Lifeless Moon was announced back in March 2017 and is the spiritual successor to the sci-fi adventure indie game Lifeless Planet.
In Lifeless Moon, players find themselves in the middle of a mysterious lunar expedition and face the aftermath of an old experiment from the 1970s. The gamer will get the role of an astronaut from the Apollo space program, and we have to find out his fate and immerse himself in the adventures that await him. Having set off on a mission to the moon, our hero randomly ends up in another world, or falls into the depths of his consciousness and tries to understand what is happening.
Back in 2014, Lifeless Planet introduced an interesting game concept to players. What originally began as an exploratory mission to find a planet teeming with habitable life has become a mystery of the presence of an unknown society in uncharted territory. It was not a long adventure game, but an intriguing one. And now, nearly nine years later, the same studio is back with a spiritual sequel to Lifeless Moon.
Lifeless Moon throws you into the same situation as its predecessor. You are an astronaut on a mission but in a place where nothing is what it seems. Having moved, we find ourselves on a seemingly normal surface of the moon, but something is wrong … We see our teammate in the distance, and as soon as we try to get closer, he disappears, and we hear only his radio transmission, but there are transmissions with another member of your team, but not to say that it is beneficial, not from the point of view of usefulness, not from the point of view of the plot.
After a while, you will stumble upon a city on the moon, which definitely should not be, and after some research, we will find a cafe that attracts us, but it is closed, and after some digging, we understand that we need to find the key to progress. And here the fun begins. I found the key, but it did not fit the diner, and then I realized that I was stuck in every sense. And this is not the last time in this game… What did this nameless key reveal? The only building with a light on in the entire city was the diner, which, with a playful vibe, hinted that I should go there. I started to explore a large location around this eatery and the city, and found an old bunker and a couple of more secrets, but I could not figure out what this key was from. And only after a few runs back and forth, I came across a door that stood out a little from everything else in the city, where this key fit, and there I already found what helped me move forward. And once inside the cafe, having lost only 15 minutes of running back and forth around the location, I was met by my dead colleague, who transferred me to another location.
The game pays a lot of attention to little things that are hard to see, which makes it a little boring to go through and study everything that the game gives, and in the middle of your path of exploration, sometimes you think of dropping everything and leaving. Do something more interesting. I’m not trying to say that the game is somehow bad, but when you have to run around large locations that are not the most saturated with content, you get sad and want to quit this game.
As mentioned before, we’ll have to explore a bizarre environment, collect documents and clues to understand what’s going on, solve simple puzzles, use various technologies, and fly our jetpack. The gameplay of the game is quite simple, it combines a light platformer and a lot of puzzles that you have to solve as you progress, but often repetitive, and only a few of them will make you somehow tense up.
The game is already very similar to Lifeless Planet, so those who have played the game before will feel like they are treading familiar territory with this game. Not only gameplay, but also visually. Yes, without spoilers, this time, the adventure takes a different approach. Periodically, another astronaut appears, which makes the game less lonely, and some special encounters add some mystery to the game. But everything looks the same as in the predecessor game, no new equipment, no new interesting mechanics, and what will remain invariably pleasant is the atmosphere and fantasy of the game’s creators.
For the most part, the game is completely reminiscent of a modern light adventure. You will walk around the world in search of interactive attractions. Some green areas do things when you get close, such as a character or item appearing. Others are highlighted, and some have text prompts that appear when approached. This works well as a guide, but in some places you will still be running headlong and looking for what you need to do. There are times when you immediately have a notepad entry that tells you exactly what to do, but there are other times when the game won’t tell you anything until you’re in a certain place or pick up a certain small item.
With light adventure comes light puzzle elements, which can be divided into two categories. The first is basic item placement, as you will be moving items to specific locations to activate them. The trick is just to find the object because, eventually, you will stumble upon the place where you want to place the object and watch something happen. Other game mechanics are light manipulation, such as moving around mirrors to redirect it or fiddling with a device to change focus and direction. Again, this is not difficult, but interrupts the study and sometimes requires some thought. Throw in a jetpack platformer element to all of this, and you’ve got all the fun.
If there’s anything new in the series that you might not like, it’s the first-person elements. There are several buildings in the game where the perspective changes from third person to first person, and the movement changes from free to static switching between locations.
You can only interact with items when you find an access point and click it to write information to your notebook, get items to use, or view them. The problem is that your aim cursor is small, and unless you want to hover over every element that might seem important, the indicator that something is interactive animates too slowly to be noticeable. And the number of interactive objects themselves is too small. Most often it happens that you just went in and made money on an object that stood out or stood out from the general atmosphere, used it where necessary, and this is where the interactive ends.
Lifeless Moon turns out to be just as intriguing an adventure as its predecessor. The story may seem very similar and the puzzles simple, but what appeals to this game is the desire to explore and understand the world in which our hero finds himself.
The game is available for PC via Steam.
Our PC review of Lifeless Moon was completed thanks to a key provided by PR.
