MOON. A classic “anti-rpg”, influencing some of the most popular video-game artwork of recent history, from Toby Fox, who said he... didn’t play it, but “(the game's) concept was an inspiration for UNDERTALE”, to Tony Domenico of Petscop, who doesn't know anything about it but notes perhaps he “saw a screenshot of that "catch" text somewhere and forgot about it”.
…In all seriousness, it’s really fascinating how even the vague idea of moon, in screenshots and summaries, has changed the landscape of video games. It’s hard to tell exactly how much it’s responsible for when the influence of its initial Japanese-only release in 1997 was of course very concentrated in Japan, and I wasn’t around to experience that era of video games myself… but there’s just so many novel ideas in moon that you can’t help but feel a spark of inspiration light up in your brain the more you know about it. The good news is that in 2020, they translated the game to English, and many people who only knew of the game from forum posts and anecdotes can now play the actual thing for themselves. So, let me tell you about my experience playing "moon" for my own self.
In moon: Remix RPG Adventure, you play as a young boy who gets sucked into his television and transported into the world of the stereotypical RPG videogame he was just playing. You don't have a proper body in this universe, but an old lady tells you that she is your "Gramby", and she happily welcomes you "back" into her home and gives you clothes to wear, allowing you to interact with the world around you. Now is when the game introduces it's main gameplay mechanic - a ticking clock, with both a daily and weekly schedule that advances whenever you're not in a dialogue or cutscene. There's a little arrow on this clock, and when the ticking hand reaches it, you will pass out and be given a GAME OVER. As a little bird Yoshida tells you in the town square: "If you ain't got love, you'll stop breathing and pass the heck out." If you want to be able to move around for longer before having to rest in a bed, you'll need to interact with the citizens of "Love-De-Gard" and catch the souls of the animals slain by the HERO to gain love and grow stronger.
The time limit is pretty harsh when you haven't gained any love yet, but thankfully there are a few easy ways to get around it and raise your level. Gramby gives you a task you can complete for love right away, and she will also give you a cookie every day. Eating food will move your time limit forward, giving you more time to move around, so you don't want to miss your opportunities to stock up here in the early game. There's also plenty of animals around to catch, though you'll have to follow the HERO around for a little bit first. Don't worry too much about the weekly schedule - it's really only important for getting all of the NPC related love, and you'll probably need an external guide for those anyway.
Speaking of guides, it should be noted that moon is pretty much impossible to play without one. You can go for a pretty nice long time without any help (I think I lasted about 5-10 hours on my own?) but inevitably you run out of answers, and to be honest, the game doesn't provide a way to get all of information you need to complete events or progress the story, so I don't think you should bother trying to struggle through figuring out everything on your own. That being said, I would go as long as you can without one, since lots of the things you can do in the early game aren't too complicated to figure out by yourself. When you do need one, I personally found this generally spoiler-free guide very helpful, and when I needed to understand how to progress the story (the Mushroom Forest in particular gave me some trouble) this speedrun worked nicely. There's a translated version of the official manual, too, which you can read before you start playing since it's good for a simple introduction.
One thing I appreciate about moon is that while it has some frustrating elements, the game sets itself apart from other more grind-y titles in that it never absolutely requires you to do anything besides the main plot line. Once you reach the end of the main quest and reach love level 22, you are free to go straight to the ending, and there is no "true" ending to be gotten from catching all the animals' souls or doing everything the game has to offer. Still, I figured this was the case and rescued all 51 animals anyway, and stopped just a few hearts short of the max love level. Barring some few particularly annoying sidequests, moon is compelling enough that you want to experience and enjoy as much of it as you can. (...With a guide, of course.)
If there's one ultimate negative about moon's daily/weekly schedule mechanic, which causes certain events to happen only at certain times of day or even certain days of the week, it's that you will often be sitting around around waiting for something to happen, potentially for multiple in-game days...especially if you miss your cue and have to wait for the event to occur all over again. Thankfully moon has a really delightful way of making waiting pleasant: your character has a portable "MD" (Moon Disc) player, which you can get songs for and make a tracklist to listen to while you walk or sit around. I wish I had access to more MDs sooner, but save for two random discs, you can't get the majority of them until you get past the Rainbow Rocks area, so I recommend exploring that area as soon as possible and solving its puzzles so you can advance forward. You'll be able to get most of the obtainable tracks at an MD store afterwards, and thankfully, all the songs on my tracklist of favorites are sold there. You should give all of the tracks a try eventually –you'll have plenty of time to do so, trust me– but I think these are some nice, reliable ones to get you started. There were many times that the forced waiting, laying back while the music plays, was actually really enjoyable...it can be nice to slow down and pause sometimes, and not many video games take the initiative to actually abate tediousness like this. It should definitely let you use the MD player in more areas, though, since too many of them disable it completely, and still others allow it to play but have distracting background noises.
