Beyond The Veil

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow our curator page: [b]IndieGems[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote] [i]Beyond The Veil[/i] is a minimalist top-down shooter and RPG hybrid that focuses on story and gameplay. It's an indie project primarily written and created by a solo developer, and it fills the indie scene with another name worth mentioning. I have only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer so far, and I have to say, I am completely hooked. There's just something magical about this game that is so devoid of graphical details that makes my imagination run wild. Couple that with the eerie and mysterious world and story, you bet I am eager to dive back in to find out more. If life didn't becken, I can see myself sitting through this game from beginning to end, without pause. You play as the wanderer, and don't worry about being confused in the beginning, because like you, he/she is confused as well. Armed with a trusty sidearm and a background story that is dark in overtones, set your foot forward and face the unknowns. The game is broken up into small encounters with traveling, eating/drinking, resting, meditating, crafting, etc, in between the encounters. You have four different attributes, two physical, and two mental, that work together to determine your overall condition to keep exploring or needing to return to your home base, where your much-needed rest will refresh your attributes so that you can venture out again. So this means that you will see some aspects of the game that may be a little slower for those who wanted nothing but the non-stop top-down shooter aspect. So please understand this when you look into this game. Also the reading is fairly substantial in number of small reveals of understanding of the world as well as the wanderer's own doubts, so it's really exciting to get move involved the deeper you venture. But at the same time, if the reading really doesn't suit you, you may find yourself pulling back. But I love that the game dares to allow you to visualize the world as a fantasy fiction novel might. Enough is revealed to lead you on, but nothing gives concrete details but your own mind. The small encounters you have to travel to, and the zones all have outer edges, from where you can exit and go to the map. Within the encounters, there are usually enemies, both ranged and melee. The ranged ones have seemingly exceptional aim or scattershot guns that have enormous clips. I only played on the easier of the two available difficulties so far, so I have yet to suffer a death. I shudder to think what the harder difficulty might bring. Perhaps, just perhaps, after I complete my first playthrough on the "Calm" mode, I will dare venture into the darkness one more time. The game only offers a single save file, and starting a new game will erase your former progress, so I definitely want to wait on that, no matter what. Part of the difficulty I have been having is that the game can be played with controller alone, keyboard alone, or keyboard + mouse combination in the standard twin-stick shooter type orientation for the last option. But with the controller alone or keyboard alone, you only fire upwards and you have to use the controls to spin the room until you are facing whatever is "up" in order to shoot at it. I have recorded the first bit of my gameplay using the controller, and I have since played a bit more beyond that point using the controller as well. But I think it's time for me to make that switch to the keyboard and mouse for a varied directional aim and fire, to go with WASD for movement as you would expect the keyboard layout for a top-down shooter. The following video is my first look at the game: https://youtu.be/k8jBR-YIIaU You can see from the many sections of reading that you should expect to see that as well. The game starts on an internal monologue that is ten paragraphs long. I devoured it, but I can see why you may wish to skip a game because of the reading. Everyone's standards are different, so I hope that you like what you see. The easier difficulty seems to be quite user-friendly, as I have taken a lot of bullets to the face and have yet any life-threatening injuries. [h1]Controls[/h1] I think the best control layout is keyboard + mouse, but the controller function works fine, as I played almost 2 hours with it so far. I did not test the keyboard only controls, but there is no reason to suspect that it would not work well. [h1]Graphics[/h1] Minimum graphics, even the top-down shooter sections are minimal. From screenshots and the trailers, I can tell that there are going to be some dramatic-looking boss-type enemies in my future. But for now, the different enemies I have encountered so far are all represented by a simple sprite to represent what kind of enemy they are. What is interesting is that the entire game seems to be built on a black background, with white shapes and lines in the foreground with varying translucencies. The only other color used seems to be red. It's so simple in appearance and so clean. When I am playing, I am unaware of the complete lack of other colors. Let your imagination run with this game, I am sure you will understand what I mean when you start playing. [h1]Music[/h1] Pretty tense, and pretty dramatic. I like it a lot. In each encounter, the music will let you know whether there are still enemies nearby looking to end your life. But if you really don't want to listen to the music, you can just mute it and play your own music, I suppose. There seems to be an issue with the sound slider at the main menu screen. Sliding it up and down does not seem to change the volume at all. I hope this gets fixed in the future. [h1]Audience[/h1] Not for the weak-hearted or those who cannot stand to read anything in games. A lot of the game's quality is in the story, the lore, and bits and pieces of the world that is revealed. You can just look a bit at the gameplay and if you feel that the color scheme looks too strange, you may wish to avoid it too. The easier difficulty seems to be very user friendly, so I don't think the game tries to cater only to hardcore gamers with artificially boosted difficulties. [h1]Pricing[/h1] Launch price is $14.99 USD base with a 10% discount. I do think this game is worth full price. [h1]Areas to Improve[/h1] -The volume slider at the main menu needs to do something -Traveling is a bit slow, there is no reason why there's necessarily a wait for the progress bar to wind down. -At the end of a battle, after all enemies are cleared from the area, all of the available pick-ups should be highlighted or have arrows pointing to without needing to use any resources or the compass. This would save a lot of time trying to conserve resources and wandering all over the map looking for them. -Controls cannot be remapped, please consider adding remapping options. -There's no display at all in the controller scheme about mouse+keyboard option, but this is clearly the best option to play the game! -Some grammar/spelling errors. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] [i]Beyond The Veil[/i] is a fairly priced mixture of top-down shooter and RPG elements that dares the player to mentally construct the world within. As essentially a single-developer indie title, it will not appeal to everyone, but will offer quite an exciting adventure for those who give it a fair shake. Pick it up today and let your imagination run wild. [quote]I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.[/quote]

