Beyond the Gate

Good day, players!
today I played "Beyond the Gate", a short 2011 game made for the RMN Summer Games by a developer called simply Sam, that I've already "encountered" when I reviewed another game last year, and I am talking of Four Sided Triangle (if you are curious you can read about it HERE!), another game from this author made in 2008 that's of a totally different genre (being a party-based classic fantasy jrpg) and also exists only as a demo (even if it's still longer than this Beyond the Gate!).

In Beyond the Gate we play as Claire, a young woman who has terminal cancer. The game start when she is going somewhere (probably home) on a train... when she suddenly falls asleep, and then wakes up on a strange island, in the graveyard where the tombs have no name. Guided by a mysterious voice, she enters an unsettling hospital, where the ghosts of her past roam and try to stop her...


The game not only includes battles but also unavoidable encounters with bosses!

Beyond the Gate can be described ad a short adventure game with some classic rpgmaker elements, like combat and levelling. You even have battles against bosses, and the opportunity to restock items in a couple of areas thanks to a merchant, while save points also restore Claire to full health. Luckily combat isn't really difficult, and enemies are always visible and avoidable, maybe except for a couple of crowded areas,but lesser opponents were never really a problem. There are also some permanent augmentations that can be found or bought, but I do not think they're so useful, being costly, better buy some healing items and a better knife! Claire has also some special skills that require AP (Action Points) and will also learn more levelling up, but I did not find them really determinant to survive (I only used the one to reduce the enemy's defense, and that's all).

Combat and duels with bosses aside, the game includes exploration and a single puzzle in which you have to figure out a password, and all is pretty much simple and linear so do not worry too much, it's impossible getting stuck.

Visually the game is pretty good: mapping is really nice and really shows the progress made by the developer in this field from 2008 to 2011! Here there is both the use of First Seed Material assets, but there are also edits and some custom made sprites (again, better than in the previous game!). The theme of the contest was "surrealism" and well, more or less the places visited will be surreal even if not so much, and some locations seems disjointed one from the other. There are also some little passability errors in which you may walk inside a wall, but nothing game breaking, and I'm pretty sure that most players won't find that. Music is pretty good, most of it consists in melancholic piano themes that I guess are pretty appropriate.


OUCH! Ok, do not underestimate normal enemies, since we'll be often outnumbered!

Final Verdict
Beyond the Gate is an ok game, visuals and music are especially good, for the rest unfortunately there is not much "game", just a sequence of battles and cutscenes that rapresent the main character fighting against doubts and bad memories that lead to a predictable ending. Battles are pretty simple and boring (even the bosses that possess some special attacks are simply beaten by mashing the normal attack), and there is not enough "surrealism" despite the eerie landscape, that's more mysterious than really surreal. Aside for these issues, the game is still pretty enjoyable and I had fun playing it even if it could have been a bit better. But it's still an ok game if you want to play a short and simple mysterious scenario, I guess!