A Room Beyond

[b]A Room Beyond[/b] is an interesting adventure point'n'click game where you have to reveal the secret of the mysterious Fog Wanderer who is causing some trouble to the villagers. But first, you have to find your way out of the cave prison. Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit: http://saveorquit.com/2017/09/13/review-a-room-beyond/ When I first saw this game on Steam, a game called The Last Door instantly popped into my mind, which is a game of the same genre. When I actually started playing A Room Beyond, I found out that the games are indeed similar in a lot of ways. This game's pixelated graphics are a big draw for me and I was really surprised to see that the 2.5D environment is really really well done. Games with similarly pixelated graphics are in most other cases just made in the good old flat 2D so ARB features an unusual, yet welcome change. One little thing bothers me, though: the pixelation is generated "on the fly" and some of the objects have the same colour across a big part of their surface. Because of both of these two flaws, shadowing is sometimes not present the way it should be, which slightly spoils the otherwise beautiful graphics. Although the soundtrack isn't always present in the game (some scenes are almost completely silent if we ignore the sound effects of walking and interacting with objects), I think it mostly does a really good job at creating an eerie and slightly uncomfortable atmosphere. The sound effects are also pleasant, with the exception of the crowbar which, when used, sounds like a whip. For some reason. When you start the game, you first have to complete the "Prologue", a quick little tutorial which introduces you to all the controls and GUI functions (not that there are many of them, though). Like all other similar point'n'click games, you are given an inventory for storage purposes. I like how you never get too many items at once [i](I'm looking at you, Deponia!)[/i] so you don't have to try up to a hundred different item combinations when you're stuck, trying to find a way to move forward with the story. So, the story: it's good. That's the short version. Now for the long one: the story builds up very gradually, letting you set your own pace when exploring the area or talking to the other characters. When you approach other people, you can have a little chat with them. Most of the time, the dialogues have surprising depth and you won't feel like skipping through them all the time. I didn't mention this yet, but the story consists of five chapters. The same story continues from chapter to chapter with minor cliffhangers between them. Personally, I think that such way of delivering a story fits this game quite well. I do feel like complaining about one thing, however. Who thought it would be a good idea to bring fighting into a game of this genre? When starting the second chapter, you will get a weapon and from then on, you will have to fight some strange looking oversized angry purple bugs. Which also happen to be hostile. There isn't much strategy involved, though: you just have to pick a spot next to the bug very precisely (otherwise you won't be able to hit it for some reason), click on the bug rapidly for 3-4 seconds and that's it. I find this annoying because it happens way too often. For example, you have to fight about [i]ten[/i] of those creatures one after the other just to get some item on the other side of the room. That certainly wasn't enjoyable, considering I had to find that precise spot for each of those bugs. Connected to the problem above is yet another one: the weird camera perspective. Since the devs managed to create a good-looking 2.5D game, they had to use that extra half of dimension for some showing off purposes. The room with the bugs I was talking about was even harder because of this exact reason: you can't really see all the bugs all the time and you also can't walk properly around the room since the weird perspective doesn't let you see the floor. At least not the part you'd want to see. I was also a bit irritated by the woman whom I saved at the end of the first chapter. She was always in my way and a few times I had trouble getting to the other side of the room because she didn't have to move and I didn't have another way past her. Definitely not fun. Although I got a tiny bit too angry in the previous paragraphs (and not without a legitimate reason), I enjoyed playing A Room Beyond. I don't know if that was because of my love for adventure point'n'click games or for some other reason, but the truth is that once you get used to the weird and annoying perspective and some other minor disturbances, you can have a pretty good time playing. The 2.5D thingy is definitely a welcome gimmick and the story, as I said, isn't half-bad either. 44 achievements are also an upside if that is something you're looking for when buying the games. And since I'm mentioning buying ... should you? Sure. The price isn't too steep ($8) and I'm sure there will be some discounts in the future. You can't play this game on Linux, however, so keep that in mind if you don't have one of those fancy and costly operating systems on your machine. With love, BirdCute [quote]Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.[/quote]

Super Spiel erinnert mich vom Gameplay, Grafik und der Atmosphäre sehr stark an die ersten Teile von Alone in the dark und die waren genial, aber auch an The last door. A room beyond ist ein Point and click action adventure und horror Spiel mit Kampfeinlagen welche zwar einfach gehalten sind, sterben kann man aber trotzdem und recht schnell eigentlich wenn man nicht aufpasst (zumindest ab der zweiten Episode). Die story is voll mysteriös aber sehr interessant und spannend aufgebaut. Es wird von Episode zu episode heftiger und es geht immer mehr ab. Bin schon auf die weiteren Episoden gespannt, insgesamt sind bzw werden es ja fünf, zwei gibts schon und die dritte is am weg (Stand: Juni 2016). Für ein 1-Mann Projekt ein Top Spiel, wenn mir jemand sagt das haben mehrere Leute gemacht würde ich das auch glauben. Weil einfach alles passt die Atmosphäre, die Musik, die Dialoge sind anspruchsvoll und das gameplay is klar und gut gelöst, ich fühl mich echt wohl in dieser Spielewelt und bin schon sehr gespannt allen Geheimnissen in A room beyond auf den Grund zu gehen. :D

If you liked The Last Door and/or Alone In The Dark (the old ones), go head first. That said, this game stand on his own and bring a totally new/retro/fresh experience. A piece of pixel art I would say.