This might be odd to say, but I'm recommending this game despite refunding it. That's predominantly because this game is just not my style. But I could definitely see it being someone else's jam. Pros: -Interesting storyline. Even from my brief look into the game the worldbuilding seems pretty deep. Not quite on the levels of Sunless Sea, but it's definitely got that same eldritch atmosphere to it. -Good visual style. Gives me that Darkwood vibe. -A potential for in depth customization. Guns, talents (Inscriptions) and gun accessories (Increased damage, fire rate etc.) Neutrals: -The character styles. Paired with the gloomy environment the strangely geometric appearances of the enemies (and yourself) kinda feels jarring. I didn't really love them, didn't hate them. It is a little tough to get immersed when you're some kind of spiky arrowhead though. -The travel. I like the exploration aspect to it, but it feels almost a little dragging having to wait for the travel timer, considering how quickly you clear the early zones. I felt like I was staring at the bar a little more than I was actually running around the map. -The Bugs. Nothing really jumped out as atrociously gamebreaking, but it's frustrating when the volume slider does nothing and restarting from the last checkpoint leaves you softlocked if the checkpoint clocks in in the middle of a travel/craft progress. Minor nuisance more than anything, hence why they're in Neutral. Cons: -The survival mechanic seems...Kinda pointless? Maybe it's because I thought of myself as a spiky arrowhead over a person, but eating and drinking seemed like it was there for the sake of being there. -The gunplay. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm experiencing the opening levels but the gunplay felt...Slow? There was an immense amount of backpedaling, long reloads and gunfire that seemed almost impossible to avoid. You can dash, but the dash felt like it didn't do much to get me out of danger. I ended up using the dash just to get in the face of my enemies and blast them with the shotgun instead of using it to dodge fire. Perhaps you're meant to use cover but between the trees and the -shadows- of trees, it was tricky to figure out where cover actually was. Overall, it just felt slow, clunky and less strategic and more "tank the bullets and hope they die quickly." Overall the game has style, but it's not my style. Maybe others will enjoy it, I don't know. I do hope it gets more attention though.

This is the kind of game where you really have to come for the atmosphere, I think. The gameplay's certainly not bad, by any means, but it's pretty average top down style shooting gameplay. The art, and the music, and the somber writing passages, though, are just what I was hoping for seeing the screenshots and trailer. If something about this art style appeals to you, know that the game's committed to it and will certainly deliver you that. I haven't finished it yet, and plan to, I just thought I'd get a positive review in cause I know how cruel steam is to games without a lot of reviews. Edit: I did finish the game now! The enemy health pool can be a little high sometimes if you're not keeping up with weapon upgrades, but other than that, by the end the gameplay was beginning to feel like an important part of the tone and kind of won me over. The story really comes together and is worth seeing through to the end.