...Of course, you can only stand so much waiting before getting bored of even your favorite tracks, so when you start checking your phone during these musical breaks, it may be time to start wrapping up. When you are satisfied with your time in moon, you can probably go right ahead and see the main quest through to the ending. I had more than enough love to meet the endgame requirement when I was ready, so I went straight in, not looking at any guide for the final section. That...may have been a mistake. In "anti-RPG" fashion, the game throws a bit of a curveball at you in this part, giving you a choice to make after about 20 minutes of (unskippable) cutscenes. I chose effectively the wrong option, and the game ended abruptly. My first conclusion was that the last 20 minutes of dialogue was actually telling me that I had to 100% the game first before I could get a satisfying "true" ending, so I spent about a half hour in deep frustration thinking about all the things I bounced hard off of that I would have to return to, before checking an 100% playthrough and realizing that the game ends exactly the same there as it did in mine, and the ending depends entirely on that final choice from earlier regardless of your completion percentage. Ahhhhhhh. After going through the final cutscenes again, the true answer is a bit more obvious, but if you want to skip doing this ending twice, maybe check the guide before you lock in your answer. Regardless, the cinematic buildup is really well done here, both endings are fitting for the game, and on a broad level I like them both.
So having played it, what is moon, and why does even just the idea of it inspire? It's a game about subverting the tropes of typical RPGs with knights in shining armor, calling into question the "inherent goodness" of an almighty, violent hero and the "inherent badness" of scary looking creatures. At the same time, it clearly loves the RPG genre; the world of moon is brimming with life, full of silly animals and goofy characters, all playing out their role in the narrative of the RPG, and it wants you to love and care for everything in it. I think I do love a lot of what moon is. You can feel its dated-ness in many, many ways, but there is –if you'll excuse me for this– a lot of love for videogames in its heart, and it offers new ways to think about and experience those games.
With this in mind, it's not at all surprising that moon was so influential - and clearly I'm not the only one who felt a spark of imagination light when they played it. Here’s a game that came out just last year that is truly, concretely inspired by moon, while being unique and quite modern; let’s take a look…
24 Killers initially caught my eye because, as the game's Steam page explains, it was inspired by moon. Since I was in the middle of playing moon when I heard about it, it seemed like a great followup title. And while 24 Killers implements some solid game mechanics and style from moon, like the daily energy allowance that refills with food, and progression centered around helping funky monsters, I found that the game's vibes and aesthetics also remind me a lot of something like Earthbound; it's a vibrant and whimsical world where anything can happen, and you're just settled in for the ride. There's almost a toy-like feel to how everything looks and sounds; it's got this upbeat "fun" energy at its core that's extremely charming. I have to admit I've never fully completed any of the Mother titles due to the grinding and the external guidance necessary, but 24 Killers offers up the same energy without either of those barriers.
In fact, one of my favorite things about 24 Killers is that I didn't have to look at a single guide to figure out any of the puzzles for my entire 11-hour initial playthrough. Everything in the game is pretty self-evident and figured out quickly through some decent thought and trial-and-error. moon offers a good point of comparison: for many puzzles there, you would have to open your inventory, select the specific item necessary, and then use it while standing close enough to an NPC to get them to react, requiring the player to guess at what item they would need to use to progress...assuming they had the item they needed in the first place, or that using an item is what they needed to do at all! In 24 Killers, you simply can't offer items randomly like this; if you talk to someone and you have the item they need, the game will ask you if you want to give the item. If you don't have the item, the game won't prompt you. Usually if characters need an item from you they'll also make it very clear when you talk to them. This, among other adjustments to old formulas, cuts out a lot of potential fumbling and blind guesswork, and I much prefer it above checking the guide for moon over and over. In this way and many others, the game feels very anti-esoteric, meeting the player on their level and making sure that even the grand exposition and lore doesn't go over your head. Even in the dialogue the characters regard you pretty plainly; "Bro please ferry me to the afterlife" is probably my favorite line from the whole game.
In moon, you would appease or disturb a monster, and then catch its soul so it can be revived and rescued. It's delightful to discover all these different creatures in that game, but you don't interact with them much besides grabbin' at 'em. In 24 Killers every monster is its own sentient person--and every one has something they'd love to yap to you about. You'll run laps, bounce balls, play games, and drive cars around with these guys, and I found that to be another much welcome deviation from moon's formula. moon frames its monsters as adjacent to wild animals, but the monsters of 24 Killers are just genuinely guys hanging out, and if you engage them, they can be your chill buds.
