120 Finding Paradise
PC
Developer/publisher Freebird Games Format PC Release Out now
You may spend your first few hours in Finding Paradise wondering exactly what took so long. It’s been six years since Kan Gao and Freebird Games’ breakout hit To The Moon, and all signs point to this sequel following a very similar path. Once again you play as a pair of doctors from Sigmund Corp, a company with a compelling pitch: on your deathbed, they use technology to enter your mind and alter your memories to fulfil your dying wish or fix a lingering regret.
There are deviations from the formula, admittedly. In To The Moon, you had a reasonably straightforward task – helping a man achieve his lifelong dream of space travel. Here, things are a little more opaque. Colin Reeds hasn’t been able to articulate what he wants Doctors Eva Rosalina and Neil Watts to do. Rather than gad about on a linear timeline in search of the point where they can make a single, life-altering change, the pair must flit back and forth throughout Reeds’ life, searching not for the opportunity to change it, but for a clue as to what it is he really wants.
The process, however, plays out in much the same manner as before. You wander a stage searching for memories – little dialogue scenes that reward you with one of the orbs you need to move on. Once they’ve all been found, you must then identify a memento that’s shared between two important moments in Reeds’ life, allowing you to jump between them. The sliding-block sections from To The Moon are gone, in their place a friendlier kind of grid puzzle, but aside from that, and the nonlinear story, it’s pretty much business as usual.
That means that, like its predecessor, Finding Paradise is a clunky old thing, and often a little inscrutable, leaving you no option but to approach and examine every object and piece of furniture in a scene until you stumble upon a way to advance the story. It’s often achingly slow, too, with ponderous character movement leaving you pining for a run button.
That’s fine, because it’s an intriguing tale, its mystery and fuzzy chronology giving it a constant, momentum. Watts and Rosalina are still a wonderfully written duo who, even at their most silly or sarcastic, never lose their respect for their patient. And if the story itself doesn’t quite deliver the emotional gutpunch of To The Moon, it imparts a stronger message, one that questions the very concept of SigCorp’s USP. And Gao’s wondrous score will fill in the gaps, its piano and strings lifting and swelling, grabbing you by the heartstrings and taking you with them at all the right moments. Maybe that’s what took him six years to make a sequel. Whatever it was, the results reflect time thoroughly well spent.