Beach Episode review

Note: This review assumes you have played To the Moon, Finding Paradise, and Impostor Factory. Spoilers ahead.

With To the Moon, it’s always been about the journey rather than the destination - at least, that’s what we’ve been telling ourselves. But the end is still there, and over 10 years later, the reverse train wreck has finally reached end of the line.

Much like Neil and Eva, the series has been running away from confronting something. Doubles of characters walking about, Faye manifesting into the “real world”, doors closing on their own… it has been increasingly harder to wave away evidence there are more layers to the onion than our eye ducts would prefer. With dozens of dead and nonexistent characters sitting by the sea and enjoying the scenery, Beach Episode is set at the event horizon of it all.

But speaking of Neil, there was a bit of a trend throughout the series. Though John, Colin and Quince were proclaimed the main characters on the store page, I would argue it was quite the opposite. To the Moon was about River, Finding Paradise was (in a way) about Faye, and Impostor Factory was obviously about Lynri. Likewise, the Beach Episode is Eva’s.

Tear-inducing stories have been part of To the Moon’s appeal since the first game, and from talking with people on Discord, I take this one is no exception. Though this time I noted feeling less raw emotions, and more emptiness and melancholy as the game shut down. Kan Gao has mentioned aiming for a kind of hollow feel to the game and its end, and he achieved it in the bestest-worst-way possible.

Despite this, on the surface (and the surface’s rather deep), it is still “a silly beach episode”. So expect jokes and references at every corner, and several mini-games (if you disliked Impostor Factory ditching “gameplay”, you’ll be pleased to know this), one of which became an unexpected hit in the community. Particularly notable were appearances by LdW5f5aX$%[ERROR]bm8gc3BvaWxlcnMK.

Of course, I also cannot omit the Bestest Memories portion of it - some time before Beach Episode’s release, there was a Kickstarter campaign that, as one of the rewards, let you bury your very real message into game’s very digital sand. At a couple points in the game, you’ll get to dig them up and read things random fellow humans wrote. There are jokes. There are dedications to those lost. There are celebrations of happiness. I think this side of the game hits as hard, if not harder than the story - because this is real.

The graphics were better than ever - as you’d expect from a sequel, but you never know these days. As before, the tiny sprites convey difficult emotions perfectly, and a few set-pieces were painfully well done (two made their way into /wallpaper). The soundtrack mainly consisted of familiar tunes, but the 2 “big” new tracks instantly climbed to a spot among my favourites. Aside from them, there were a few quasi-originals, including the Lo-Fi mixes previously exclusive to YouTube and new versions of some fan-favourites (three of which were from Quintessence, a very old game I happen to be currently playing :D).

If you’ve played the previous games and liked them - and since you’re here you did - Beach Episode is a great ending to the series, an epilogue of sorts. Maybe you will guess how it goes, maybe there could be no other way it could go. An ending is difficult to write, I constantly say how most works’ endings are the worst part. But perhaps exceptions are possible. Perhaps an ending kan (sorry) be good enough.

Whatever’s the case, I am definitely waiting for the next release by Freebird Games.

There were some technical difficulties on my end due to using Linux, but I managed to circumvent them by switching to Proton – and the problem was apparently fixed very quickly by an update.