NOTE: This game was given to me by the developer for review purposes. This did not influence my review in any way. [h1]========================================================== ---------------------------------------OVERVIEW------------------------------------- ==========================================================[/h1] The game begins with a brief, scene-setting introduction: a frantic person quickly drawing a circle of protection around them and preparing a magical ritual as they call on the spirits of to protect them, then drops out to the title screen and a well-produced movie-like opening credit cut scene. After that, you wake up locked in a wooden cage inside a cave, while the wind howls outside. Escaping your capture, you explore the small cave and then venture outside, to a peaceful forest setting with crickets chirping -- what happened to the howling wind!? Don't worry; you quickly find other things to keep you distracted from thinking about it, while you go about the typical point-and-click adventure tasks for strangers. *sigh* If only real life were so easy. Anyway, you quickly hear about the Fog Wanderer: a dangerous man that lurks about in the fog, murdering people. Being an all-round nice guy, you decide to do something about it. D'oh! [h1]========================================================== ----------------------------------------QUALITY------------------------------------- ==========================================================[/h1] Graphics - A Room Beyond features 3D Pixel graphics. They're mostly well done, but look absolutely horrendous in full-screen at 1920x1080. I ended up playing in a smaller-resolution window instead, making them much more pleasant. Scene graphics are quite nice, if necessarily somewhat drab due to the setting. Character graphics are reasonable, though blocky enough that you can't really tell much about the characters. There's dynamic lighting, which is particularly well done. There are half-a-dozen or so settings available, but these are only accessible from the main menu (so you have to quit your current game), or, in the case of detail or resolution, from the standard Unity launcher, requiring a full exit back to Windows. Sound - The music in A Room Beyond is very nice, but it's what you'd expect from Incompetech; Kevin Macleod's music fits the title very well. There's also another artist with whom I'm not familiar. Much of the game is played without music, though; a couple more quiet background tunes wouldn't have gone astray. Sound effects are minimal. Environmental/ambient sounds are pretty good, but sometimes a bit inappropriate, such as the howling wind in the cave at the beginning. Other sounds are few and far between, except for the footsteps, which are much too loud and always sound the same. Attacking sounds in combat are repetitive. There are no voices. Gameplay - A Room Beyond plays like many other point-and-click adventures, complete with inventory and the usual combine-this-with-that-and-use-it-on-that-other-thing puzzles. The game is divided into five episodes that seem to be quite short. I'd guess if you know what you're doing you could run through the whole game very quickly, indeed, but a good portion of the game's appeal comes from exploration and discovery, which can take much longer. There is a fair bit of backtracking, which becomes rather boring (especially with the footstep sounds to grate on the nerves), and some of the puzzles are rather contrived, but that's pretty much expected with point-and-click adventures. Pro tip: double-click to run; it won't work by double clicking on a screen exit directly, for some reason, but you can run to a point on the screen nearby and then walk to the exit. The story seems interesting, though the characters are underdeveloped and forgettable. The script is mostly well written, but I did notice a couple of grammatical errors and a typo or two. I had a giggle in the first chapter: "Hey, I was with your wife." 'Hotspots' on the screen are sometimes hard to find, even when you know where they should appear. The cursor changes sometimes, but it seems to be unreliable. Holding down CTRL to show 'unexplored hotspots' (and exits) definitely helps, but once you've explored a hotspot, CTRL no longer displays it, so it's easy to forget where things are. It can also be hard to make the protagonist do what you want. Pathfinding is quite poor, too, and you'll often become stuck on world objects or your companion. There's also no way to cancel a previous command until it's finished, so if you accidentally click on a hotspot, you'd better hope it's a transitive one. Combat is dull and frustrating, and subtracts from the experience of playing the game rather than adding to it, particularly when coupled with the lack of precise movement, unreliable hotspot displays, a companion who blocks the enemy and prevents you from attacking, and fixed camera positions that sometimes leave nearby enemies off screen. The game would be better without these frustrations. [h1]========================================================== -------------------------------------PROS & CONS------------------------------------ ==========================================================[/h1] Pros: + Interesting story + Nice music + Good dynamic lighting + Steam Achievements and Trading Cards Cons: - Pixel graphics look rather bad in full screen HD - Precise movement is nigh impossible - Pathing is bad - Camera and hotspot issues make navigation and combat frustrating [h1]========================================================== --------------------------------------CONCLUSION----------------------------------- ==========================================================[/h1] I really wanted to like A Room Beyond much more than I do. The first few minutes of the game drew me in and made me interested in the story, but fighting with the controls, pathing, camera, and hotspot issues drained my motivation, and killing spider after spider in the dull and frustrating combat pushed me until I just couldn't be bothered with it anymore. I'm still interested in the story, but not enough to actually play the game. Maybe I'll just go and watch a walkthrough video instead. [h1]5/10[/h1]

