The Pale Beyond Review (KelpieGems)
The game is a lot of fun, great narrative and atmosphere. However there are some criticisms i have in regards to the general design and play experience. I'll give a bullet list and then go in depth on some problems i had.
Pros:
- Great storytelling
- Very nice atmosphere
- Fun survival management
Cons:
- A lot of clicking through repeated dialog, could use a skip or fast-forward for parts you've already done
- A branching decision tree type load system that doesn't work with the survival mechanics and isn't focused around clear 'decision points'
- Research points.. they don't do anything.
- A few UI bugs outstanding
So to talk over the cons listed. I found that my experience was that i played my first run, got game-overed a couple of hours in, and then had to start from the beginning because my issue wasn't any one particular decision made, but rather just not having known how to optimise resources from the beginning. This meant that i had to click through a huge amount of text that i'd already seen just to reassign some rations differently next time. From what I've seen this is a common issue, and leads into the other major criticism i have.
The game uses a branching system for loading your save, the implication being that these points are where you can make different decisions to effect your run. BUT, that's not really how this game works at all. Being a survival game the major thing you're fighting is gradual erosion of your supplies or loss of crew, and that isn't an easy load back to fix. This usually means that in case of a game over you have to load a long way back and not just to the last "decision point". This combined with the fact that there aren't really branching narratives so much as a couple of different but very similar outcomes towards the end mean that your decision tree is just one or two game overs and then a straight line to finish once you learn how to optimise resources. Not only that but because the game doesn't really have much in the way of a branching narrative there really isn't any motivation to come back and try something different at certain points either as you'd be clicking through so much repeated dialog until either hitting a game over or reaching the ending.
Finally the research points are inconsequential, I've asked around and it seems they give you a +1 to a specific dialog ONLY if you don't have enough loyalty, making them almost entirely meaningless in the game. This is rather silly given that they require allocating workers and sacrificing resources to obtain, and are never really clearly explained.
Ultimately i really like the game, but i think the branching load system was a bad design choice, and exists purely for the sake of metaphor (somewhat ironically). The core survival system and narrative are very fun, but include some weird additions like research points, and game overs unfortunately make it so you end up having to repeat huge segments of text until you're no longer having fun. All love to the devs and definitely not trying to be a negative nancy, but thought i'd express my honest thoughts.