From Beyond Prologue

This adventure game tries so badly to emulate old-school point&click adventures that the ultimate outcome is a fail. Ugly graphics in static screens where you can barely see a thing, scrolling text descriptions in a font that is difficult to read, chaotic inventory that will quickly get overcluttered with useless items, streams of screeches that were probably meant to pass for music, all this made playing this game not exactly a pleasant experience. Gameplay mechanics reminded me of early 90s text adventures from Legend Entertainment like Frederik Pohl’s Gateway series or Eric the Unready (available on Steam), but even these oldies looked better on the technical side. The story is yet another variation on Lovecraftian tentacles horror and is quite OK, also on the positive side the game itself is not expensive. Its name and ending indicate that there is supposed to be a sequel (or main game rather), here’s to hope that it will come out in a better state than this “prologue”.

From what I understand of the unique genre that is the point-and-click adventure games that made their debut back in the mid-80's when the transition from extremely-basic text adventures were given something of an upgrade via the inclusion of actual graphics to further immerse players into the world of said game, this then later gave way to several masters of the video gaming art that specialized in this role including the obvious Sierra studio alongside another, lesser known, company that made a small number of quite fascinating point-and-click adventure games that would latter be fondly called 'Macadventure' games. From Beyond is a product that seeks to replicate the good old days from way back with a new mystery of sorts to boot, with how the story is at the forefront of gameplay here as you immerse yourself into a new world of many secrets waiting to be found alongside even more dangerous threats, be they natural or otherwise, and is very much reminiscent of ICOM Simulations' oldest titles from over 35 years ago! (Indeed, the Déjà Vu duology remains a personal favourite of mines, even compared to newer entries inspired by it such as Infested and Spectacle, although From Beyond's full potential does come rather close to the originals at that!) It is why then, as much as it pains me to say this, that this is just a 'demo' of what will, some day, be the entry point to a much bigger, far more ambitious, adventure game that truly lives up to it's name and truly excites the niche gaming audience that really appreciates a good story and world to delve into for a solid dozen hours or so. Unfortunately, despite having enjoyed the experience for the two and a half hours that I spent (mostly) blindly going through it and seeing things firsthand, with the remaining four hours going back for the usual achievement hunting, I couldn't help but feel somewhat disappointed upon finding out that the full game has, to this day, not been released or even announced as of yet, which is saying something when you look back at From Beyond Prologue's original release date in December of 2018, more than four years having passed since then. It is perhaps also possible that my experience was soured later on when I came across some trouble with one of the more obscure achievements for this game, Learned Scholar, whereby I had to restart the game multiple times to get every single book and note (including two that you are locked out of past a certain point early into the game!) and it would not register for me despite manually reading them in the inventory myself! Perhaps this was because I had accidentally triggered a death through clicking past the textbox into a map entry point that led to an unexpected demise that I already knew of before (another issue that could be fixed for the full release) but it did leave me frustrated regardless. (And yes, that includes the 'Cellar Note' for those wondering, despite needing to delve a little 'dangerously' to get it!) To give credit where it is due, I did do my research to see if the game's development process had been been abandoned or not and, from what I can tell, the staff who made this demo are still hard at work on the full title, albeit circumstances relating to the pandemic of past alongside other circumstances that have troubled the main developer have made the process of developing From Beyond proper much more difficult and slower than anticipated. It is why, having originally going into this review with the mindset of giving this a negative review, that I was convinced just enough to change it into a hesitant positive review, although I must warn those who are currently seeking a full game experience that it is still nowhere to be found in sight currently and I would recommend those people wait until From Beyond has been released fully if they do not wish to be disappointed in any manner. (Those who are happy to wait, however, can safely ignore my personal warning and enjoy what is, in all fairness, a pretty promising experience that is marred with it's short length and that 'hook' that is currently not yet pulling it's fans into the full title as of yet!) Alas, From Beyond Prologue was worth the time spent, brief as it was, however it would be disappointing to see all the effort and dedication into this indie game that desperately needs that *one* title to bring new eyes into the potential of such a genre that could help to expand more interest over time, now that we have more modern tech to work with developing these games alongside decades of game design experience that's out there for young and aspiring developers to learn from in what makes a game FUN to play, whatever the genre may be and as niche a genre as it may be! TLDR Version: • Unique use of old MS-DOS graphics from the mid-80's to encapsulate the memorable experience of old 'Macadventure' point-and-click adventure games (+) • Immersive world that is quite good at engaging the player with slowly introducing it's lore in both direct and subtle ways (+) • Small details that are hidden in various ways, be they as large as entire new rooms or as little as nods to other adventure games, nicely presented as secrets for the player to optionally discover (+) • The horror aspect of this game is nicely balanced in such a manner that it is not too tame so as to come across as boring or censored nor is it too intense and terrifying that it'll scare off less-seasoned gamers (+) • From Beyond's demo is quite short and can easily be completed in less than two hours for anyone who is remotely experience with such games, with replayability being limited due to the small scale of the demo (-) • The full game is not out and does not appear to be with a release date anytime soon, limiting the potential of what is currently a rather promising 'Macadventure' inspired game (-) • A couple of solutions to the game's few puzzles aren't as straightforward as one might like, requiring finding some items that are not so obvious due to blending into the background or hitboxes for using items on being particularly small (-) • One achievement in particular, Learned Scholar, appears to be bugged and is very difficult to register it being unlocked despite doing it all in one sitting (-)

