Released in 2018 on PC and 2020 on consolesthis small independent game resulting from a participatory financing has obtained its new-gen version on PS5 and Xbox Series end of June 2022allowing a new audience to discover an adventure in space, tinged with simplistic puzzle games and a slightly revised technical quality.
A very realistic post-apocalypse
Inspired by several works of the sci fi genre, such as 2001, A Space Odyssey or Interstellar, Deliver Us The Moon (hereafter called DUTM because of the laziness) is above all an investigation carried by a story told throughout the game, via various bits of information that come to us over time. Everything starts on Earth in about 40 years. We learn that around 2030, the bobos on bicycles were right to shout: humanity is running to its death because energy is no longer available on Earth. By dint of driving Hummers, eating cows and killing bees, our planet is dying. But thanks to Elon Musk, men go to colonize the Moon to discover the Helium-3 isotope, an energetic compound which, as it happens, can be sent back to Earth with a microwave beam (not the same one as in your kitchen, it’s a bit more powerful). Everyone is delighted, the colonists are heroes, the World Space Agency which manages the space travel is gorging itself. But in 2054, the communication is lost. The ray ceases to supply the blue planet, which suffers all the disasters that Gillot-Pétré had predicted in 1995: heat waves, sandstorms, rising oceans and a new Christophe Maé album.
For five years, alumni of the shuttered WSA attempt to mount a small expedition group to find out what happened on the other side of the beam, unable to believe that the colonists intentionally deprived Earth of its resources. Suspicious death? Alien attack? Paranormal accident? You are sent to investigate and get the ball rolling. This is how your adventure begins, alternating between phases aboard ships, starting with the launch rocket at the beginning of the game – a very good sequence that puts you directly in the mood – and free phases in space stations or on the mainland, sorry, the moon. Be careful, free phases but not too many since this is not an open world but a corridor game. Closer to a contemplative adventure title, or a walking sim, than a post-apocalyptic survival narrative, DUTM is slow. Very slow. As slow as a cosmonaut making small jumps on the dark side of the Moon, subjected to a reduced gravity.
Like any good walking sim, you’ll have to read a lot of stuff to understand the story a bit more
If the scenario is devilishly realistic, the physics and the gameplay are just as realistic. You will be subjected to weightlessness in some scenes, sending you tumbling gently in a module, sliding without a sound towards walls without knowing where the top and bottom are. During extra-vehicular exits or in depressurized stations, your suit will indicate the remaining time of O2 and you will have to find tanks on your way to avoid having blurred vision, then falling into a coma. Some sequences will be very exciting and frightening, when you are dropped into the great emptiness, drifting through debris until you manage to find a place to hold on to so as not to drift into the cosmos. Nevertheless, we feel that the game is well scripted and pushes you to go precisely where you need to be, without ever leaving room for total exploration. Quite logical given the double-A scope of this indie game, which does more than well in terms of graphics and environments.
The game is beautiful, sublimated by the machine and the ray-tracing, we can stop from time to time on beautiful sceneryYou can stop from time to time on magnificent sceneries, watching the sunset on board of the stations or on the Moon, just to take a picture or two, to keep as a souvenir in your console. The game is also pleasant to the ear, since the French version is very convincing, even though there are no known dubbing actors. It brings a certain freshness not to associate voices with other characters or actors from the cinema. We will also note, with surprise, a total localization of the game since even in the settings, the details are in French: the plates on the doors, the press articles pinned to the walls and that you can read, the various inscriptions in the modules… It’s a good thing, like any good walking sim, you’ll have to read a lot of stuff to understand the story a bit more.
The ASE odyssey
Where the game fails a bit is in its mechanics. The title is only a succession of walking phases in the different locations of a lunar module, or outside between several stations, and puzzle games without much inspiration. Overall, we find ourselves pressing buttons in an uncomplicated QTE, connecting electricity by powering a box, or pressing new buttons on a control computer. To do this, equipment will be added to your suit as you go along. These include a kind of laser beam that allows you to burn the golden parts of some plates to open chests or access hatches (reminiscent of LEGO games), but also the introduction in the middle of the game of the ASE unit, a small flying robot a la Wall-E that follows you everywhere and that you can send into ducts to access closed rooms, or that can be put in boxes on the wall to act as a VIP access card. Again, its use is a cliché of the genre.
Another problem with the game on PS5: amazing mini loading times between sequences. Of course, they are not very long, but they break the rhythm and show a vestige of porting. You can feel that the console wouldn’t normally have to load anything given its power, but it does anyway. The result is a little lag from time to time. Note that this update does add haptic feedback and adaptive triggers to the gameplay.
In the end, we will rely on the scenario. In your menu, you have the possibility of discovering narrative arcs that are unlocked over time, with for each of them some tracks that are pieces of understanding to be found via the texts to be read, holograms to be activated to relive situations, or objects to be scanned with your suit to get data. By cross-referencing all the information, these elements of history are unlocked and allow you to understand what happened on the Moon, and then to advance in your path to bring the Helium-3 back to Earth. With a very discreet, even invisible aerial music, to match the total absence of sound in space, and some audio logs that are triggered from time to time, the atmosphere tries from time to time the thriller but quickly returns to an atmosphere between melancholy and intrigue. A story that ends in 6-8 hours, with a huge slack in the three-quarters. Nevertheless, the developer has the merit of trying to punctuate the progression, in vain, with transitions between FPS view and TPS view depending on the situations (if the latter require a lot of dexterity in particular), as well as a few moments aboard vehicles that will allow you to remember how much we expect Mass Effect 5.