But why are you befriending the monsters? Because you are HOME, a cursed spirit doomed to wander in limbo until they are dragged into the corpse of a soldier and given a chance at escaping their affliction--as they befriend the monsters inhabiting the remote island of the game's setting, they lose the resentful bitterness that caused their curse to develop in the first place and can slowly heal themself. Basically, HOME is a lonely bro, and could use some good friends. We've all been there, you know how it is. Honestly, HOME is probably my favorite character of the whole game; their dual mixture of sarcastic attitude that can flip to genuine goofy dramatics and flair, based on essentially "if it would be funny, do it", was great and really made my time with the game; their personality a worthy selling point in its own right.
Now, I should mention the two small hiccups I encountered with this game. Somehow I made an extremely similar mistake to the one I made with moon - I assumed that "completion" of the game required a lot of extra steps and took a break, when in fact I was right at the finish line and just needed to step over it. To explain with relatively few spoilers: you need to collect three "Echoes" to reach the end credits. I collected two Echoes, which gave a cutscene with almost identical dialogue each time. I assumed that the repetition meant that you would be required to gather a lot more echoes to finish (maybe 24 echoes in line with the games namesake...?) but it takes a long time to get just one Echo, so I stopped playing that save file in order to check out the others. Whoops. Don't make my mistake; you just need three.
A quick explanation is also necessary for the save file gimmick; this is where the 24 in 24 Killers is actually relevant. You start the game with four save files, each offering a "blessing" that you obtain once you "meet the Husbandman" (i.e. progress to a certain point) on that file. Then, you can use that blessing from the start of your next fresh save file. For instance, I chose the file C-4 which has the "fast-forward" blessing; once I met the Husbandman in that playthrough I was able to start new games with that benefit, where it caused cutscenes and general animations to play much faster. If you get all the way to the credits on a save file, you then unlock another save file slot, with a limit of 24 available save files - 24 parallel universes with 24 "Killers", hence the title. Once you know how to beat the game, you can get far enough in each save to get its blessing in about 3-4 hours each. I did this a couple times to see if there was anything new in these save files; aside from a few minor changes, the save files are identical to each other. I think the idea of having multiple different save files is fun, and the concept of creating a new "universe" (extra save file) every time you beat a session, which you can then also beat and then create another universe and repeat the cycle, is delightful fiction. However, I feel like it's mostly only substantial for the storytelling of the game; I can't really recommend playing the game over and over unless you genuinely just want more of the same experience you already had. Which is a legitimate draw of this title! I enjoyed playing around in 24 Killer's world quite a lot, enough to just go straight to replaying the game a couple times without extra fuss or worry that I was doing something wrong or right. I'm disappointed there wasn't much new to find outside of a few extra blessing-related lines of dialogue, but I don't regret the sidetracking; 24 Killers is just nice to play. Not necessarily “24 times over for 90+ hours” nice, but “extra time besides what's absolutely required” nice. ...Oh, and the other hiccup is that there's a little too many constant flashing lights in the game! Thankfully there's a "photosensitivity mode" option in the settings that works perfectly. Just worth mentioning because I think just about anybody would get bothered by the constant blinking lights in the UI.
Altogether, in its directness, (good) simplicity, and general vibrance and whimsy, 24 Killers is a genuinely "casual" game. It's a lot more appealing than many games I've seen that have grappled for the "cozy" brand; I hesitate to apply the same label to 24 Killers because it's usually reductive and honestly not that fitting here, but instead I found 24 Killers to be another game, like moon, that you can really enjoy just being in. If I had any extra criticism, I wish some dialogue and cutscenes played out a little slower, giving time to soak everything in just a little longer. I never really had this experience (my consoles growing up were all just Nintendo handhelds) but I can imagine it being the kind of game you could have purchased for your PlayStation back in the day, and you'd come home after school and plop down in front of the TV to mess around in it for a while to blow off steam. I hope that sounds like high praise, because it is, at least in my eyes. It definitely helps that the game picks up on the good bits of its predecessors, while making much desired quality of life changes to the old bits that needed work.
It can be a little hard to recommend moon for how old and hard-to-follow it can be; you might be better off watching a long-play online. I have no such issue with 24 Killers, and I encourage anyone who's remotely interested in the things I've mentioned here to check out the game on Itchio. (It's on Steam too of course, but the Itchio download comes with a Steam key anyway...!) Also as a final note, if you've got a switch and/or steam deck, both of these games are great candidates for handheld gaming; being able to pick these up whenever compliments their gameplay styles nicely.
THE GAMES!
