2021 : Moon Escape

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

2021: Moon Escape is a Top-Down Action-RPG released on Nintendo Switch in 2023. Moon Escape is a game presented in a Game Boy/Game Boy Color style where players take the role of a spacefaring soldier returning to Earth with the plans of an enemy space force, only to find himself crash-landing on a strange moon on his trip back to Earth. To escape and return home, he must explore the moon, uncover its secrets, and gain access to new powers d abilities so he can find his ship’s missing part and complete his journey.

As I mentioned above, Moon Escape presents itself as a Game Boy or Game Boy Color game, and the game’s menus use 3D to lovingly create the game’s box, cartridges (one each for both color and monochrome), and game system (for the sake of copyright, it’s a similar knockoff handheld system). As for the game itself, it is indeed presented as either a Game Boy or Game Boy Color 2D pixel art game depending on which version you choose, with the former even retaining the original Game Boy’s puke green screen coloring and the Game Boy Color’s simple limited palette. Both versions feature a pretty simple, disposable chiptune soundtrack, and have little in the way of sound, even when you take damage.

The gameplay here feels a bit reminiscent of the classic 2D Zelda games, but with a more sparse world, and with your character toting a gun instead of a sword. unfortunately, this leads to one of the game’s major problems – you have extremely limited ammo, meaning it’s almost always better to avoid enemies rather than fight them. However, this is perhaps for the best, as the hit detection is pretty bad here, making combat pretty unenjoyable.

There are other problems as well. This game absolutely overloads you with text as your character chats with his ship’s AI at length throughout the game, and you always have to stop while this is happening, as you can’t skip this text or move while reading it. The game’s menus are also extremely sluggish and clunky.

Ultimately, in the end 2021: Moon Escape just isn’t fun. The tedious, slow-paced gameplay that’s constantly interrupted with pointless dialogue, the poor combat that the game pushes you to avoid anyway due to extremely limited ammunition… there’s just not much here to latch on to as something you’ll actually want to do. As much as the visual presentation here is good, everything else just falls apart.

tl;dr – 2021: Moon Escape is a Top-Down Action-RPG where players take the role of a soldier in space who gets stranded on a moon and must try to escape. While this game does a delightful job creating a presentation to mimic classic Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, everything else here is terrible, from poor hit detection to sluggish gameplay to tons of slow, unskippable text. The result is a game that just isn’t worth playing, despite the endearing visuals.

Grade: D+

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