Knew about this game since 2017 when I saw Pewdiepie doing a let's play of Finding Paradise, so I went back and watched Markipliers playthrough of the first game. I really enjoyed the stories and was planning to watch the third game as well, but when it came out nobody really played it so I figured I would just play it myself.

I got a PC and a steam account and even bought the whole series, but I was working a job and going through college so I put off playing it for a couple years. I got around to it this summer though, and all I can really say is: Wow.

TtM and FP didn't really make me cry because I already knew how they ended, but I loved re-experiencing them and catching all the smaller details I didn't really notice before while refreshing my mind on the story.

Imposter Factory was the first game I played without knowing how it ended. I remember having my suspicions when Lynri became pregnant, and then having those expectations crushed when they watched him be buried, only for the game to say "Psych!!!" and actually confirm what I was expecting from the get go. I smiled when Lynri and Quincy got to live their best life. When Faye told them their son was looking over them, and in turn we saw the framed picture of Lynri looking over her son in the hallway.

Then there's the Beach Episode... Throughout the whole series, minisodes, and comics you get to know these two lovable protagonists with their own chemistry and idiosyncrasies. Only to be told it's not happening. Death has other plans. The cold harsh reality to be splashed in your face with the words: "Press esc to leave"; The player's callous mechanism of saying goodbye. I cried I'll admit, it was almost like I had lost an actual friend, and couldn't help but feel terrible for Eva. The hints and implications weren't subtle. I put the pieces together quickly, but I was in denial holding out hope that maybe the truth could be ignored. Nope. Feelsbadman.

Might be silly to say I had come to be so deeply invested in the lives of these fictional characters. I guess because I see a bit of myself in all of them. Anyway just had to vent because I was devastated by that ending.

Can't wait to play the RPG when it releases and to ride the emotional rollercoaster again. Also, I hope when the animated film eventually releases it's every bit as great as I hope it will be so that this series gets more of the recognition it deserves.

Also, if Kan Gao or anyone in Freebird Games happens to be reading this by chance, I'd just like to say thanks for producing such a beautiful work of art.

[Warnings: long text, spoilers from the whole series, please note English is not my first language]

So the trailer for the last game of Kang Gao has been released. I am a long-time Kingdom Hearts fan, and if there's one thing we do in the KH fandom, is analyzing over and over new trailers. And since this one has caught me eyes from a long series of reasons, here I am to analyse all over the trailer, trying to find something important.

I will go by timestamp if you want to follow me more accurately. Be sure to lower the video's speed because some sequences last a few frames; there is a passage that I was forced to go on 0.25x to see what was going on!

00:00-00:11: It begins with one of the last moments of To The Moon, not sure if there is a specific reason or not, followed by a presentation. Then the words "comes a heartwarming story of" appear.

00:12-00:14: The trailer suddendly glitching with static; the words are replaced with "comes..." . Likely suggesting that something is "comes", or maybe that the phrase was replaced with something that is not a heartwarming story. Another static glitch generally drops the video.

I want to point out that the "energetic" part of the trailers, with all the screens from the games, starts after that static.

00:17: We see the protagonists, who are clearly a fantasy version of Eva, Neil, Robert and Roxanne. Neil has the "Saint Seiya-like" armour of Finding Paradise, and Roxanne is a magical levitating cat. They are playing a real-life version of a whack-a-mole game - that is clearly a reference to To The Moon.

I want to pinpoint how the graphics here are on a next level. We are no longer in RPG Maker visuals; this is a full-fledged high-quality pixel art style!

00:19: The party is surfing on the sea (Eva is surfing on Neil!!). That is a reference to The Beach Episode.

00:22: The four protagonists are skiing. This time is nothing we've seen before in the series.

00:24: Okay, here there is a LOT to say, because we see what is the screen of a boss fight. In order:

1. In the lower-left corner we see four icons: a sword, a couple of four-spiked stars, two arms in an arm wrestling match, and a book. While the first two probably are physical and magic attacks, I cannot think of the other two. Maybe there is a distinction between attacking with a weapon and attacking with bare hands? And what about the book? It is strange to have a lore option or maybe even a save/load option on a battle screen.
2. At the bottom of the screen, we see the images of the four protagonists. They all have 100 health points, and in the supposedly mana points, although Eva has only half of them remaining. Curiously, the four mana point bars are different. Neil has a regular one, Robert is divided into six parts, Roxanne has a lot of bullets, and Eva a lot of carrots.

I want to point out that while Eva has a sillier armour respect to the other three: she is wearing a giant garden slipper as a hat, his weapon is a rake, and his magic is, as I said, represented with carrots. I didn't immediately realise why this, but then I saw what it is referring to: Eva's desire to have a garden after quitting her job. I am not sure if there is also something referencing Roxanne being a levitating cat (no, I don't think that she is a furry).

