Feature: Interview - Kan Gao of To the Moon

Several months ago we stumbled upon a little trailer for a new indie game that really came out of left-field and shocked us (and several other outlets) with a beautiful soundtrack and an interesting premise that really hit the heart. We had to know more, and thus we managed to bug Director and Designer Kan Gao just enough to give us some new details on Freebird Games latest title: To the Moon. 

What inspired the game and the type of story/game play? 4-5 hours seems like a very approachable game in this day and age where adventure games can log up to 20 hours or more.

The game was made in an attempt to turn various misfortunes in my life and others into something beautiful and worthwhile.

Not in an “emo” way, though, and it’s far from a “depressing” game (in fact, the first half can probably be labeled “tragicomedy”); but I believe that something good can come out of every bad event, and this is my attempt to prove that to myself.

I wanted to tell a story with To the Moon, and I knew how I wanted to tell it – so I just went ahead and did that without much of a consideration for genre categories and time. It just so turned out to resemble a RPG/adventure game hybrid clocked at 4-5 hours, which I think accomplished my goal effectively.

In To the Moon how exactly do the doctors help Johnny relive or “correct” moments in his life via memories? Going to the grave with the feeling that you’ve accomplished everything you set out to do sounds like a great idea.

The concept of what they do is rather simple: they travel through the temporal layers of the patients’ memory, so they can transfer the “registered desire” of the patients from present time into the early times of the simulation of their “new life”. In the simulation, the patients would essentially live this new life from an early start point of their old life.

The difference would be that they now have this unwavering desire and motivation with them throughout the entirety of their new life, never fading. It would then be up for them to accomplish what they want with it.

I think the cause of the vast majority of the failures in real life is that with time, our desires fluctuate, and our ambitions fade. The you or me yesterday is not the you or me today, and we are constantly in a different state of mind as we were a moment ago, albeit how small the shifts are.

But if we were to have something like a consistent desire and ambition with us that would never fade, all our temporal frames would essentially be synchronized to work toward one single goal. Many dreams would be fulfilled, and a lot more projects started in the garages would be finished.

The game tastes like butter? That second trailer is interesting, particularly the intro scene where we see Sally and Tommy telling the doctor they are going to call the cops on him for trying to attack a squirrel. Who did the majority of the dialogue and story writing?

That’d be me. More specifically: me past 2AM.

Can we expect more witty scenes like this? What would you say the ratio of serious to humor is To the Moon?

I have been sleeping late rather often in the course of its development and writing; therefore, yes, I think more scenes like that can be expected. As for the ratio of serious to humor … Perhaps about 63% serious and 37% humor? Give or take 3%.

As the story plays on, there’s a gradual shift from lightheartedness (heavy in the beginning) to a more serious tone (end).

If it is a pretty high ratio, do you think that will keep player’s attention or be well received, since many adventure games or RPGS tend to have more serious moments? The first trailer made the game seem very serious…

To the Moon is a serious story overall, but where the humor comes in is the play-in-a-play aspect of it, as we are watching the doctors as they watch Johnny’s life. As the ending credits roll, the tone and impression left on the player is meant to resemble that of the first trailer a lot more. And if things go well, I think people would be more likely to say “that was beautiful” rather than “that was hilarious”.

But that being said, the journey to get to the end doesn’t always take itself too seriously – and I think it does a positive job of keeping the player’s attention, since it takes some warm-up to the characters before the audience would actually emotionally invest in them. I want to deliver an emotional punch with the execution of the story, but I’d also like to be able to make them laugh and be amused along the journey. It’s a platypus between drama and lighthearted humor.

Are these characters (particularly Dr. Watts) based off anyone you know?

That’d be me past 3AM. And as a side note, you don’t want to know who I become past 4AM. (Pssst, it’s Snorlax.)

How many installments will be in the series and how have you determined characters. Will the next in line be someone from John’s life or will it be an entirely new person?

It’s not finalized right now, though I have planned some overarching story involving the two doctors to connect the series. The other episodes would be about entirely new people, though they might reference the old timers now and then.

What I love, as a writer/developer, about a concept like this being a series is that each episode has complete freedom on its own rather than having to forcefully extend a story that’s already been offered closure (which is I think where a lot of the “sequels” of movies and the like fall). Each installment is a blank canvas, yet still remains connected by the two main doctors who the players will become familiar with.

Do you foresee making games like this for smart phones or other hand-held devices? Do you have plans on creating content like this for Xbox Live or PSN? Would you like to?

I would like to (though story-oriented games like this is probably more fitting for tablets rather than smart phones), but it would be a matter of technical constraints. There has been something interesting on the horizon that might make them possible in the near future, though! Mac and Linux are on the top of my want-to-port-to list at the moment.

Can you explain some of the mechanics for the game you are particularly proud of or something you see as fresh for the industry?

The game isn’t exactly technically advanced, but I do like the memory traversal system via mementos – it’s one of those things that integrate the story with the mechanics seamlessly. There’s a lot of untapped potential with its usage in To the Moon, though, especially considering it’s linear (though reverse-chronological).

The memory traversals in some of the future installments may not be linear, and each memento may link to multiple memories. It’d give it a lot more gameplay experience than just a teleporting method, and it’d be like a memory maze where you are traveling through time at random points to piece together what happened!

As an indie developer, what are some of the challenges you face once you come up with an idea for a game?

Convincing friends and family that I’m not crazy for trying to pull it off and make a living doing this rather than apply for jobs at some corporation? Hah, well no, they’ve been pretty supportive.

I think it’s mainly the hurdle of being able to taking things one step at a time. When you’re at the beginning of development with only just an idea, it’s like standing at the foot of a tower that’s thousands of floors tall – it’s intimidating, and makes you worried about whether there’re any washrooms up there. But if you break it down into however many floors to climb per day and know that you’ll get to the top by a certain amount of time, it makes it that much easier to start climbing consistently.

Thanks Kan. You can check out To the Moon on their official site. To the Moon is stated to release this autumn on PC.