Unraveling the threads of a good game story is like solving a well-crafted puzzle. After a lengthy, sometimes difficult journey, the pieces click into place and you're rewarded with the satisfying payoff of a job well done.

Playing indie adventure game To the Moon, released earlier this month for PC, is like solving a puzzle that reaches down your throat and smacks you right in the heart.

Ars Technica writer Andrew Webster wrote about the game in a piece posted on Game|Life a few weeks ago, noting correctly that you won't actually play much of To The Moon: Other than a few sliding block challenges and one brief, anomalous action sequence, you'll spend the whole time clicking your mouse and watching the story unfold. This game did not have to be a game. Its narrative could have been expressed through another medium, like cinema or animation.

But that doesn't really matter. I was too enthralled to care.

In To the Moon, you take on the role of two scientists who work for an agency that gives out last wishes to terminal clients. Using an Inception-like technology that lets them enter dying patients' minds, the doctors can go through a client's memories and alter his experiences, effectively changing his entire life.

So when one client, an old man named Johnny, says that he wants to go to the moon but he doesn't know why, Drs. Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts tap into his memories and start digging through his past to find out. It gets messy, as the past tends to do, and eventually the doctors are caught in a web of mysteries and trivialities that they have to untangle before Johnny runs out of time.

This is a story about love and loss, mostly, but it's also about human nature, about the devastating little mistakes we make and the fragile strings that bind us together. It's about communication. It's about the frustration of having something to say but not knowing how to say it.

It's also occasionally hilarious, thanks to the buddy-cop dynamic between Rosalene and Watts. They banter constantly with hit-or-miss humor that adds a dash of levity to this serious story.

The whole experience is enhanced by a beautiful piano-driven soundtrack that channels a melodic mixture of 16-bit tunes and current classics. One main track, reminiscent of Final Fantasy X's "To Zanarkand," is particularly stirring.

"My goal for To the Moon is to have you play it, watch the ending, and say 'Wow, that was f-cking satisfying – may I have another?'" creator Kan Gao says in a preview trailer for To the Moon. Gao's answer is yes; he plans to release several sequels in the near future.

The puzzle of To the Moon is both elegant and memorable. Take a few hours and try to solve it. The pieces fit together oh so nicely.

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