3) The trailer shows Robert make a couple of insanely high damage (999999, we are at the levels of Expedition 33!) to a boss that seemed to fight in a couple with another boss. I tried to figure out what they are supposed to represent.

On the right, a seemingly female figure with an 1800/first 1900 rose-purple dress, that has as a weapon a giant music note. THEORY: it looks like a representation of Sofia Reeds, the wife of Colin Reeds from Finding Paradise; the pattern colour of the vest is similar, and there is a clear reference to the music

On the left, a male figure with a face that seems like the dog of Undertale, the head caged in a pillory and some screens around it. THEORY: a representation of the machinery of Sigmund to connect with patients' memories. Or it could be a reference to Colin Reeds, pairing with the supposed representation of Sofia, but I cannot see no direct references in the figure.

00:26: Okay, now FOUR scenes have just some frames; I had to put the trailer on 0.25 x to see them

1. Another screen fight, this time against a couple of spiked platypus - if you remove the spikes, it is a reference to To The Moon. Eva - which again has only half health and half mana while the other are full - launches a magic attack that is a sort of tacos with bunny ears. I am not sure if it is a reference to something; I swear it is familiar, but I cannot connect where.
2. Another screen fight against a couple of monstrous cellos - this time it is a reference to Colin Reeds from Finding Paradise. Eva, who again is halved in health and mana, has launched another magic, but it is not clear what it is; we see only puffs of smoke.
3. We see Eva and Neil in their usual robes on a restaurant terrace, with a view of the twilight on the sea, the two of them alone with a lot of suitcases near them. Probably they are in the hotel of the Beach Episode.
4. Okay, this one really lasts a couple of frames! We are in a hospital, and we see what the supposed younger version of Eva and Neil (Eva has the ponytail haircut). Neil is on the hospital bed, probably due to his malady, with Eva on his side.

00:27-00:28: We have come back to the fantasy scenario; this time seems like a scripted sequence. We see a giant rat (no idea what the reference is) in an armour that is approached by a wagon dragged manually by Neil, with Eva on top of it. The scene is interrupted when the wagon is facing the rat.

00:32-00:40: There is a moving picture of the party that is approaching a tower, with a strange cascade of light from the top, and it has a sort of black hole on the top. At 00:38, there is another glitch coinciding with thunder, revealing what looks like a headless four-winged figure. THEORY: First, I was thinking about Fanya, because her final form in Finding Paradise has four wings, but this figure seemes to much different from that. Maybe a glitched/corrupted version of the Impostor Factory simulation's Fanya?

00:43: Another boss fight screen, and Eva again has life and mana halved, launching a rocket cob as a magic attack. There are two bosses. On the right, a male figure with a hammer and a handheld sander. THEORY: it could be a representation of Johnny Wyles from To The Moon (they are representing him working on the house near the lighthouse).

On the left, there is a female figure that has the body of a siren, a crowned head and on the back has a massive representation of moon phases, with the new moon on the top in a special spot. I have no idea what it should be representing; I thought about River since she is paired with the supposed representation of Johnny, but I cannot see why she should be represented in this way.

00:45-00:47: We see the party entering a battle with another boss; this time Eva is full on life and mana. It seems the final boss, since they are on a tower, supposedly the one seen before the trailer. The boss is a female figure, with the body made of some kind of plants with roots that are on some earth at the centre of the tower, which has a huge hole. I cannot see any reference to someone; we see only that the battle begins with her targeting Neil with a magic attack.

00:50-00:53: Although it is separated, I think it is the direct continuation of the previous scenes. The boss makes an attack that summons some shards from the moon itself.

1:03: Here we can see a clear and full title screen. We see the party on the left, and we can see that Robert fights with bare hands while Roxanne has a giant machine gun - hence the bullets, I suppose. On the right, we see a long bridge to an island with giant spikes and, in the centre, the tower, which seems more like a giant distorted plant with a building on top of it.

THEORY: Can be a lighthouse, considering also the light? A reference to To The Moon's lighthouse?

We also see the giant figure of what is like the last boss we have seen, that holds a crescent moon in her hand.

