Following an accident while watching fireworks, Rae was left blind. She’s made a new friend in Nani, a cat who comes to visit her. When Nani stops visiting, Rae goes on an adventure to find her friend.
Have I ever mentioned I love artsy games? Well, Beyond Eyes falls perfectly into the category of an artsy game. You play as Rae, a girl who has gone blind, on her quest to find her friend Nani. Along the way you’ll find the dangers of trying to get around while blind, all while living in her imagination of what she’s thinking the world looks like.
Beyond Eyes is an absolutely gorgeous game. The colours of the game reflect how Rae is feeling – while they’re typically bright and colourful, when she starts to get scared things will turn dark. When the elements impede her other sense, she becomes unable to build what she thinks the world looks like.
Along with being extremely artistic, Beyond Eyes is an emotional journey, or at least it was for me. When Rae initially hears something, she isn’t completely sure what it is until she gets closer. What she thinks is a line of clothes turns out to be a scarecrow, crows included, scaring her. Whenever she got scared, whether it was from crows, seagulls, or dogs, I got scared right alongside her. When a girl lost her ball, I became just as determined to try and find it, despite the barriers in the way.
To go alongside all of this is the sounds. The music will be bright and cheery when she isn’t feeling any fear, but when something draws near, it turns more ominous. This is one game you’ll want to try and be able to hear both sides of audio in – sometimes the direction you need to go is in the audio, since beyond where Rae is – and for most of the game, where she’s been – is blank.
I do have some issues with Beyond Eyes. Sometimes Rae will need to climb over a fence, and where she does this is on some oddly shaped spot. Somehow she does it without really feeling out where she needs to go, and do so perfectly. This was pretty questionable to me. Also, she’ll just stop when she runs into an object instead of actually doing something with it. On certain objects you need to interact with, you may need to mash the interact button as you wiggle around until you find the exact spot to actually use it.
In an overall sense though, Beyond Eyes is absolutely fantastic. Some may find the the speed Rae moves at is a tad slow, but I found it perfectly fine. I mean, she’s blind, I don’t expect her to run or jog through areas. The game didn’t overstay its welcome, coming in at only an hour and a half for me. I still have achievements I could aim for as well, should I choose to, and with chapter select being an option, I don’t imagine trying to hunt them down would be too terrible beyond figuring out what to do.
If you love artistic games or good stories, check out Beyond Eyes. It’s one of my favourite games I’ve played on Steam in recent history. I just wish it was available on PS4, so I could play it on there. I guess I can just hope, but at least I was able to enjoy it on Steam.
Beyond Eyes Review Score
4.5/5
Beyond Eyes is available now on XBox One and Steam.
I would like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy for review.
