My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So instead, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. Previously, I turned into a quivering pile of mush on BioShock 2: Minerva's Den and The Binding of Isaac. And now, a game that may very well top both of them: masterful indie heart-breaker To The Moon. 

To The Moon made me cry. Like, eight times. And I don't mean in the “single dramatic tear meandering down my cheek” sense. I'm talking about gushing waterfalls of salty face liquid. You'd have thought everyone I'd ever known and loved acted like they never knew or loved me and then promptly died. Of a disease whose main side effect is tragic irony.   

And that's weird, because I figured myself one who'd be impervious to the game's barrage of gut-wrenching sadness bullets. I mean, its two controllable (notice I didn't say “main”) characters often turn humor into a weapon of mass face-palm-worthy irritation, and – aside from largely unneeded end-of-area puzzles – there's hardly even any interactivity to speak of. You walk around and click on predetermined objects. That's it. I'm a gamer. Why should I care about any of that? 

However, if nothing else, let To The Moon serve as a lesson on why reductionist thinking is Bad and Wrong. Because if I'd given the game the cold shoulder over those concerns – or even just written it off as another tear-jerking, smile-seeking indie missile – I'd have missed out on one of the most genuinely heartfelt stories I've ever experienced. Videogame or not. 

The gist of the game is as follows: You “play” as – or really, experience events from the perspective of – two Future Doctors, Rosalene and Watts, with a machine that allows them to grant people's dying wish by altering their memories as they lay at death's door. In this case, it's an old man named Johnny who's dealing with a rather pesky, er, coma. He wants to go to the moon, but here's the thing: he honestly doesn't know why. So you hop inside his head and go on a big scavenger hunt for items from his past that might reveal the origin of his oddly uncharacteristic desire.

Basically, it's Inception meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But there's that pesky reductionist thinking again, and as before, it doesn't hold water. To The Moon's conceit is just a vehicle for incredibly nuanced characters and a story that unfolds, well, backwards. But it still somehow feels like it's moving forward. Ultimately, the game explores characters' entire lives from finish to start – acting as the boat-rocking cannon blast to games like Dragon Age II, which have merely dipped a pinky toe into exploring their timestreams. I'm pretty sure its creators are story wizards. 

Moreover, unlike, say, Final Fantasy VII – whose most-revered moment is undoubtedly its Shocking and Unexpected Death Scene – To The Moon prefers to extract all sorts of tears for all sorts of different reasons. Whether in action or storytelling, most games know only one language: brute force. To The Moon, on the other hand, applies a far gentler touch and runs a full gamut of emotions. It's not really about the tears at all; it's about the moments in between them. That, above all else, is key, so let me explain.

(SKIP THE FOLLOWING IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS.) To The Moon first made me cry when I realized why there were so many origami rabbits. Before she passed away, Johnny's wife, River, obsessively crafted mountains of the fuzz-free fuzzballs, but her intentions were a complete mystery to Johnny. Ultimately, he wrote it off as yet another quirk that arose from River's rather severe case of autism, which – for obvious reasons – always put a strain on communication in their relationship. Slowly but surely, however, the game peeled back the layers of meaning surrounding River's excessive obsession. 

The large-scale arts and crafts project began after – when they were middle-aged adults – Johnny confessed the reason he first asked River out way back in high school. He thought she was unique, and he wanted to use her to avoid being another “typical” person. “Points is, I know what I need,” he had told a friend over lunch. “And she has it.” It was, admittedly, sickeningly self-serving, but he was a dumb kid at the time. Clearly, that wasn't how he felt anymore. From that day forward, however, she became an origami machine – right up to the day she died many years later. And Johnny kept each and every rabbit – right up to the day he finally joined her.