Luckily for me, one of my best friends was visiting from Toronto and was curious about the game that had stolen my heart (and my wallet; the merch addiction is real, y’all) — a game that crowned itself my favourite of all time. It would’ve been wrong not to show her, am I right?
To the Moon is a puzzle?light, 16?bit, 2D role?playing indie game about two doctors, Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts, who enter a dying man’s memories to grant him his final wish: to go to the moon. A description that barely hints at the heart beating underneath. What it really is — what it’s always been — is a story about the fragile architecture of a life. The dreams we build, the promises we make, the people we tether ourselves to, even when we don’t quite know how to bridge the rift between our words and our feelings toward them.
So much of To the Moon’s magic comes from Kan Gao — the writer, composer, and quiet designer of this utter, devastating heartbreak (no sir, you won’t be forgiven for causing such agony). To this day, Gao’s score remains the most gorgeous music I’ve ever heard in a video game. It doesn’t just accompany the story, it haunts it, like a recollection you can’t quite place but aches in your chest. It whispers everything’s alright, even though it isn’t.
With this in mind, my friend, and I braved a journey of laughter, mystery, and melody. Though nothing could prepare us for what we were about to behold. This is a game about love, but it’s also a game about loss. You’re granting dying wishes, yes, but more than that, you’re witnessing Johnny’s and River’s lives — the couple at the centre of To the Moon’’s emotional gravity — reaching for each other across a lifetime as their dreams collide and unravel in all their tenderness and fracture.
You ride horses. You eat olives (yuck), you play whack-a-mole. You follow the trail of paper rabbits until they lead you into something unbearably raw and human — and then, of course, there’s the platypus.
The most chaotic emotional support animal in gaming history. Every time it appeared, my friend would look at me like, “Why?” and I’d just shrug because, honestly? That’s the whole point: this strange, quirky, endearing little constant that shouldn’t make sense and yet somehow does. It becomes a motif, a reminder that love is often awkward, mismatched, stitched together from pieces that shouldn’t fit but do — a metaphor for this game’s tone.
This masterpiece turns 15 this August, and giving it space in this rewind feels like the least I can do to honour it. The truth is, I hardly ever meet anyone who’s even heard of this game, which makes loving it feel a bit like holding a secret constellation — one you only show to the people willing to listen.
To the Moon might not be the most popular but it’s still highly regarded in its niche, eventually growing into a series of games — A Bird Story (2014), Finding Paradise (2017), Impostor Factory (2021), and Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode (2024) — each one orbiting the same themes of memory, longing, and the curious ways we try to make sense of our lives. Trust me when I say they’re all worth your time, or don’t, you can always fact-check me by reading the overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam.
With the animated film in production and Last Hour RPG update, set to be the final chapter, it feels like the series is preparing to say goodbye. But maybe that’s fitting. To the Moon has always been about endings — and the beauty within them.
As the last sound bite blended into the music and the credits rolled, tears staining all our cheeks, I felt that old certainty again: that creating something this magical, this tender, this quietly devastating is something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life.
Later that night, standing once again at the pier with the lighthouse dark and the moon impossibly bright, I realize that maybe that’s the real rewind — not just returning to a game I love but returning to the version of myself who first believed stories could save us, and letting them guide me once more.
