In all the excitement of starting a new year, I almost forgot to cover the last game I played in 2024, Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode.
This is the latest entry in the To the Moon series, following the strange and emotional Impostor Factory from 2021.
Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode came out in September, but I put off playing it for a while because I did not believe for a minute it was just a happy beach episode. At the end of the year, I decided to finally dive in.
It’s shorter than the others, taking me around two and a half hours instead of the roughly four hours main entries in the series have taken. It also notably doesn’t follow a new story with original characters like the main entries have. Instead, you play as Eva, going on a trip to the beach with her co-workers. It should be fun and lighthearted… and it is, except for the sense that something just isn’t quite right.
There’s humor and lighthearted antics and even a couple of mini-games, and of course it all culminated in an emotional scene that left me feeling sad even though I’d already had a good idea of what it was leading up to.
Now, I can’t really talk about too much without spoilers, so I’ll just finish by saying that if you’ve stuck with the To the Moon series all this time, it’s worth playing Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode to see this next piece in the overarching story.
It’s been implied that this is the ending of the series, but we also have The Last Hour of an Epic To the Moon RPG to look forward to. The director once said that the two games are both endings to the series, with one being the good ending and one being the bad ending. Which one was this? Well, I’m sure we’ll have a clearer view of that once the second game is out to compare it to.