The Pale Beyond Review (Trypp2Phan)
TL;DR: If you like narrative games, resource management, and weighty decision making, give The Pale Beyond a spin.
At the end of Act 1, The Pale Beyond is an impressive first outing from Bellular Studios. The Pale Beyond's art direction, writing, and sound design come together in a way that gives the game a very unique feel that plays intricately with it's setting. Each of the major characters on the Temperance are likable in their own ways, and for some are incredibly intriguing. Even the less-major members of your crew, those with faces but less development, are still treated with care to their characterization in minor dialogue. The foundations are laid early for you not just to care about your crew not just for their strategic advantage, but to genuinely see them through the Pale Beyond.
In the gameplay department, fans of the weighty decision-making of games like Frostpunk will feel right at home in the Pale. The game follows a deceptively simple loop: Major decisions usually made at the beginning of a given week, and management of three stockpiles of resources, in essence, morale, food, and fuel. Perhaps it's the presentation, but beyond the immediate resource effects on major choices, you feel the weight of even the most minor choices on the effect of the expedition. To give an example, and to oversimplify an early choice: Your crew has found a stowaway. Do you take them on as an extra pair of hands for the expedition, or do you not run the potential risk of having one more mouth to feed than needed?
There are a few bugs that I noticed through the first act, and while minor overall, they were fairly annoying. Multiple times throughout the act when attempting to use resource cards (Fueling the furnace, Feeding the crew, etc) stacked resource cards, when attempting to drag them onto the interface, would disappear and bug out the interface. An easy work around was to simply click on the resource cards and add them that way. A far more minor, but far more annoying bug, was that in just about every crew assignment or use of a resource card, the amount of dogs available in the kennels for the week would show that it would go down, as if there were a cost associated with using the card, but upon using it would actually have no change. This made planning out a couple of weeks very frustrating.
I haven't played around with the Save Tree system yet, from my understanding a way to re-load and explore different outcomes by re-loading specifically at large branch-points, I suspect to prevent active save scumming. In a game like this, I'm intrigued on how the system handles the "problem" of save scumming. I've already got many ideas of what I could have done better throughout act 1, and I'm certainly interested to explore them.
Overall, as of right now, I'd recommend The Pale Beyond. Certainly worth the price, and despite some roughness around the edges on day 1, it's got an engaging game play loop, intriguing narrative, and a stellar presentation. Excited to see the rest of the story play out, and for future projects from Bellular Studios.