Maria has lived a long time, seen and done many things, and perhaps old age has in fact made her a little jaded. Conversation with strangers also isn’t something she’s overly fond of, and yet, something about Aeda, a girl seemingly waiting for the same tram as Maria. Something she can’t quite put her finger on causes her to get far more chatty than is normal for her, en route to see the Sunrise on the Moon.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m an absolute sucker for games that make pixelated visuals look good, and this one most certainly does. It’s also a rare choice of art style for a visual novel and one that arguably might clash just the tiniest bit with the setting, which – for all intents and purposes – is the future. Not the year 2022, anyway, and I suppose it could also simply be a reality different from our own in which technology has advanced much faster. Then again, social media is still very much a thing and there are no flying cars, so… yeah, I’m fine with this reality, thank you very much. Anyway, I’m sure you get what I’m trying to say, and I’m also sure few – if any – would actually feel any kind of disconnect between something ancient like pixellated visuals and a science fiction-ish setting. Just felt like bringing it up, you know?
Right. So, the Lunar Colonies. Maria’s home for who knows how long, and she has yet to miss the sunrises from the station’s viewing platform. Is today going to be any different? Well, that depends entirely on choices made by you, the player, for unless the last one is super well-hidden, Sunrise on the Moon features no less than four(!) different endings. Some are relatively easy to reach if you pay attention to the text in each choice, but the big one, the one I believe to be the true/canonical ending, now that took a bit of guesswork. Totally worth it though, as it is also the best conclusion to this particular story, by far.
Not thereby saying that the other endings were ones I’d label as, well, less. Plus, the path to each tends to feature at least a handful of different conversational topics, all of which were, quite frankly, interesting in their own rights. I’m obviously not going to spoil any of them here, which is why – as always – screenshots have been carefully selected; which was no easy task, I might add, given the fact that it took less than an hour to play/read the entire visual novel. On the flip side, that’s also the only potential complaint I have, and let’s face it, such is a very minor nitpick. So… go grab a copy of Sunrise to the Moon and strike up a chat with Aeda. Trust me.
Sunrise on the Moon is available on itch.io, for free (pay-what-you-want).