Give me a minute here. I just finished the game and now I need to pour a stiff drink, sit with the lights off for a while and stare out the window at the falling rain, or something like that. Man, this thing is dark! About a third of the way in I figured out exactly what it reminded me of. There's an author named R Scott Bakker who wrote fantasy novels. I don't know, maybe he still does; but I quit reading them. His books always had this over-the-top combination of lurid prose with a world so supremely awful that no human being could possibly stand to live in it. Everyone was doomed, damned or both. The characters seemed to spend every moment of every day wracked with such excruciating mental and/or physical anguish that you simply couldn't believe that they all wouldn't just lie down in mute surrender and await the merciful embrace of death. You can see why I stopped reading these things. It's not called "The Great Ordeal" for nothing. Well, this is basically R Scott Bakker: The Game. The first thing that catches your attention here is the bold visual style. Come to think of it, that's pretty Bakker-esque too. For all his excesses, he had a real way with words when it came to describing two particular things: underground ruins and magical pyrotechnics. The rest of it may have made no sense, but if you really want to feel like you're lost in the unfathomable depths of an ancient tunnel or being burned to ashes by a wizard, he's your man. These guys clearly have their own vivid sights that they're eager to show you, although you're going to have to use your imagination to see them. Visually, they depict their desolate hellscape of a world in a through-a-glass-darkly sort of way, as if the solid matter is merely shadows and abstractions hiding an underlying truth. The enemies, the zones on the map and your character itself take the form of strange geometric symbols. The forces of nature, in contrast, are much more realistic: raindrops splashing on the barren ground, blinding flashes of lightning and wind howling through the canyons--in a nice touch, it actually can affect bullet trajectory. Everything is black and white, of course, save for the flames and bloodstains on the ground. It's like they're trying to say that the only real things are chaos and pain. Geez. They really lift the veil, though, during the text interludes tucked away between chapters and before many of the zones. There you get to experience the suffering of the protagonist in its full glory and scrutinize his every agonized emotion and tormented thought down to the subatomic level. At the beginning the plot is still more or less tethered in a version of reality. You play as a warrior summoned to another world to bring it back from the brink of death by shooting everything in sight. By the end things come totally unglued and, well, I don't really know what the hell was going on. It sounded pretty bad, though. Ultimately I think it's supposed to be some kind of nihilistic allegory about facing death in a world without meaning or something like that, but you never really know with this kind of stuff. They might just like the way it sounds. The gameplay elements are just as confusing and feel as if they were all abandoned in various stages of completion. At first shooting things in this hyper-stylized world is kind of fun and different, but without much variety in the enemies or abilities it turns into a pure grind by the end. You've got randomly-distributed weapon drops that range on the usefulness scale from "very" to "not at all." Upgrades that are never fully explained. A crafting system where most of the time you can't find the right ingredients. Yeah, I'd have thought it would be much easier to get my hands on charcoal in a place like this, but I searched in vain. Then there's this whole food and water system woven throughout the item drops and crafting options which seems like it might have served a purpose at one time but now has been rendered completely obsolete. In hindsight turning a concept like this into a top-down shooter was a bizarre choice to begin with. The whole time you get the feeling that their heads are way up in the clouds somewhere, transfixed by whatever hellish cosmic vision they're witnessing, and that making the actual game was just an annoying distraction. Maybe they should have made a walking simulator or a visual novel or something less interactive so they could focus on crushing our will to live with their depressing story, since that seems to be where their heart truly lies. Hard to say what you should do about this. It's so damned weird that on one hand it really is kind of an interesting experience, but if you if you try to absorb it completely it'll make you feel bad in more ways than one. You can find more indie game reviews at [url=https://oddlittlegames.com] oddlittlegames.com [/url] or visit my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34514756/] curator page. [/url] Thanks, and enjoy!

[b]Karanlık bir fantastik dünyanın içerisinde oynanışı sağlayabileceğiniz bu oyunda; neden burada olduğunuzu ve yapmanız gerekenleri araştırarak harekete geçebilirsiniz. Oyun kahramanının görüntüsü sıradanlıktan biraz uzak tutularak, gölgeli ve gizemli atmosferle uyumluluğu sağlanabiliyor. Sizler de bu kahramanın kontrolünü sağlarken, çevre kontrolünü üst seviyede tutup, nereden geleceğini bilemediğiniz düşmanlara karşı devamlı tetikte olarak, savunmanızı üst seviyelerde tutmayı deneyebilirsiniz.

Прошел первые врата. Сложность высокая. Вот итог: Не верьте визуалу - он однообразен и надоест после прохождения первых врат. Не верьте бэку и атмосфере - несостоятельная попытка проэксплуатировать Sunless Sea и лавкрафтианы. Не верьте обещанному булетхелу - игра проста, ИИ туп, битвы с боссами просто долгие. Если вам повезет умереть хоть раз до первых врат включительно - мои искренние поздравления. Не верьте РПГ-элементам - они примитивны, хоть их примитивность старательно спрятана за нестандартной механикой. Не верьте сурвайвалу - никаких, вообще никаких сложностей с выживанием нет. Крафту тоже не верьте, если он вам вообще был нужен

Um jogo de genero hibrido, parte shooter visto de cima, parte sobrevivencia, com elementos de rpg, possui um dos lores mais interessantes que já vi, recomendado para fãs dessa mistureba boa. Confira um oiadinha básica: ➥ Veja minhas outras análises! ⤵⤵⤵⤵⤵⤵ ➥Não se esqueça de seguir o meu [url=store.steampowered.com/curator/7655908-Panda-dos-Games/] curador [/url] para análises e dicas!

Genuinely great little game, stylised well, and glad I watched that splatt vid way back when.

Much like accidentally brushing up against roll of industrial-grade sandpaper after a walk through a syphilis ward, this game scratches an itch I didn't know I had. Perhaps it was my wholly unrealistic expectation that bullet-hell shumps should also contain their share of dark, post-apocalyptic melancholic musings that had turned me off the genre. Or perhaps it was just all the bullets. Beyond the Veil has bullets, yes, but it also has an intriguing enough story to want me to GET GUD (tm).