Good visuals and music
FINDING Paradise is the sequel to To the Moon and A Bird Story. You need not play these games to appreciate the sequel, but you will be much more connected to its main characters if you do.
The game follows a string trend among indie-game developers who devote their energies towards the design, writing and musical composition out of what can only be described as an intense and passion to create video-games.
It places itself right next to video games such as Undertale by Toby Fox and Doki Doki Literature Club! which tend to have so much input from a single creator that they’re as close as can be to embodying the auteur theory the film industry likes.
Kan Gao is the mastermind behind Finding Paradise and utilises his company, Freebird Games, to publish his work. The game is available on the Steam platform at RM23 or you can get the bundle with its soundtrack, which I highly recommend, at RM28.40.
PLAYING THE GAME
As with To the Moon, you play as the loveable tag-team of scientist, doctors Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts.
You take a short expository drive and walk to find your patient for the day. Along the way, moments are filled with hijinks.
This is not a game you want to rush. There is a lot of reading so take the time to, well, read. If reading anything more than 1,000 words is problematic to you, this game will not sit well with you.
The game does its best to feed new players especially with information on what makes this world tick. Everything revolves around a company called Sigmund Corp that has found a way to access a person’s memories and alter them using a special device. It’s similar to the movie Inception (2010) where people can jump into someone’s subconscious and suggest things to them internally.
Sigmund Corp plays the role of a life insurance company. If you are at your dying bed and have regrets, it will send two scientists to alter your memories so you die peacefully in your own mind. Obviously, that’s a slippery slope of questionable morality and ethics, homed inside a wonderfully complex philosophical meta-narrative. And that’s exactly where Finding Paradise shines.
THE MUSIC
The soundtrack for Kan Gao’s games has always been a big part of what makes them so great. They’re often strongly driven by drastically emotional piano ballads that will send anyone into tears.
Kan Gao does as he has always done with this game. There is sweeping piano music and sustained string sections juxtapose the minimalistic sonic space.
The music never overbears on the player and is always there to lift your emotions where it so pleases. The soundtrack is a musical cue to your subconscious.
There’s no voice-acting in this video-game, so the inclusion of the music into the diegetic world is an ingenious move.
For those of you familiar with its prequel, To the Moon, Laura Shigihara, who has worked on the lyrical track Everything’s Alright, once again provides another great lyrical piece to wrap up the game.
Shigihara’s voice singing over a melodramatic emotional gut-drencher is the player’s cue to step away from the computer and stare into space for a few hours.
THE VISUALS
Finding Paradise is built using the role-playing game Maker XP game engine, and as such makes use of a familiar aesthetic such as Team GrisGris’s Corpse Party or Shigihara’s Rakuen.
However, it still manages to carve its own path by pushing the limits of what the engine is capable of through creative use of User Interface changes and additional art that makes the character and backgrounds pop.
Perspective shifts are not uncommon in this game either and are used to great effect to bring out certain narrative progressions, whether it be for comedic effect (thanks to at least one half of the scientist duo you play as) or to turn the world on its head and put players on edge.
CONCLUSION
Though the game is not for everyone as it makes players read a lot of text, the music and visually appealing aesthetic are usually more than enough to keep players engaged in the story.
Finding Paradise works very hard to find a comfortable spot in your heart and proceed to beat it up until you cry, smile, cry and end up with tears of happiness in the end.
Despite the emotional rollercoaster rides, the game is noticeably lighter of heart than its predecessor as it takes more time to inject comedic events. Albeit this could be because its themes sit in contrast with each other. To quote Kan Gao on the games, “To the Moon was about seeking fantasy from reality, whereas Finding Paradise is about seeking reality from fantasy. Two sides of the same coin.”
All in all, the game is a wonderful emotional roller-coaster to take a ride on. I highly recommend it and wholeheartedly give this game an 8/10.