We aint found S#!*

Lifeless Moon is the spiritual successor to Lifeless Planet, a 2012 game with similar themes. Similar to the early Planet of the Apes films in Lifeless Moon, a small team of astronaut’s land on a new world in the early 70s, only to discover a freak accident had occurred here; a small section of a town has been transported to the atmosphere less lunar surface. The town’s population was of course killed but there is clear evidence of scientist coming to study the accident and its through these clues that the players will start to unravel what happened.

MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PlayStation, Xbox
Price I’d Pay: $19.99

Lifeless Moon is a desolate game, and I don’t mean that to say that its ugly because the graphics are fine, if a tad dated. No, the world is set on a lunar surface, and has this overall feeling of loneliness in the world. For the most part, the game is a walking simulator that sees players explore this moon by using ‘Stargate’ like devices. There are areas and moments, some that are much more awe inspiring than others which is a great thing considering this is a game from a smaller studio.

Players will come across plenty of puzzles to solve throughout their time on the moon. Unlike a lot of the other games that require deep exploration for items to solve puzzles, in Lifeless Moon most of the items that players will require will be front and center. The game is here to tell its story, and doesn’t include a lot of needless exploration to reach that end. In fact, to make things even easier items are automatically picked up with players approach or investigate which leaves players to focus on the solutions for things instead of locating the tools.

To its credit Lifeless Moon is considerate of gamers time clocking in at about three hours. A lot of this is due to the hand holding that the game does as it basically tells players exactly where to go to progress, it never goes as far as to tell you where to find certain things though because then we could just watch the movie. But sometimes the game does feel a tad overly easy, I do appreciate a challenge every now and again and if there was a way to turn down the assistance in Lifeless Moon I think the game would be all the better for it.

Players won’t find combat in Lifeless Moon, instead this game is made for fans of classic sci-fi, the stuff from Rod Sterling’s Twilight Zone, the kind of sci-fi that makes you think about it after you turn it off. And for all those reasons I really enjoyed this game, while I did find it overly easy at times moving through the world and the various biomes and figuring out its story was the real payoff, and if you like that type of sci-fi then you should check this one out before you get lost in Starfield.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.