Loved it! You can tell the developer put a lot of attention to every detail of the project. The writing is good and fun, like a cheeky Lovecraftian storyline. The music and the art is great, really gives you the feel of it being a game made by a company back in the early days of videogames. For a small project, you get a good amount of things to do in the game besides beating it. Collect letters, solve situations with different items, have different endings, do a puzzle. The fact that the developer is active on the forum answering people's questions is also a positive point in my book. You can see that they care about the work they've put out. So, although is a complete (short) adventure... I'm left wanting more! I'll definitely keep an eye on this for the next installments of the series. For such a small price, I would seriously advice people to give it a chance. This is the type of project you want to support.

While it looks great, the game itself is a tedious trial-and-error fare, and the navigation system is one of the most borked I've ever seen. Once I got to the town, I had no idea where anything was in relation to anything else, and the navigation system is so poorly designed that I almost never knew where I was going or how to get back to areas I needed to revisit. There's also the classic point-and-click problem of clicking on everything because you're not sure what you can and can't pick up, made worse by having to click on the Take option every single time you want to see if something can be collected.

Great game I loved shadowgate on the NES as a kid,

A short and sweet point and click adventure game with lovecraft theme.

This is so oldschool and sophisticated! Too sophisticated for my liking, but thumbs up for all the work done on the project!

From Beyond Prologue es un auténtico caramelito para cualquier aficionado a las aventuras gráficas tradicionales y, en especial, para los amantes de los Mitos de Cthulhu. Es una aventura corta, de poco más de una hora, que va directa al grano. El objetivo, como salta a la vista desde el primer minuto, era escribir una carta de amor a la obra de Lovecraft usando el lenguaje del point and click en primera persona al más purito estilo Shadowgate. Y la carta es preciosa. Una pena que, a estas alturas, From Beyond no parece que vaya a tener más recorrido que el de este prólogo. Pese a ello, como obra chiquita y contenida, merece muchísimo la pena.

I had this game in my collection for awhile but thanks to the recommendation of a friend on Gamejolt I decided to give it a try. I will definitely be finishing this game off in the future however I enjoyed what I played of it so far it definitely captures the spirit of those old Macventure games like Shadowgate I just wish that it let you use items on self like in that game but oh well maybe in the next one.

THE TEXT iS ALL CAPiTAL LETTERS AND REALLY HURTS TO READ, EXCEPT THE LETTER i FOR SOME REASON. EVERY SCENE HAS DiFFERENT MUSiC WHiCH USES A SHARP PiERCiNG SiNGLE iNSTRUMENT. AT ONE POiNT i PICKED UP AND CARRiED A PiTCHFORK BUT WHEN i TRiED TO USE iT, iT BROKE BEFORE i COULD EVEN SELECT WHAT i WANTED TO USE iT WiTH. SOMEHOW i HAD PiCKED iT UP AND CARRiED iT, BUT iT ONLY BROKE BY TOUCHiNG iT LATER - COMPLETELY USELESS.