![]() You don’t remember whether she actually played this theme when you first met or if you just inserted it as a placeholder as a result of your own lack of recollection. Time is not only a place – it is also a person, a smell, a sound, a taste… You stand in the rehearsal hall where you first fell in love with your wife, as she played the first few notes of the piano theme. “Time is a Place” captures a core theme of Finding Paradise, and is the track with the most number of different versions in the OST (in fact, all these headings are names from the OST, which also includes the iconic track “HNNNNNNGH” – this game still holds my record of best track titles in an OST). ![]() However, what truly makes something “life-changing”? Is it enough that every time I think of memory, I think of something related to this game? If life is just memory, then changing my view of memory would have ultimately changed my view of life, right? Time is a Place When asked whether I have ever experienced a “life-changing” game, these games would not have come to my mind. Therefore, the majority of this article is about Finding Paradise. There is a third game called Impostor Factory, which deserves its own analysis in a different article. I was more moved by the emotional core of Finding Paradise, but To the Moon definitely set the stage for the impact. What makes a life meaningful? What do we ultimately wish for at the end of our lives? Kan Gao, when making the first game, was inspired by questions of mortality from his grandfather’s life-threatening condition. The objective of both is simple: you act as a pair of memory “doctors”, changing the memories of a dying man in order to fulfill his dying wish. Although categorized as games, they would more fittingly be called movies, with vibrant soundtracks that rely mainly on the piano. ![]() They are made on RPG Maker by Kan Gao, aka Freebird Games (I still can’t forget that one fateful night in the beginning of quarantine when I found out he was also from Markham, my hometown). Finding Paradise is its sequel, with an interlude in between called A Bird Story, a short little game with no text. There’s this little game, called To the Moon, which takes less than 5 hours to complete.
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