Deliver Us The Moon Is A Space Oddity

When video games venture into outer space, rarely do they do so with subtlety. If a game transports you to a faraway planet, then rest assured it is almost definitely going to be light years away from Earth, it will absolutely arm you with a gun, and you will certainly be using said firearm to mow down that particular planet’s inhabitants, mercilessly slaughtering an entire civilization for having the gall to not be immediately welcoming of a fully armed human being entering their world.

The short demo I played of Dutch indie developer KeokeN Interactive’s Deliver Us The Moon was refreshing, then, in that it didn’t see me taking on an alien threat whilst simultaneously proving to be an alien threat myself, with its concept instead being rooted in the far more feasible concern that one day we will have doomed ourselves by using up all of Earth’s resources.

This is where the player-character comes in, with the unnamed rogue astronaut you’re placed in control of being sent on a secret do-or-die mission to the moon, though the demo leaves your exact objective unclear. All you know is that you’re to somehow “deliver” the moon to the Worldwide Space Agency, the game’s fictional equivalent of NASA, and that the fate of humanity (as always) lies in your hands.

[Editor Nick Tan: In my playthrough of the game at an ID@Xbox Showcase event at GDC 2016, the developers said that the human population has diminished either due to climate change, overpopulation, and a general breakdown of international cooperation. On the moon, you'll visit various WSA bases of different nations, each with a particular answer to the desperate inspiration on Earth. You'll need to choose which of these—or perhaps none of these—options are best.]

The demo is brief, and given that it was created to coincide with the launch of the game’s recently concluded Kickstarter campaign, it serves as more of a proof of concept than an exact indicator of the finished product. With that being said, there’s still a lot of evidence that we should be excited for KeokeN Interactive’s vision, starting with its nigh-on photorealistic visuals. Using the Unreal 4 engine, the two locations traversable in Deliver Us The Moon are both impressively detailed, with Kazakhstan providing a short snippet of an outdoors environment complete with glaring sun and blue skies, before you’re placed behind the controls of your rocket ship, finally landing in the space station.

There’s a lot to admire, from the realistic lighting and shadows, through to the odd glimpses of space you receive through the station’s few windows. One particularly impressive moment comes in the form of an elevator ride down to a base situated on the moon, in which you’re treated to your first look at Earth from 384,400 kilometers away. While it may just be a static backdrop, the closing shot of your character finally venturing onto the moon’s surface is a strong indication that KeokeN could well nail the space exploration aspect of the game outside of its pretty skyboxes.

There’s not a lot to do in any of these environments given the limited nature of the demo, but they do offer an outline of what can be expected from the final game. The most robust gameplay segment is the initiation sequence necessary for your rocket to take off, requiring the pressing of a series of buttons and pulling a selection of levers in a correct order. Then there’s your small robot companion, ASE (which stands for “All-Seeing Eye”), a spherical, floating cutie-pie that was hilariously incapable of acknowledging my personal space, careening into me like a fly repeatedly bouncing off a window. When or if KeokeN decides to not have him headbutt the player-character at every available opportunity, I’d be more than willing to have a hovering R2-D2 permanently by my side throughout my lunar adventure.

Though the very short demo made it difficult to get a firm grasp on what KeokeN Interactive has up their sleeve, if the time and effort they’ve clearly put into nailing Deliver Us The Moon’s visuals and atmosphere is replicated throughout the other aspects of the game, then this could stand to be a unique and understated take on space exploration in the medium. I’m excited to see the direction the developer is headed in with this one.

Deliver Us The Moon will release episodically, with the first episode available in August 2016 for PC and Xbox One. Talks of a PS4 build is in the works, and the game will cost around 20 Euros (about $22).