PLAY
Before The Green Moon
Surely this can’t be just another farming sim? Not from Turnfollow, which dazzled us with the delightful comic tale of Wide Ocean Big Jacket?
Whereas that game made you feel like the director of a hilarious silent comedy about a family camping trip, tilling Green Moon’s ugly fields can feel like getting back to the tedious post-holiday grind of work.
Its hooks sink in nevertheless. The timeworn formula of turning an overgrown mess into a functioning money-printing machine remains a horribly moreish loop, even if we have seen it too many times. Admittedly, it’s rarely this (deliberately?) hideous: Green Moon looks like the climate apocalypse has come for your N64. Yet the sparsely animated cast of low-poly oddballs you meet still manage to charm, thanks to writing that’s as often hysterical as it is touchingly sincere. It’s here that some genre innovations begin to sprout. Characters are initially closed-off and some never really warm to you, a welcome dose of rude reality after so many overly saccharine Harvest Moons.