Beyond the Doors

I like it, and I get what it's trying to accomplish. It needs more features and systems to get there, but it's a good foundation. Praying this isn't another "Shadows of Doubt" situation where the dev calls it done too soon.

it feels like a game that wants to be voices of the void but so far it only really copies the aesthetics of it and that's it. The game is just you being a schizo janitor that tries to record people but doesn't get anything most of the time.

As of my writing this, this is a very short experience. Your primary job is as a janitor, but there is little incentive to clean besides satisfaction. There is no way to clean besides picking up each and every piece of garbage and dragging it to a trash can and throwing out trash gives you one dollar per piece. On the other hand the recorders, even without processing give a much more fulfilling payout than any amount of cleaning. Because of this, I pretty much never extended my cleaning outside the cellar you live in. By focusing on upgrades and devices to expand your network, you can fairly easily get all 40 doors tapped within 7 in game days. The daily missions don't seem to base off of what you are capable of and seem to have a linear progression in what door you need of what level, but by the time it was asking for level 1 audio I had level five and 80% of the apartment recording and being collected at once. There have been a few bugs here and there like getting stuck in physics objects, occasional item duping and the processing breaking when you turn the computer off as soon as it finishes, but nothing too serious that couldn't be fixed by reloading the game. In its current state, I think it just doesn't have enough of its own identity to justify its extremely limited amount of gameplay. Many people call it a rip off of voices of the void, but I don't think any game necessarily owns the aesthetic. However, things like the number keys to choose interactions with objects, the sleep and food hud, falling over when hungry or tired and being unable to run and several other factors are all pretty much identical to voices of the void, which is a very unique thing to take. Of course, theres nothing wrong with them implementing the same ideas, but it is to voices of the void as subnautica below zero is to subnautica

I've had this game on my radar for some time and after playing it today I can say there's a good foundation here to work from and I can see the potential to make this into a really interesting and unique game. Still requires a bunch of quality of life improvements but its still very early days, but the core idea is there. Of course like with any new game, especially one in such early development, there will be bugs. The bugs I ran into were not game breaking in any degree, more on the frustrating side but easily dealt with, of course submitting a bug report was nice and easy via the in game menu. Overall, a sound game, good direction so far and applied their own take on the "Void Like" genre that's been getting more popular lately, looking forward to where this game goes moving forward

I sincerely hope this game grows to be bigger and better, because unfortunately i can't recommend it in its current state. The main gameplay loop feels way too similar to VotV's but made slightly more complicated for no real reason, the inventory system isn't great despite being just a hotbar, the movement and item physics feel way too heavy and sluggish, and cleaning up your base is extremely unfun and unfulfilling (given how there are very few customization options). As many other reviews said, i hope it manages to become its own thing rather than just "VotV in an apartment building", and with that i hope i'll get to change the review into a positive one when it does. Also, if you do want to play, you can gain infinite money by spilling and refilling your trashcans.

Honestly don't understand the hate that this game is getting.. Sure it's very similar to Voices of The Void? So? It's a completely different environment and has a lot less exploring, which I am fine with cuz VoTV's map felt too large for a single person.. This feels more compact and still spooky/adventurous. Sure the two games are very similar, but not identical, so stop giving it the same expectations of a different game.

It's a good start, but most of what's good about it is ripped straight from VotV. Nearly everything except the basic gameplay loop, which does itself take notes from it, is either directly taken or clearly inspired by mechanics of VotV, with no particular crediting of it anywhere. The wiring system is the most unique part of it, though its not particularly well documented in the game. While I would otherwise call it a good game, it's basically just VotV lite in an apartment building with stalking instead of space signals and a touch of Tunnet.