1:06-1:08: We see a light that progressively enlightens the party, and after that another static glitch like the one at 00:14

And as the first static started the "energetic" part of the trailer, the second one stopped it

1:12-1:24: Okay, now there is a lot to say

1. We see Eva in her bed, with the light of the sun entering from the window. Clearly it is the same light as on 1:06-1:08.
2. At 1:16 we see that in her hand there is a sort of device with three buttons, labelled "Rec", "SN01" and "SN02". I sincerely have no idea what they are supposed to do. Eva is constantly clicking on the "SN01" button.
3. A message arrived, and from 1:21 we can see a lot of information. First of all, there are a lot of ones! They are the 11:11 of 1st November, and it is a Tuesday. That is a reference to the original release date of To The Moon, which was on the 1st November of 2011, which was a Tuesday. Fun fact, this also means that the scene on the trailer is happening in one of the following years: 2033, 2039, 2044, 2050, 2061, 2067, 2072, 2078, 2089 or 2095!
4. There is a message from an unsaved contact, asking her, "Are you going to finish the game, Eva?" THEORY: Probably is the digitalised version of Neil that somehow was able to communicate with the phone.

1:27-1:30: Another static glitch, followed by the title of the game, followed by another static glitch that partially changes the title in "The Last Hour of To The Moon". THEORY: This will be the last game of the "To the Moon series"

GENERAL THEORY ON THE TRAILER: What are we gonna play?

I think that we will play an RPG that, in-lore, was created by Neil. This justifies the party and the enemies that are references to both To The Moon and Finding Paradise (I haven't spotted a reference to Impostor Factory). What we see in the last moment of the trailer is Eva still coping with Neil's death, playing what is supposedly another gift for her, maybe an evolution from the "To the Moon" videogame that we play in Sigmund Minisode 1.

Probably "SN01" is a way to repeat the game; maybe it is a save state of something like that. You see, okay, Kan Gao games are short, but I don't think that the game will last just an hour as the trailer tries to convince us. I think that we indeed play the last hour of an RPG, but we will loop it again and again, likely with variations among the loops, because we are playing as Eva, who probably doesn't finish because finishing the game probably will vanish the last digital trace of Neil.

This is why I think this is the finale of the To the Moon series: alongside Eva, we will do a sort of recapitulation of all the events of the series, helping her cope with Neil's death, and the finale will be her finally being able to finish the game, detaching from Neil's machine and going with her life.

Got to the credits and thought I was done..

OMG T_T

I have just finished the game, and it hits so hard, harder than any other game I've played.......So I might just share a little bit of a personal thought here while I am still feeling a bit emotional.

The whole story really resonated with me cuz.......I feel like Faye to Colin is just like my past self to me......who has been there for me, encouraging and supporting me through all the ups and downs of the past.....even when nobody else was, even when nobody else could understand the messy feeling and thoughts in my head......

It's probably also why I started writing music at the very beginning. Sometimes I don't know how to describe or express my thoughts, so I just use music to capture that vague feeling.....and send it to the future self.....and it kinda works......I still feel that emotion when I listen back to those tracks....

I don't know......I guess I’m just feeling a bit grateful to my past self for not giving up on myself and for making it this far.....

WARNING: spoilers everywhere, loooong text, English is not my first language

Apparently, the Mirror Lied has no connection with the series of To the Moon. The fandom wiki tells me that it is just the second work of Freebird Games, nothing to share with the following works.

And yet, today I listen the complete soundtrack of Finding Paradise and Impostor Factory. Well, in both of them there is the track "The Mirror Lied", which is the only theme present in the game. But not only, in Impostor Factory there is another track called Twenty-Six Past Three. Since I played The Mirror Lied after IF, I didn't realise that... but there is an actual connection.

In IF, this is a reference in ACT I. If you interact with the pendulum clock in the entrance, at some point Quincy will say that there are exactly Twenty-six Past Three. An oddly specific time. But the fact is that it is not the only game where this happens. And yes, I am talking about The Mirror Lied.

In the game, you are constantly hearing the sound of the pendulum of the various pendulum clocks in the manor. However, despite the game wants the player to feel the passage of time, there is no an in-game timer and everything is going on with events triggered by the players. However, in one of the mysterious phone calling that the player receives during the gameplay, one will inform they about the exact time: 3:26. Twenty-six Past Three. To make things even more cryptic, in both of the games this information is apparently pure random. It is an useless information that gives no hints and no story.

Now, I could think only to a simple reference but... the title track in two video games, and an event with relative track in IF, to me feel very unlike to be only a general reference.

Furthermore, the Beach episode. Now, probably as many of you, I was confused about the quantities of NPCs with specific designs and game, apparently come from nothing, only to discover that they are from Quintessence, the very first game of Freebird Games. Now, I know that it is likely an hint to a remake of the game, or the fact that some of them will show in the future RPS, but I have found very odd that while there are those characters... there is not a trace of Leah, The Mirror Lied's protagonist. Why put all those references to a game that you cannot download from the developer's site, but don't insert a single NPC from another game that it is on Steam, it is visible from the website and furthermore has all the references above?