A Room Beyond is a 3rd person 2.5D point-and-click adventure in retro pixel art style set in a surreal mysterious world. Episode 1 of 5 starts with the main character finding himself trapped in a cage in a mysterious cave. After freeing himself and exploring a strange world he can only make assumptions of how he got got there. In conversation with the residents such as a priest or the wife of a gold washer he learns about a mysterious figure, the "fog wanderer", which seems to be threatening the inhabitants and maybe even striving to extinguish the whole world. The permanent presence of an abstract threat as well as the setting in general has elements of lovecraftian horror and E.A. Poe stories. The combination of pixel art style and surreal story create an absolutely genuine atmosphere which makes the game's greatest feature. The game features a variety of puzzles from easy to challenging, logic-based to intuitive and often innovative. In addition there are short little action sequences as well as a minimalist combat system. Sometimes there is more than one solution to a specific issue! The game has multiple endings, and when I needed to consult the hints in the community hub for the safe puzzle in chapter 5, I caught a glimpse of a dialogue that there might be another possible character constellation in the end - which explains why in my longplay/walkthrough you can only see 5 of possibly 10 alternate endings. The only point of criticism for me was the challenge of controlling the character in a pixelated 2.5D environment. I was grateful for the hint system which highlights paths to follow and objects to click by using the right mouse button. A Room Beyond is a wonderful one-man project by the German developer René Bühling. For me composition, atmosphere, design and maybe even the title seem to be influenced by the Last Door. If you liked The Last Door you should definitetly give this one a try! With A Room Beyond you get a lot of content, puzzles and pixels for a real good price! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXt9LMYXcBo

[b][i]Review copy provided by developer[/i][/b] I tend to avoid episodic games, at least until all the episodes are out, but even then I’m always wary. Episodic development always seems to result in an uneven experience, with chapters of the game feeling like they were pulled from different worlds of design. Sometimes that works in their favor, as with The Dream Machine. And sometimes it doesn’t, as with A Room Beyond. Already built upon a vague premise and indistinct graphics, the episodes that chronicle this adventure feel wildly disparate and uneven. If the revelations they led to were surprising or compelling enough this formula could still work, but sadly there are little moth-eaten holes across this whole tapestry, The game opens with you (the player) witnessing a suicidal ritual. It then jumps to you (the character) as you escape from another, possibly related, ritual deep in a dank cave. You find yourself in a hazy valley being terrorized by the Fog Walker, a supernatural murderer who can also recruit glowing bugs to do his bidding. Unclear on what’s happening or your part in any of it, you must struggle to escape death and stop the tragedies from occurring before things get any worse. I made it through three chapters of the five-chapter game, and that was the best I could piece together. A Room Beyond feels very much like The Last Door when you start it up, with a powerful, stylish opening and clear divisions between its chapters. But while The Last Door had strong narrative and systemic continuity between chapters, A Room Beyond seems to jump all over the place. The first chapter will see you exploring the valley and solving essentially one puzzle, while the second introduces combat and more complex alchemical and pipe puzzles, and then the third has you treasure-hunting and cave diving. Unfortunately the narrative can’t seem to tie this all together either, as the villainous Fog Walker seems to get new powers every chapter, without a hint at it’s motivation over halfway through the game. It’s a frustrating journey as well, thanks to some mechanics that just don’t work as well as they should. The game is designed to look like a PS1 or early 3D PC adventure, with your blocky character roaming intensely-pixellated terrain. But the art style doesn’t quite click, obscuring many points of interest behind indistinct pixels and forcing you to use the obnoxious highlights multiple times per scene. Your character has trouble navigating the areas as well, mashing his face against walls and bushes in a vain effort to get where he’s going. It’s doubly bad in sequences where you have someone following you, because they’ll block your path and your character won’t attempt to path around them. And the combat just exacerbates everything, requiring you to position yourself and click on enemies until dead, but sometimes they can hit you when you can’t hit them and your attacks have a random chance to connect anyway. I had high hopes for A Room Beyond, being a fan of pretty much everything that went into it. Lo-fi adventure games facing off against unknown evils are the kind of thing I never get tired of (see how many I’ve reviewed this month), but this one doesn’t bring much more than the themes I like. Simply moving and interacting is a chore, each chapter introduces new mechanics that clutter the game with instant deaths and distractions, and the plot seems barely present. I wish there were something to highlight, but sadly I don’t think there’s really anything beyond the obvious problems here. Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11322459/]curation page[/url]!

