#6 - To The Moon And Back By Wordigirl

To The Moon And Back is a game created by wordigirl

Hello there, boys and girls, and not to forget the enthusiastic readers of my unfortunately seldom-written reviews. But do not worry about that, because today I will be back on track to finally write a review on To the Moon and Back by a respected member called Wordigirl, who has had the experience of having made some quality games over the years. The big news is that this review might help me get the grand position of editor. Yes, folks, it's my editor application. Boy, I cannot believe how far I've come. I feel like I've become a reviewer just a few months ago but I realize that was indeed long back. Time flies, man. Anyway, enough of the talkin' and let's get on to the review now.

Pre Thoughts

I will give my Pre Thoughts on the game before I progress. This prepares me pretty well for writing the actual review. In this part, I will cover the Thumbnail as well as the basic explanation of this game

You wouldn't expect a person who had made only around above average games over the years (No Offence) to suddenly come up with such an amazing project. Yep, I'm talking about Wordigirl. Her masterpiece features over six levels boasting exquisite 3-Dimensional Atmosphere, with not one but two playable characters. The Thumbnail was stunning enough to capture a PPG feel that would have fooled millions of players who came here looking for a PPG to play. But of course, they would have rather played this. Anyways, without further ado, we'll go deeper into the review, and firstly, let's look at the gameplay.

Gameplay

Let's get on with the gameplay now, shall we? Now To the Moon and Back was not any sort of a scary or mystery experience, which is usually something in most adventure plats. But To the Moon and Back is more like a daily-life adventure platformer game. The introduction was really stunning, somewhat inspired by Bobbler's games. Basically, the player was hidden by a group of trusses or front plants that were covered by graphics to capture the experience of a PPG introduction, which is something newly introduced to this creator. That was followed by a stunning 3D School where we were supposed to play the role of a smart, but simple lad called David. The player must play as different characters to roam around the school, as well as the houses, and finally the garages, and the different landforms. Though the first few levels did not feature a whole lot of enemy placements, making it less difficult, I still felt a lot of innovation in various sequences always made the game stand out.

Now explaining the innovative ideas I observed in different parts of the game, one of them is the use of gears to show the movement of a ship. I presume that Wordigirl placed a spaceship on the gears (which were made invisible) to make the scene where a spaceship moves along the sky fast, from the reach of David. This was one of the sequences that stunned me and inspired me to make more 3D Games along the way. There were more phenomenal innovations like using gears to pull the character into the UFO, as well as player-changing between levels. We were playing as David in the school, but Tina Lee in the level where David's garage was featured. This enabled us to look at the game at various perspectives. Only, that the difficulty wasn't high, and the game was incomplete but other than that, the gameplay was phenomenal.

Storyline

The Storyline revolves around the life of two best friends - David Crain, a nerd who does research on extraterrestrial activity, and Tina Lee, who saveS David from bullies, but is unfortunately unnoticed. Once David finds out that there is no hope to make people believe of his alien existence research, he decides to take help from Tina Lee to build a spaceship to go to the moon. The most gripping part of this storyline is the scene where David gets kidnapped by the Aliens, who pulled him up to his UFO. Tina Lee becomes the main character to save him from this chaos, with nobody even believing her story. What I like about this game's storyline is how it starts to become much more gripping and interesting as it progresses. This is another factor that hooked me to this game. But anyway, let's get on to the next part.

Music

I decided to take it as a custom to include this heading in my reviews from now on. So, talking about the music, I have things to say only about the music on the first and fourth levels. The first level's music, was a bit annoying to listen to, and I would have preferred 60 nights over the actual selection. In level 4, The music "Find a Way" was used. It is made for situations which have turned ugly or bad. It fitted this situation perfectly, as David is now in the UFO, and Tina Lee has to rescue him alone. This was definitely an example of a bad situation. I liked this choice of music. But now, let's get to the scenery, shall we? We shall!

Scenery

Scenery played a major part in this game and will be important in this review as well. The scenery was literally the part of the game that made this extremely unique. Wordigirl perhaps got inspired by Bobbler who brought the new 3D Mechanics into the Platformer creator that captured the PPG feel even in an Adventure Plat. The 3D Scenery Effect can be done by placing tiles and walls adjacent to each other and adding the same graphics to either of them, which captures the feel of the character standing in the middle of the whole room, with part of the floor even behind him, which is basically the walls with the same graphic. Other than that, there are a few more things I would like to explain.

Here I go. I think default plants and other items in the platformer creator must be used without a graphic in at least some places, because extensive use of graphics is a little awkward to look at, in my opinion. I always like to see at least a small use of the default items even in 3D Games like this. I am not saying this is compulsory for a good game, I'm saying this could be a small improvement. Not like games aren't good without default items though. Anyway, with having explained all the parts of this review, let's now get to the Pros, Cons and also the Ratings, Shall we?

Pros

* 3D Mechanics

* Improving Storyline

* Self-Moving UFO (With Gears)

* Superb Introduction

Cons

* Unfinished Game

* Very Little use of Default Items

Ratings

Feature Worthy?

To be honest, if a game is incomplete, it should be published as a demo and "To be continued" will be displayed on the final level. This is acceptable for a feature if it is at least good in the finished levels. But the last level was unfortunately incomplete and impossible, which means this game isn't beatable in any way. So I guess it cannot be featured unless the last level is at least made possible, but otherwise, it's a fantastic project overall, no second thoughts.

Final Verdict

To the Moon and Back is a pleasant sploder experience of having gone to a 3D World of a story with many twists including misunderstandings and mishaps, and references of different science facts. This is supposed to be a feature-worthy game but the last level was incomplete, which in my opinion, isn't acceptable. Like I said, even a demo game can be featured unless it's possible. This game might have been featured already, but that is the opinion of that editor. Anyway, overall, this game will indeed be a part of my favorite list, and I hope this will be complete soon. Until then, Goodbye and hopefully I will be back for my second review in this application.