Beyond Reality (IGMC 2014 Edition)

This review is for the IGMC 2014 version.

The opening sequence establishes our main character as well, amoral, and really not very likeable, which does not bode well for any empathetic link between her and the player. If the intent was to make her seem driven then it was a step too far, not calling an ambulance for an injured person because you want to catch your train is amoral, calling one on the way to your train is driven.

So our protagonist catches her train and makes it to work and we discover her name, La'lele and the first person she meets is called A'shereni, who not only reiterates the punctuation shaker trope but lets us know that La'lele is the boss. Though of what isn't immediately apparent.


Apple-polisher, though it may explain how you can get away with that outfit in a corporate setting.

There is a mix of custom and default music, used petty well in most cases to enhance the experience, the opening section being a prime example of this with a futuristic and yet still foreboding feel to it which though not immediately relevant does become so as the game progresses.

Direction is somewhat heavy handed in this first sequence, and the dialogue is a little odd, surely the director of a facility wouldn't refer to off stage noise as coming from the west, when the only thing to the west is the living area, wouldn't a more natural response be to refer to it as such?

Still we get a bit of mystery with a exhumed frozen body being brought back to life, and the facilities raison d'être, which appears to be pollution monitoring and scientific experimentation within that scope, not something you'd think would have a lot of archaeology or forensic pathology attached, so how and why and where they exhumed a body seems problematic...and never explained.


What? Does the Declaration of Helsinki mean nothing to these people? Ends do not and never have justified means.

Our driven (I'm being nice here) director goes in search of a problem, and of course finds one, via a memory button puzzle that is a little frustrating in its repetition, but that does include a useful dynamic of hints and clues the longer it goes on, which makes solving it ultimately inevitable. It appears this place isn't run by a set of shared goals and an altruistic attitude to save the human race from its own mistakes; it's a group of people who are sycophants, rogues or just plain terrified of La'lele, hardly a working environment conducive to success. Also what sort of person writes down his secret plan to do something deceitful in a log that the director has access to? A better option would have been the information shown via a secret camera that the director had installed to watch the staff, underhanded yes but in character, which would enable La'lele to ascertain what was going on, and since the later reveal isn't particularly surprising, the earlier attempted misdirection doesn't work.

However before that can be explored in any manner and some interpersonal dynamic established our frozen body is thawed and revived and she's as cute as button and scheming to boot and she has a quest. Go back in time 3,000 years to when magic was prevalent not science, avert a war and change history with who knows what consequences to the future in which all of these people now reside.

For reasons that make no sense the entire contingent jump at the chance, except La'lele, who as has already been established is a control freak. There is no logical reason for them to agree with such alacrity, or indeed at all, to what is honestly a dangerous and foolhardy endeavour with no guarantee of success and a plethora of possible negative ramifications.


and that means what to me? Oh right, quest, sorry.

Still Salada Sulad, our frozen cleric, just shifts every back in time anyway, which does beg the question, why did she asks for help if all she was going to do was negate people's free will and force them to accompany her? Yet another unsympathetic and downright manipulative character, so far I like no-one in this game. Also if Salud has the power to shift an arbitrary bunch of people back in time 3 millennia then surely turning up at the government headquarters and doing the same to the ruling bureaucrats would solve the problem in the first place.

Now 3,000 years in the past we're in the familiar medieval RPG landscape, battles, magic, wooded valleys and rustic towns, quest objects and dire warnings. Though we don't get to see any of those since we are literally rushed via three short cuts from the clearing where we arrived, though a cavern system and a way station to arrive at the rebel stronghold. It takes less than10 seconds, screen time, to make this journey, and leaves the player feeling short changed. From this point on the game follows some familiar territory with our somewhat reluctant 'heroes' braving the odds and attempting to overthrown the corrupt government of Sulada's time.


Where's the bed?

The battles are the classic front view turn based, with a few interesting little graphical touches to liven them up. The first battle has a nice distinction in that as this is indeed the first fight that any of these characters have ever engaged in their only option is to hit things. There are no skills or magic available and since they aren't carrying any items that is not an option either. From this point on however the battles fall back on to the attack, skill/magic, and item use formula.

At no point in the game does the motivation of the characters make sense, and indeed most of the characters are relatively bland, except bizarrely for the main character who has logically realised that completing this quest will get her and her people home. She has somehow shed the amoral viewpoint of her earlier incarnation and has decided to brave dangers untold and hardships unnumbered to fight her way to the castle, and confront the corrupt government and get her compatriots back to the their own time.

What happens next is hardly surprising, but I'm not going to spoil it in a review, suffice to say those elements I have already highlighted as lacking do not get any better, and indeed some of the more simplistic ones, like the battles start to involve a complexity that would have been appreciated if it had actually worked. Combo attacks should be refreshing because they require strategy to execute, but that's not the way they played out here, they just meant it took an extra round to do anything, when they worked, which was rarely.

In addition there were other odd game dynamics in play, sell only merchants makes no sense, and are generally just frustrating from a players perspective, though since there was nothing to sell I suppose it made no difference. The castle presented a problem of access that didn't require any challenge to solve; no puzzles, no unavoidable combats, just find the rooms with the chests and take the keys.

Beyond Reality isn't a bad game, it's just a 5 hour game that has been shoe-horned into an hour to meet the requirements of the contest. There is obviously a lot of back-story to the world, both present day and 3,000 years ago, and requires a much longer play time to allow that story to evolve organically, and for the characters within it to grow and develop with their own faults and foibles, strengths and abilities. As it is the motivations behind the characters makes sense to the developer, but not to the player and that is a shame.