Thinking About the To The Moon Beach Episode

So back in late September, the Sigmund Corp franchise got its Beach Episode (available on Steam as "Just a To The Moon Series Beach Episode"), and with it the series is nearly at a close. While I am going to avoid naming any specific spoilers in this blog post (please play these games yourself, they're around 4 hours each and very worth it), I should probably provide some context!

While I refer to it as the Sigmund Corp series, officially this series of games by Freebird Games is referred to as the To The Moon series, named for the very first game - a 2011 release titled To The Moon. In this series, you play as a pair of doctors (Neil Watts and Eva Rosalene) whose job is effectively a sci-fi Make-a-Wish for the elderly. Using a special machine, they are able to analyze the memories of those on their death beds and then rewrite those memories so that in their final moments the patients remember their life as if they had accomplished whatever life goals they missed out on.

The games tackle a lot of topics that make them absolutely fascinating and emotionally intense to play. Each game uses the concept of some final goal somebody missed out on as a lens through which to analyze life as a whole and what it means to find meaning in it. I don't want to give any particular details so as to not spoil it, but the games have found a particular audience with neurodiverse individuals for a very strong reason. While some of the handling of the topics is a bit dated by today's standards, it clearly comes from a place of empathy and making a genuine effort to understand and represent people as they are.

There is also a more subtle overarching plot following the lives of the two doctors specifically, one that gets a bit more explicit detail in the "Holiday Specials" that were given to To The Moon players for free before finally being explored in depth starting with the game Impostor Factory.

This overarching plot is finally coming to a close with the final two games in the series, both spin-offs - Just a To The Moon Beach Episode, and The Last Hour of an Epic To The Moon RPG. The Beach Episode has released, and with it...

I feel strangely empty?

To The Moon was a hugely important part of my teenage years. It helped me come to terms with some fundamental aspects of myself and accept me for me. I don't know if I would be alive today without that game to help me realize that I have value as I am and I don't need to change or hide myself.

Finding Paradise too was a wonderful experience. While the aspect of myself that connected directly to the mechanics of the game was fleeting and temporary, I feel that if I were to revisit it, I would find a whole new side of that game that would help me in all new ways.

Impostor Factory was an emotional knife to the stomach. While each of the games has made me cry, there is a particular moment in Impostor Factory that is just... devastating in a way I am both glad and weirdly saddened that I will never have to cope with myself? It is hard to explain. Let's just say the "saddened" part has to do with me being trans (and the game is not about being trans) and leave it at that. If you know, you know.

With the Beach Episode... the questions have now been answered. The lingering mysteries and the vague sense of horror they portended have resolved. The grief, the coping, the loss, the knowing that of course this was coming, this was always coming...

There's a sense of dread acceptance, I suppose.

It didn't hit nearly as hard as I had come to expect from this series. Part of me wants to say it wasn't as good as the other games, that the series is going out with a whimper rather than a bang. But then... this series has always been strangely realistic and grounded given the fantastical sci-fi elements and scenarios it presents.

And what we see in the Beach Episode... well, that situation is rarely so dramatic in reality. It's just a miserable, cold, hard truth. It's not cruel about it, it doesn't drive the knife deep, it doesn't get "edgy" about it, there's no dramatics, no big "moment of reveal" as you've almost certainly figured it out well before it happens. It's just... a subdued acceptance of reality. It's a hard swerve from how the rest of the series has been, and yet in doing so it exemplifies exactly what made the games so strong. That realism.

The Beach Episode may be the most realistic of all the SIgmund Corp games.

Acceptance, grief, knowing that it was always coming... but that it doesn't make what we had any less special just because it's over.

So now I have just one question.

What the heck is Last Hour going to be about?