6180 The Moon is a platformer, which plays a bit differently to other games. It’s a game that was developed by Turtle Cream, and was previously released on PC. I played it on the Xbox One. The game doesn’t really have much of a story, but being a puzzle game it doesn’t really need one. You play as a little white orb like moon. You find yourself having to guide the moon through various stages to find the sun. I liked how there wasn’t much forced on you and I could just simply enjoy the gameplay mechanics for what they are.
As you move through stages there’s limited ledges, and instead you swap between the top and bottom of the screen by jumping. It’s an odd mechanic that I haven’t really played a game that felt like this before so that so exciting. The game looks fairly basic in terms of style, and it at first seems like there might not be much to the game. What the game does well is keep you interested throughout its duration. After doing some research into the game I saw that it actually won Best Indie Game at the 2014 Tokyo Game Show.
As I said before the aim of the game is to find the sun. You travel to various locations, which has its own chapter in the game with ten levels. Each stage you play, you have to get past various obstacles and reach the end target. Every chapter has a short cut scene with small amounts of dialogue. This was good as it added a bit more interest to the overall experience and helped set the tone of the game. The first thing when starting the game is getting used to how you control and maneuver your way through each level.
The gameplay is unique and feels fresh. It’s extremely well implemented into the whole game and is well-considered. You can’t die from falling, but there’s plenty of other ways you can die, like spiked ledges. There are checkpoints throughout stages, and they come in the form of glowing white squares. You simply have to move over one of these and your progress is saved. The game does get pretty tricky at times and throughout the game the challenges do become more troublesome. There is a power up in the game that I enjoyed. You first get this in the Venus stages. The ability means you can stop in mid-air when pressing B on the controller. You can then head downwards until gravity sends you falling. There are also ledges of blocks that come and go during some levels. These offer some very challenging gameplay moments. There are some blocks that have a green outline. These explode and cause you to fly off in a certain direction. You can also come across various breakable blocks. The game is all about finding the path through each stage to reach your goal.
I like how the gameplay is simple, thoughtful and most importantly rewarding. You control the white orb with the left analogue stick, A button and B button. The controls are limited, but that’s good because it’s the stages themselves that prove most challenging. It can certainly take a lot of practice to master navigating your way through the stages. Most of the puzzle solving is down to correctly moving and positioning yourself.
The presentation of the game is very simplistic. It uses a black and white theme, that feels like a retro arcade game. It’s hard to say whether it was a design choice that the game looks this way, but I enjoyed it. The game is mainly focused on the solid gameplay mechanics. I only had a few issues with the game, the main thing being that it does get a little repetitive after a while. Also the game is pretty short, but that’s ok as length doesn’t have to equate to a game being good or not. Sometimes I like a game that offers a shorter experience, when we are surrounded by games like Fallout and The Witcher 3, that are huge in length. I would have liked to have seen a bit more variety in terms of gameplay and possibly other power ups. This would have kept things a bit more interesting.
Overall 6180 The Moon is a decent game with a unique twist on platforming. The game is pretty short with little story. I enjoyed the style of the game the and sound design suits the game well. It’s not a game that’s going to blow you away, but it’s certainly a game that’s worth checking out if you want to play a platformer that offers something a little bit different.
REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.
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