To the Moon is an affecting visual novel with adventure elements, built (I believe) in RPG Maker, but eschewing the conventions of the RPG.
It is an exploration of a man's life, approached in an unusual way: beginning with old age and delving back gradually to childhood, unpeeling his life, love, and the events that shaped him little by little. It's an effective story-telling technique, allowing the player to piece together the puzzles of his existence, with moments of raw sadness, occasional bits of humor, and an an ending with genuine emotional power.
It's not perfect; while the writing is, in the sense of characterization and plot, excellent, it is also, in moment-to-moment sentence construction, often infelicitous. The actual gameplay is minimal -- small "flip" puzzles and hunts for inventory items, no conventional graphic adventure puzzles -- but this suits the nature of the project, which is focused tightly on the story being told. More gameplay would simply get in the way.
The music, also, is excellent.
To the Moon is an 2012 IGF Finalist in the Excellence in Audio category.
