Impostor Factory

Billed as Episode X of the unnamed series that includes To the Moon and Finding Paradise, Impostor Factory is another showcase of the incredible all-purpose talent of its developer Kan Gao. It features wonderfully expressive sprite art, a beautiful albeit unambitious soundtrack, and breezy writing that constantly swings between hilarious and heartfelt. It’s a confident game, but that confidence is a double-edged sword. On the plus side, all of the unnecessary detours into simplistic gameplay from the previous games have been excised. On the other hand, without those distractions, the game now feels overlong; it frequently drops out of a montage to elaborate on a specific scene that frankly just belonged in the montage. Furthermore, the storytelling has become somewhat weighed down by contrivance and self-reference. The enigmatic and occasionally non-linear nature of the previous plots were central to their conveyance. Here, those traits seem to exist merely to spice up a fairly straightforward story. Of course, that story is, unsurprisingly, very moving and thought-provoking, and the reveal of how it connects to the rest of the series is unique and difficult to summarize. But seriously, it’s been a decade since To the Moon, and this series needs to stop introducing sequel hooks and start resolving them.