Beyond Eyes

Release Date: August 4, 2015

Adventure, TPP, indie games, experimental/artistic, exploration games, singleplayer

6.1

OpenCritic

74%

Steam

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An unusual adventure game by tiger & squid, and independent Dutch studio. The protagonist of Beyond Eyes is a ten-year-old girl named Rae who lost her sight in an accident while firing up fireworks. Ever since that day, she spends most of the time in the garden next to her house, accompanied by a cat named Nani. One day, the animal disappears, and Rae decides to leave the house for the first time in a long time to find her lost pet.

Beyond Eyes is an incredibly original adventure game for PC, PS4 and XONE in which we assume the role of a blind girl who uses her working senses to visualize the surrounding world. The title is the debut project of tiger & squid, a one-person Dutch studio. Despite the unsuccessful fundraises at Indiegogo, the developers managed to catch the interest of Team 17 Software, which has released several interesting productions such as Penarium or Sheltered as a part of their program of supporting independent game designers.

Plot

The protagonist is a ten-year-old girl named Rae who lost sight in an accident while firing up fireworks. Since then, the girl stays away from crowded and lively public places, spending most of her time in the garden next to her house where he feels safe in the company of her cat, Nani. One day, the animal disappears, and the worried and lonely Rae decides to leave the house for the first time in a long time to find her lost pet.

Mechanics

The gameplay consists in traversing a hostile and alien environment in search of traces of the lost cat. Since we control the blind girl, as you might guess, the mechanics quite significantly deviates from the established solutions of adventure games. The heroine has to skillfully use the incoming stimuli – mainly auditory ones – for the purposes of visualization of and orientation in the surrounding world. The gameplay premise harmonizes brilliantly with the production’s original visual layer that is full of outlined shapes, presented with blurry colors reminiscent of a watercolor painting, gradually emerging from an endless white.

Last updated on December 12, 2016

Videos and Screens

[1:15] Beyond Eyes E3 2015 - trailer

6.1

OpenCritic Rating

Game is Recomended by 17% of Critics. There are 26 Critic Reviews.

OpenCritic

PCGamesN: 5 / 10 by Jeremy Peel

As an exercise in empathy, Beyond Eyes is brilliant. As Rae muddles through her self-induced socialisation period, you'll see her sense of adventure overcome her fear of the unknown. Its message is loud and clear - to let life in, with all its risk and upset, so that the good can enter too - and its conclusion Watership-Down uncompromising. What's more, it's occasionally fun to indulge in a small-scale kind of exploration that encourages you to feel out the entirety of your environment rather than cast your eyes about for enemies and items. But for the most part the execution is too simplistic, and the frustrations are too frequent. Beyond recommendation.

Full Review

NZGamer: 7 / 10 by Hadyn Green

Overall I think the creators reached too far with Beyond Eyes. Even the name feels wrong attached to this game. It needed more challenges or a more intimate sense of gameplay. It's a hard task recreating within a visual medium the feeling of being newly blind. Close your eyes, even in a familiar space, and then walk around. Now think how you'd make that into a game. I think Beyond Eyes takes a good stab at it, but ultimately comes up short.

Full Review

Eurogamer: by Simon Parkin

This whimsical and original game mimics the disorientating effects of blindness, but fails to build meaningfully on its initial idea.

Full Review

74%