RPG Maker games often get a bad rap and are considered low effort products in this industry. But I wouldn't liked to have seen the same story in any other format. To elaborate let me bring up the premise of the story.

Your objective in these games is to dive into a dying person's memories and alter them before his last breath to trick him into believing he died a happy man, or with no regrets. Therefore the gameplay involves exploring different areas of this man's life and unravelling the nature of his regrets. You would think that a dialogue heavy story based game would be better off as a visual novel but it's in these exploration sections that I was the most engaged. The level of detail that go into these environments and the sequence in which they are presented to you is just nothing short of perfect.

That aside the pixel art style complements the tone the game tries to maintain and the personalities of every character. It can be comical, extremely surreal, and yet also be emotional and introspective.

Music played a big part in both games and is extremely well done. Each part emphasises on a particular instrument. TTM being focused on the piano and FP being focused on the cello. Laura Shgihara was involved with the vocal performances of the songs that play during the credits so shout out to her and I believe the rest of it was done by Kan Gao. And on that note, here's where you can find it

My favorite one is the main theme of To The Moon tho [open.spotify.com]

The ONE issue I have is with the puzzles. These just do not fit, I'm sorry. They're not challenging, they're not well made and they don't look pretty either. I'm finna learn to mod just to change this one thing and that's a promise.

Overall this is my favourite RPG Maker game ever period. I would highly recommend this game to literally anyone.

P.S: Buy the Paper Memories comic DLC to. They're wonderfull comics and the illustrations by @komemerda are incredible. I see ya'll keep posting her stuff on the community without crediting her and that's lowkey disrespectful. Support her, she's a great person.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway let me dive into a bit of personal territory. I think what I've typed above is a decent description of what the game is and some technical aspects of it. But what these mean to me as a person is a different story. To The Moon didn't strike any particular chord in me but I loved it either way for what it was.

Finding Paradise on the other hand helped me realise things about myself. The major theme of finding paradise was in my interpretation, childhood loneliness. I'm an adult now but I still hate a bulk of my childhood. I didn't have many friends, all I did was play games, I always felt inferior and left out of groups. The approach FP took to talk about this was to put it shortly, the best one. I can't think of anything better. Kan Gao said it best in a tweet after the release of the game.

To the Moon was about seeking fantasy from reality, whereas Finding Paradise is about seeking reality from fantasy. Two sides of the same coin.I think most folks would get the emotional core of To the Moon more. But for those who actually are able to relate to the core of Finding Paradise, I hope it means something. I feel like it's a story not often told because of how hard it'd be to relate to.