GAME REVIEW: Break the Beyond (demo)
In mid-December, I went out to a party that seeks to connect people in the gaming industry and among the very many lovely people that I met that night was an art director from Latchback Games, who told me about a mobile card game they had been making called Break the Beyond. Since my new thing is shouting out nice people who do good work, and because I actually found this game to be really fun, I figured my first game review of 2024 would also be my first review of a mobile game!
Since there’s no story to be found in this game (at least as of yet, as it seems to be partially under development still), let’s start with art and style. This game does very well in this department for a few reasons. A lot of mobile games try to be too much and ultimately don’t fully deliver, so they have amazing graphics but bad mechanics, or good music but a bad story. What Break the Beyond does really well is keeping it simple while still being effective. For example, rather than hiring someone amazing but likely very expensive to do a full game score—like Ari Pulkkinen or Nobuo Uematsu—the game has soft backing music to set the scene, with ambient sounds to help with the mood. This has the added bonus of very distinctly not getting annoying after playing for a long time, which is excellent (I still have nightmares about hearing “Under the Sea” on repeat during the Kingdom Hearts games). There are no mandatory sound queues, so you can play with or without sound, which is also nice. The artwork, too, is lovely without being overdone and is therefore quite effective, with a great font (familiar even) that looks good and suits the fantasy setting but isn’t too hard to read, and the visual graphics are both simple and easy to understand, yet still aesthetically pleasing. I also love the design of the gender-ambiguous PC.
Mechanically, the game is simple enough that even a tactical fool like myself got the swing of things pretty quickly and I was able to get through the game’s four levels after a day of playing. Break the Beyond is a dungeon crawler at its heart, where you traverse the Dungeon, Mountains, Crimson Swamp, and Underworld currently, though the game does suggest that there will be more incoming eventually. Each level has six battles, though if you’re lucky, you’ll get one round with an option to open a chest (for which you need to have found a key), rest and recover, or battle. All of this leads up to a boss battle, which is significantly harder than the regular monsters, unless you prepared well, of course. Players can combine many items to make them stronger and it’s a lot about deck management and trying to be as prepared as possible for whatever comes at you next. Ultimately, it plays really smoothly and I haven’t had issues with frustration over what I’m getting dealt.
There’s also a slow progression chart of upgrades that you get as you “level up” throughout the game, like a bow to use in combat, more health, more hits, harder hits, that sort of thing, which help make the game easier as you play more. There aren’t a lot of load screens, mostly just in the beginning, but they’ve added hints of world lore in there. It is currently hard to tell their relevance, since I’ve only read a handful of them (they talk about things like necromancers), so I’ll be curious to see how the game develops story-wise. It would be interesting to see more lore come into play in the game, though it’s certainly not necessary; some further worldbuilding could be cool though, to allow for a bit deeper player engagement.
As well, since I’ve started playing, they’ve had another update (6.0 IIRC), which implemented the addition of daily bonuses and a restructuring of the item system. This makes sense, as the item system did previously seem rather undeveloped, with only chest keys being found as items. Now, they’ve included runes and power boosts, so you have the ability to, for example, add fire or ice to your next attacks, add damage to a weapon, add damage to your fists, or dodge an incoming attack. They also rearranged the layout and usage of items. I wouldn’t have hated if they had included a glowing border on the cards that your boosts can buff, just so it’s clear where and how to use these new buffs, but otherwise I find that this was a pleasant upgrade to the game.
[ed: 5.1.2024] One other thing worth mentioning is that the game has a neat little system in place that you can watch an ad for a revive. At first I was curious why they would only include one revive, but frankly, the game is not so hard as to require you to need more than one revive at this point, and after I started to get good at the game, I stopped using them altogether. However, this is a rather clever little way to include ads in your game to help the studio out, without really inconveniencing the player. I really tip my hat to this, it’s very well implemented.
If I have any general feedback for Break the Beyond, it’s minor. Firstly, that lore in the game-start load screens feels like a tease right now, but their Discord folks have said that more will be incoming in the future, so that’s less of a complaint and more of a point of interest for the future. As well, I noticed that I had some struggles with gameplay in that, when selecting my items after slaying a monster, if I didn’t check what was on the screen before hitting the final blow, I wouldn’t know which elements to prioritize in the items I’m keeping because the options overlay on top of the battle cards. It’s a small thing but it would be nice to be able to access a battle view so you know what you’re planning for when selecting the rewards for defeating monsters. It’s also noteworthy that the bosses seem to be the same for every level—something I hope they change as development continues—so trying different builds isn’t all that helpful… yet? The first two bosses seem to always be weak to slashing, with the Swamp boss being weak to ice… not much for blunt, ranged, or fire weapons to do against bosses that aren’t weak to those types of attack. Again, this seems like the sort of thing that will get updated as the game proceeds through development. Otherwise though, I don’t have any real mechanical complaints about the game and these UI issues are really minor and don’t much affect the overall experience; there’s a lot of potential for growth in this game!
Break the Beyond has a nice balance between being addictive but not so much that I’m going to forget to get anything done. It’s easy to pick up and put down as needed. There’s no pause function, so if you need to put your phone down to charge or answer a call during a round, it’s no problem. All of the enemies react to your actions, so nothing will happen without you moving first. It’s a great game if you need to kill some time on your daily route, if you’re too fidgety to watch long shows, or if you just generally enjoy card games! I look forward to the next updates!
[ed: as of 01.2024 the game now has a campaign mode!]
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