Before The Green Moon Reviews

New favorite farming/community game. Love the aesthetics and characters. Took me a moment to figure out where some things are but nothing impossible. Once you figure out a routine in game, time kind of just flies by. Also having issue with the one review not recommending the game as at least half of the problems found have simple solutions found by just paying attention.

Haven't played a lot of farming sims, so I can't really compare it to other games in the genre, but I can still say I enjoyed it. It has that addictive, "numbers go up," quality as you build up your farm and buy new tools and whatnot. But it also has a lot of personality and well-written dialogue. And this may be a strange aspect to single out, but I liked a lot of the architecture, especially the building interiors. Made me want to walk around these locations in real life. Never did figure out how to catch a chicken though. So there's that.

this game holds a special place in my heart, and i really hope the developer makes another game with a similar vibe, if that's what they want to do

I can't really justify negatively reviewing this game, but this is a tentative positive review. The aesthetic, setting, and most of the presentation is top notch, and is very reminiscent of early ps2/late ps1 era. It's just that the actual gameplay loop isn't particularly rewarding. There aren't many crop types and there's nothing to do with crops other than sell or eat them (and there's barely any reason to do that.) The end goal is a $110,000 ticket for the space elevator but it doesn't take very long to unlock almost every single tool in the game AND get that, under 10 hours. The ticket probably could've been more expensive, as I didn't expect to be done with this game so fast. I liked visiting the diner for lunch each day, though, and interacting with the other characters. But the farm lacks a lot of upgrades or automation options you'd see in a more fleshed out sim. It's a neat and immersive little world but I don't know if farming gameplay or [spoiler]cutting to black before getting any actual payoff[/spoiler] did the setting any favours. Additionally, after the end [spoiler]you cannot reload from before you got on the space elevator, so if you wanted to keep playing and see all the character cutscenes, too bad, you are hard locked into the ending now and must start again in order to keep playing[/spoiler] This game is about its world and that is entirely fine, so if you go in looking for a laid back, stripped back experience in a unique setting then you'll get exactly what you paid for.