earth is a small town with many neighbourhoods in an enormous universe both fascinates and terrifies us. And the fact that, eventually, our home planet can no longer sustain us is as inevitable as night must follow day. It is with this sobering thought that Deliver Us The Moon bases its five to six-hour adventure. The premise of Deliver Us The Moon is nothing short of pure, undiluted sci-fi staple diet.
The Earth has been drained of resources and Man, in his infinite and often flawed wisdom, looks to the moon for salvation. On the moon we have discovered a form of energy known as Helium-3. And, because this is an unashamed sci-fi romp, our best and brightest minds have discovered a fast and efficient means of transporting Helium-3 to Earth via Microwave Power Transmission – otherwise referred to as MPT.
Everything appears to be going swimmingly for a few years until 2055. That was (or will be – depending on how you look at it) when the MPT stopped working and the world went dark. For anyone who’s watched a single episode of Revolution, you’ll know this is a very, very bad thing. Responding in earnest a group of scientists band together to launch a rocket to the moon, hoping to find the problem and fixing it. That’s where you come in.
Your job is simple; get to Luna, identify what’s gone wrong, put it right and deliver the moon back to Mankind. No pressure then. At its heart, Deliver Us The Moon is essentially a linear puzzle game that will challenge your grey matter at every turn. As a lone scientist/astronaut, you must figure out how to launch yourself into space, dock with the base on the moon and unravel the mysteries you find there. As Deliver Us The Moon unfolds, you’ll discover various audio and video logs that will help fill in the blanks for you as well as giving you a disturbing insight into the various eclectic characters and personalities that lived and worked on the moon before 2055.
As far as difficulty goes, the puzzles in Deliver Us The Moon sit somewhere between the early Tomb Raider games and Riven. Some of them are instinctively easy, while others will have you scratching your head and stroking your jaw for quite a while. For example, during the early stage of Deliver Us The Moon you have to work out the launch sequence in order to get your rocket off the ground. This involves throwing switches, turning dials in the right order and pulling levers at the right time. All of this while a clock counts down until lift off. This challenge alone took me a good twenty minutes.
Matters are made more tricky by the fact that Deliver Us The Moon offers no hints and zero hand holding. Along with your adventure you’ll be accompanied by an AI companion (think of Destiny and you’re in the right ballpark). However, you must figure out all the answers here by yourself.
In a refreshing departure from some puzzle game’s shortcomings, developers KeokeN Interactive has minimized the amount of time you spend wandering around aimlessly lost. Granted, there is no mini map, however the developers have made sure that the path they want you to take is easily illuminated by items that stand out either by being brightly coloured or they simply flash a word at you, hinting that there is something you can do here.
Although Deliver Us The Moon is somewhat unforgiving, you’ll never (or rarely ever) find yourself completely stumped. Most times, the solution to a particular puzzle is often staring you in the face, but you failed to notice it. Deliver Us The Moon does a great job of keeping the story fresh by mixing up the various game modes. Sometimes you’re running around corridors trying to beat the clock, at other times you’re floating around weightless or driving around on the moon like Master Chief himself in a Type-52 Prowler.
Graphically, Deliver Us The Moon is a work of art. I played this in 4k and I have to say, this is by far one of the best looking games on the PS4 to date. KeokeN Interactive excellently uses environmental lighting and everything looks as though it’s been taken from a high resolution photograph and brought to life right in front of your very eyes.
But, as good as it is, Deliver Us The Moon is not perfect. One minor niggle I had with Deliver Us The Moon was the frequent freezes every time I hit a checkpoint. This is only a slight hiccup, but it happened often enough for me to notice it. I would also like to have seen some sort of Leaderboard at the end of a particular challenge telling me how well – or badly- I did compared to other gamers. These gripes aside, Deliver Us The Moon delivers a truly thought provoking and challenging adventure over the course of its five to six hours of game play. With countless puzzles thrown in, a truly riveting and very plausible storyline anchoring the narrative, Deliver Us The Moon is one game that you’ll enjoy playing over and over. Go buy!