I give it a positive review, but i'm more mixed on it, while I do think theres some promise to be had with it, and some really fun elements that could be explored, it just isn't quite there yet and is very lacking in a few areas. Tl;dr: its alright, but it needs alot more variety, and tries to lean to hard of the VotV crutch while lacking the understanding of how it needs to function for it to work. We technically play as a janitor in this game who "Spies" on the other tenants, and thats interesting enough of a premise, I enjoy the little microphone set up and daisy chaining wires together, but I don't see much of a point in doing it? you get 1 request every day, and with each day taking a *very* long time, there just isn't much of a money flow to it, granted, I haven't seen how high the payout gets, nor have I tried selling sounds to the other person you can play as, but I just don't see much of a need to? On top of playing as a janitor, we get cleaning duties and some delivery, and again, these are nice things to fill in the gaps of time, but they're extremely repetitive. there is *no* way to expedite the cleaning process, everything is 1 by 1, and there is just so. much. garbage. if there was maybe a vacuum to carry large loads of the stuff to bins, it'd make the cleaning 10 times easier and more fun. The delivery system, while basic, feels much more profitable long term, you get requests very often, and you get 8 hours to complete a 30 minute task, getting 90 bucks sometimes on the simplest orders, making me wonder why would I ever even record? The bottom line is for me, that there just simply isn't enough right now, you have a very long task run in the background, followed by very repetitive yet much more profitable interactions. Some personal things for me to add to this game, would be a few things 1.we're a janitor, allow us to clean peoples rooms at their request like the delivery services, these rooms can be standard, or they can be weird, we can do our job or just go and snoop around for items and easter eggs, uncovering a mystery to unfold 2.Add variety to the cleaning process, allow for us to purchase things that quicken the cleaning process, while also creating new ways to clean, wash some windows, fix little things like we can with the lights, Dust corners and furniture, and make it more then just staring at the ground, holding left click. 3.Maybe have us try to hide our attempts of spying in some way? these neighbours are weird but they aren't stupid, and things can get very cluttered and obvious after enough wires, i'm not sure how I would go about this but do expand on this system in some way. 4.I understand the VotV inspiration, but try be less like VotV, its not that I don't like the style or the direction, its just that it feels like some elements just want to be like VotV, rather than understanding the appeal of it, go in your own direction, make some interesting and unique scares, or references to things you love, other than the fact that you are trying to look like VotV. The VotV inspiration isn't unnoticed, and while I like the game as is, it feels rather like it wants to be VotV without understanding how it works and its appeal, It's open, chalk full of easter eggs, with an extremely interactive and finiky console, listening to noises while we're all alone, hearing whats out there, players use their open world space to explore, filling in the time by fixing things, noticing the little bits and pieces that start showing up to haunt them, and the fun easter eggs. This game needs to understand the fact that it wants to work in a confined space, occupied full of "people", with us actively serving them, and exploiting them for our own benefit, it needs that interaction between these things, rather then a knock at the door and walk away. for an early access game, it gets a positive review, but for a game in its state? a current 6.5/10, I would LOVE to contribute or give more feedback on a game, and share some ideas as this game is developed

I really wanted to like this game, but unfortunately it's missing a lot of core features and the game get's very stale very quickly. I think this game will be good eventually because the Dev has a really good foundation, but the game currently is not worth playing.

Its honestly just boring, unpolished and buggy. It feels like a ton of features were just straight taken from other games without any level of inspiration and the other features are shallow and added to feel like its adding another degree of "complexity" to the game. The UI is buggy, I had to keep going into the settings menu to get my settings to actually save. The main devices (server laptop/computer/reciever/transmitter) are buggy and incredibly confusing when first using them. When you do learn how to use them, theyre okay. The tutorial at the start misses a ton of detail and really needs to be redone. Theres a lot of random friction points that just makes this game into more of a chore. Downtime is incredibly boring. The SFX is incredibly minimal. The player controller feels incredibly janky. The selection menu on items falls apart when you want to quickly repeat the same action on multiple items quickly. The art style is cool but misses the mark when it comes to detailing the enviroment. A lot of things are only labeled when you look at it through the UI, so finding a specific door is just a lot of wandering about. I doubt ill play it again, everytime I found myself feeling slightly engaged, a bug or something else would pop up and just rip me back out. -- Edit: Just refunded the game, I hope it can evolve into something that isnt a votv clone instead of something being inspired by votv. Votv works for so many reasons, the enviroment, the isolation and the tasks all seamlessly rely on each other, but this game has none of that while also pretending it does. Please figure out a coherent game loop that isnt stupidly tedious and figure out some of your own original features that arent ripped from votv.