6180 The Moon

I’ve started compiling this list of potentially easy completions and offline only games as I attempt to make a full transition to games I can complete by myself – again, why you probably won’t be seeing Destiny or Elder Scrolls Online here any time soon.

Anyway, 6180 The Moon follows the story of the Moon as it travels through the solar system, like the moon does, to find the Sun as it has disappeared. Along the way it meets our other friends from the solar system – Earth, Venus and Mercury.

The premise of the game is that the Moon has completely forgotten that it’s the moon and can apparently travel past all of the other planets in search of the sun. Once it gets to the sun, the sun tells it that the reason it has disappeared is because the Moon is still up and needs to go down for the sun to appear. It’s utter bullshit and you could argue that it’s a kid’s story but the gameplay doesn’t exactly appeal to a child audience.

6180 The Moon is a 2D side-scroller format where if you fall through the bottom of the screen, you appear at the top and vice versa. It’s a simple but frustrating mechanic in that it boils down to trial and error unless you are a super genius who can work out the pattern the ball will move in before you make a jump or drop. This is why the supposed storyline doesn’t fit with the gameplay – a child would become frustrated as soon as the Moon didn’t do what they wanted and I like my controllers to stay in one piece.

Looks wise, it’s a fairly cheap game and doesn’t need to be glamorous for the gaming experience. The music is dreary, supposedly to mimic the emptiness of space or whatever but in my opinion the game is best played muted.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 16 Achievements

At the start of this review, I mentioned that it was a quick completion and according to my stats, I managed to rattle through in less than an hour of play time which is pretty good going. 11 of the achievements are awarded for completing all of the puzzle levels and as I said, once you get used to the gravity function, most levels become straight forward.

Of the other five there’s not really a lot worth mentioning. You have to jump 200 hundred times and break 500 blocks, both of which will happen through normal game play unless you are really, really good and manage to get through all the levels first go.

There’s another for dropping through the screen 10 times in a row. I got this one on one of the first levels by complete accident. You also need to clear a level without jumping and also clear a level without using the drop of light pick up thing. I had to actively pursue doing a level without jumping but the drop of light one was another accident.

Oh, all of the non-story based achievements are secret, which is a bit backwards but there you go.

Downloadable Content – N/A

6180 The Moon is a quick, easy and cheap completion but it’s not very rewarding and also frustrating at times. A Gamerscore whore’s dream but nothing more.