Hands-On With Deliver Us the Moon

I take adventure games very seriously. So much so that even with little to show for it in the pitch I almost always back the Kickstarter. Especially when the promised plot looks interesting enough to capture my interest. And this is no different with Deliver Us the Moon, an adventure set in the near future that has you, as an astronaut, working towards finding a way to save humanity from its own vices. That said, it might not be enough for some people to blindly take the leap of faith that I have. Which is why I was graciously given a copy of the demo to play to give you my initial impressions of the game.

While the “WSA Space Center” is free for all to try out, it’s not quite indicative of what to expect from the game itself. I’ll admit to not having played it myself, yet, but Josh’s own coverage of it should speak for itself. The brief demo of Deliver Us the Moon that I got to try out, on the other hand, very much gives an idea of what to expect from the final game. I played through it for roughly a half hour or so until I got to the end and with a couple exceptions it handled pretty well on “high” settings. I could barely get it to run on “epic”, though.

First off, take note that my biggest problem with the demo is that it took a while to load each new section of the game. That said, I’m used to long load times in other games so it didn’t bother me too much. If you want a smooth transition, though, you might want to consider playing on lower settings. I’m sure that they’ll streamline everything a lot better once they get to work on delivering us the moon in full, but just know that for now at least it’s not that optimized for play. That said, once the section loaded up the rest was a smooth experience.

Long load times aside, Deliver Us the Moon was still a fun experience. The puzzles in it are pretty light and mostly revolve around pushing buttons or firing off some sort of charge gun to open doors, but again this is like the very first section of the game that you’ll play. You start off on the rocket platform, head inside the cockpit, fire off the rockets, and head to the moon. The majority of what I got to try revolves around the moon base that you land on. Frankly, my favorite segment actually was getting the rocket prepped for liftoff.

There’s not a whole lot of plot in the demo but that’s perfectly fine with me as I wanted to try the controls out. I already know enough from the pitch to get an idea of what to expect. It’s a third person action control scheme (WASD + mouse) and I will admit that I was able to figure the keyboard controls out pretty quickly but I had some trouble figuring out the mouse. It didn’t take long to do, though, but it would have been nice to have a “controls” menu button to know what does what before plunging me into the opening animation.

Minor gripes aside, if you’re a fan of adventure games set in the near future on abandoned lunar bases you most certainly should consider checking out Deliver Us the Moon. My time in the demo was enjoyable and I’d like to think that I’m a pretty good judge of character in this genre. Plus, there’s still a few “early bird” slots left open. And judging by how much they’ve made so far this one is certain to get funded by the time the clock ticks to zero and liftoff.