Join Liv from The Top 10ers Show as she shares a game she just couldn't finish!
Game: The Pale Beyond
Developer: Bellular Studios
Publisher: Fellow Traveller
Platforms: PC and Nintendo Switch
Playtime: 7.6 hrs (combined time on 2 attempts)
When I’m looking for a new game to play, I click through the Discovery Queue on Steam which has introduced me to a handful of games I would have never found on my own. The Discovery Queue recommends games based on your Steam library which is such a lovely feature! One day, The Pale Beyond was recommended and I downloaded the demo. I played the demo for 2 hours non-stop! I wishlisted the game and was graciously gifted it this past Christmas. It was finally time to continue my journey!
The Pale Beyond can best be described as a 2D resource management game. The player is tasked with managing a crew as they sail to the arctic in search for a missing ship. Quickly, the journey flies off the rails and you need to do your best to survive until help arrives. How will you survive? Each week the player is asked to make choices and assign tasks that will affect the crew. Deciding how to spend your time each week is crucial. Each week is a save point as well, so if you don’t like the consequences of your actions, then you can roll back your save and replay the previous week.
I loved the concept of The Pale Beyond. Managing decorum, fuel, and food are all core elements of gameplay. Depending on the player’s ability to properly manage these items, the crew as well as available activities are impacted. If fuel is low, crew mates will become freezing and if left untreated, that freezing status will become frostbite. If you ignore the frostbite status, the very next week that crew member will perish. Food has a similar phased approach before a crew member dies. Aside from physical health, marinating and building decorum is important. Each character has a unique backstory that you can learn by interacting with them each week. By listening and responding appropriately, you can gain loyalty points with each character. This is important for voting. Crew mates are loyal to their superiors, so gaining their superior’s loyalty is important to gain multiple votes.
This can be a lot to manage and can easily become overwhelming to the player! If decorum, fuel, or food reaches 0, the game ends. Therefore, you can reload the last checkpoint to try again. Sometimes this will help, but other times you will need to replay multiple weeks of the game if you’re lacking in multiple categories. However, restarting an earlier checkpoint doesn’t guarantee you will be successful. I found myself back tracking multiple weeks to see if I could bolster decorum, fuel, and food categories. Unfortunately, it seems impossible to determine where you went wrong. A choice you made long ago could have ramifications you cannot fix. I started playing on normal difficulty, but after being stuck on a particular week and then back tracking to a different week to try again, I restarted the game from scratch. There are 3 difficulty modes, however I struggled to see the difference between the lowest and the normal difficulty. This made me feel like I wasted my time by restating the entire game.
The ability to reload your save from previous weeks seems very helpful, but if you are unable to recall which week you made certain choices, then it doesn’t feel very useful at all. If the previous week had a blurb about the decisions you made, that would’ve been very helpful. I found this to be the most frustrating part of The Pale Beyond.
The demo for The Pale Beyond was very intriguing and I had a great time! The demo feels disingenuous as there appears to be a significant difficulty spike late into Act 1. I never felt that the game was too difficult for me in the demo. By playing the full game, I struggled to pull my crew along to Act 2 and I now feel stuck. How far do I need to back track to prepare for Act 2? After reloading saves a few times, it becomes tedious to reread all of the same dialogue. Ultimately, I decided to put the game down for a bit and play something else.
I was enjoying the story and interacting with the characters! However, I’ve become frustrated with my inability to progress. Usually, games have a difficulty level for people who just want to enjoy the story with limited challenges, but I suppose that’s counterintuitive for a resource management game. To be fair, resource management is not normally a genre I typically play. I will let some time pass before attempting to complete this game again.
If you’re up for a challenge, check out The Pale Beyond. I might not be able to handle the arctic winter, but maybe you can! Choice based games can be fun to play with a friend, so you can discuss the best course of action. Maybe I will have to play with someone else to help me complete the journey!
I typically try to finish games that I start, but sometimes it’s too difficult or it doesn’t click. Recently on The Top 10ers, my co-host, James, and I released a video on our 10 Games To Avoid Playing. Although The Pale Beyond didn't make the cut, you can learn more about what video games we quit playing and hear our reviews of them!
BIO: Liv writes for Podcasters United and co-hosts a weekly video game show called The Top 10ers Show over on YouTube.
The Top 10ers is a YouTube Channel where Liv and James create Top 10 Gaming Lists and discuss why each game made the list! Who has more of their personal choices make the final list? Tune in every Friday to see if Liv or James comes out victorious!
Is it there no good guide for the parts you've already completed? I like a challenge, but time is limited so if I get truly stuck, guide it is!