Yi and the Thousand Moons is obviously made with so much passion that I get drawn into it immediately. It has to be said from the beginning of this review: this is a game centered around music, and you should make sure you like the music and singer in the trailer before you buy. The rest of the review is for you who like the music but still aren't sure if you want the game.
The gameplayYi and the Thousand Moons is obviously made with so much passion that I get drawn into it immediately. It has to be said from the beginning of this review: this is a game centered around music, and you should make sure you like the music and singer in the trailer before you buy. The rest of the review is for you who like the music but still aren't sure if you want the game.
The gameplay is basic, a walking simulator with a few instances of simple interaction. The graphics is a mostly empty world populated with a few block people, block houses and a block shamisen. Yet your brain is a pro at filling out those gaps, and the game looks beautiful within the constraints it operates in. And you know what else fills out the world? Music. We're here for the interactive musical ride. The interaction is that you do different simple things to prod the music along, there are no choices or anything fancy like that going on. Yet to me it feels satisfying to release an arrow and hear the characters start to sing when my arrow hits its (non living) mark. The music fills the entire world and sometimes sends shivers down my spine. One song in particular gives me goose bumps every time. The game is short, and I keep coming back to it for replays to listen to the songs again.
I will carry Yi and the Thousand Moons with me for a long time as one of my favorite experimental indie games. I've played it five times, and every time I'm done I'm longing to play the game I feel Yi and the Thousand Moons wants to be, or could have been if the developer had a 10 people studio with him to elaborate upon the parts that had to be down prioritized now. There's so much potential here. While Yi and the Thousand Moons is already great as it is, I'm itching to see what the next step will be for David Su.… Expand
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