Voici à [i]point'n click[/i] qui a déboulé un peu silencieusement sur Steam, à pas feutrés et sans publicité, mais qui promet une aventure vraiment originale pour peu que l'on ai la nostalgie de certains de ces premiers jeux d'aventure en 3D obscurs, avec des morceaux de mystères pas très nets à l'intérieur.. ;) Vous voyez? Mon avis est asbolument subjectif, je l'assume complètement. Normalement je n'aime pas trop évaluer un jeu sans l'avoir terminé ou du moins a moitié fait mais je voudrais aussi soutenir ce projet. Car il me semble bon.. Si j'ai accroché aussi vite c'est notamment grâce à son style 3D d'abord mais aussi grâce à son excellente introduction du jeu - testez la démo gratuite - si bien mise en scène (la musique y participe) qu'elle nous laisse entrevoir la suite des réjouissances : solitudes dans le noir, créatures pas très catholiques, humour un peu sordide (j'espère) bref tous les composants d'un polar mystérieux qui, sous des airs modestes, laisse présager une grande intelligence et finesse dans sa conception. Alors oui, on en voit peu encore dans ce jeu, et suis donc impatient de découvrir tout ce que le développeur va nous proposer. C'est prometteur, original et bien fait pour le moment. Au niveau graphique le parti pris peut rebuter, moi j'ai juste adoré, elle sert les intérêts du jeu qui se veut très old school dans sa plus pure traditions. Du coup et ça explique pourquoi j'ai aimé, ça fait un peu madeleine de proust, j'ai ressenti les mêmes trucs que lorsque j'étais plus jeune en découvrant [i]Alone in the Dark[/i], [i]Ecstatica[/i] et compagnie. L'ambiance qui s'installe est donc sympathique, on sent un réel potentiel, très vite frustrant quand on termine le chapitre : car on veut la suite! On regrète vraiment de ne pas pouvoir immédiatement continuer cette aventure épisodique. Je crois beaucoups aux possibilités de ce titre, à ce qu'il risque de nous réserver même s'il apparait un peut trop facile pour le moment, ce qui peut changer j'espère, ce point constituant le seul réel défaut pour le moment.

Ein tolles Click'n'Point Adventure in philosophisch-düsterer Pixel-Atmosphäre. Schon das Intro des Spiels bahnt Spannung an: Eine maskierte Gestalt befindet sich in einem Ritualkreis, umgeben von Kerzen und unheilverkündender Musik. Diese Stimmung begleitet den Spieler durch die Kapitel, während verschiedene Gedanken kombiniert, Rätsel gelöst und auch Gegner bekämpft werden müssen. Mit steigender Episodenzahl spitzt sich natürlich die Handlung zu, doch auch die Rätsel werden anspruchsvoller. Alles in Allem ist A Room Beyond ein sehr interessantes, gedankenvolles und gelungenes Spiel.

Un grande omaggio a pietre miliari della storia dei videogiochi come Alone in the Dark 1, Ecstatica e le vecchie avventure grafiche punta e clicca. A room beyond non vuole copiare i videogiochi del passato per cercare di imitare la nostalgia " old school " che al giorno d'oggi va tanto di moda (e che solamente in pochi riescono ad emulare con successo). A Room Beyond dimostra di avere una sua identità personale, di essere un gioco totalmente originale. STUPENDO. Il titolo non è ancora completo, al momento è possibile giocare solo ai primi capitoli della trama: vi consiglio di acquistare A Room Beyond in accesso anticipato per sostenere il lavoro dello sviluppatore in attesa di vedere pubblicati i restanti capitoli del gioco.

Ambitioniertes Projekt mit extrem viel Potenzial! Mal ein bisschen vom "flappsigen" Ton in den Gesprächen abgesehen, schafft es "A Room Beyond" eine herrliche Retro-Lovecraft Stimmung zu inszenieren. Die Rätsel sind (zumindest in Episode 1) noch sehr auf Kombination und Anwendungsort-finden ausgelegt, aber das wird sich bestimmt in weiteren Kapiteln noch entfalten. Bin auf jeden Fall sehr gespannt wie es weiter geht.