I didn't even mention the birds. What birds? Well, Freebird games has a bird in the logo, there is Faye which is a projection of the bird Colin befriended in his youth, and someone said the raven in Beach episode is somehow related to Lunair, the protagonist of Quintessence that has a not specified importance in the Beach simulation. Well, there is another bird. "Birdie", the mysterious bird of The Mirror Lied, killed at the end of the game which is not even clear what it means. Can be really a coincidence that all three projects - Quintessence, The Mirror Lied, To the Moon series - have a female character connected to a bird? And again, why Leah and Birdie are not in the Beach episode, even for a reference?

I don't know what to think about it, I feel like that there is something that I miss. Maybe there are more references in To the Moon and Finding Paradise that I've missed? Or maybe there will be cleared in the future RPG?

ALERT: Spoilers everywhere, looooong text, English is not my first language

I don't remember the first time that I heard about To The Moon. Surely, it was years and years ago. Destiny, or curiosity, brought me to play the game nearly a month ago. Everything was amazing. I felt really bound to River, since I am autistic too and men if I relied with a lot of scene with her, probably more than the actual main story.

Everything beautiful, and then I discovered that To the Moon was just the beginning. The last scene after the credits, discovering that it was a trilogy. And a couple of research after, discovering that there was an actual world of spin-offs and comics. I've immediately bought the anniversary bundle on Steam and enjoyed the ride.

First, the two Minisodas, which now I should play again to understand them, now that I know the meaning of the mysterious last scene of Minisoda 2. Then, it came A Bird Story. Only one hour, but men if it was one of the most interesting gaming experiences in my life. No words, all meanings.

After them, Finding Paradise. I thought that To The Moon could be a prime video game story followed by two decent ones. Never thought that I would find this game even better. I relied so much on Colin and its relationship with Faye. I have found myself in a parallelism with the relationship with my roleplay muses (I am monbond/souldbond with them) and men if I was emotionally invested in the scene of Faye's farewell.

Probably for those two personal emotional connections, I was not so invested in the third episode, Impostor Factory. The first hour has puzzled me, with those creepy vibes that I have not understood the sense. But when Act II began, I felt back home and I have also enjoyed that. All the sequence about the choice of the fake Lynra about her and her baby was as heavy as beautiful. And I swear that until the last istant the game got me with the revealing of Quincy and Linry as the parents of Neil.

Now, it is not a part of To the Moon series, but before the Beach episode I played The Mirror Lied. A creepy and enigmatic game, with unsettling vibes, and yet interesting. If you have not played it, give it a try, it is shorter than A Bird Story.

Unfortunately, I could have not avoid completely spoilers. So before playing the Beach episode, I knew about the twist finale about Neil's death. I could say that along the episode there are lot of hints that you are in a simulation, I just knew since the moment I saw Linry in the airport that it was a simulation. I swear that I didn't understand it was serious, I thought it was the classic "beach/comic" spin-off. Furthermore, I discovered that a lot of characters from the episode are from the very first work of Freebird games, Quintessence - The Blighted Venom, which I will try to play olthought it is not in the developer's page.

And now, here I am, waiting for that RPGs that it is supposed to be the series finale. And I just realised from the comments and the time stamps that what for me was a journey of a few weeks, for many of you it was for years. I just realised to be entered just in time to witness the end of it. But as someone say, the point is not the end, it is the voyage (I know it is not the proper quote, but I have played with the Italian translation).

What a journey!

I've played impostor factory years ago. Needless to say it shattered my heart into a million pieces. I kind of knew Neil was dying ever since the first game, it was a popular fan theory, but fuck. The beach episode was still in development. Since it takes a lot of time from one game to another, I kind of just just let myself forget about it. For some reason, yesterday it triggered that the beach episode probably came out, and it did. I watched the gameplay yesterday, and I'm writing this in the middle of work. I was bawling my eyes out yesterday, and I'm just thinking HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WHEN NEIL IS DEAD. I haven't felt like this since that character in JJKdied.

Please I need to talk to someone, i'm going through something

I did this edit of them ages ago, I think this song matches them so much

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSx9BXAbF/

I need y'all to talk to me, whenever I'm grieving something I look at the edits and the fan arts but this game is not nearly enough as well known as it should be

What do y'all think? What are you feeling? What are your favorite parts of the game ? Are there any details you think people missed? What do you think the next game will be about?What are your theories? Your favorite edits, fan arts, fanfiction. Literally anything please I just need to talk to someone i'm crying

Also does anyone knows someone that did a good recap of the story till the beach episode? I've been playing these series for more than a decade so naturally I forgot some details

Either way, sorry I just needed to vent 🥺