Nov 9

Nov 9 Review | Beyond Galaxyland - Kids In Space

With a title like Beyond Galaxyland, and a splash screen almost resembling Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, I had a few expectations in mind before even starting this game. What I played, however, pleasantly exceeded my expectations in the form of a smartly made, well-orchestrated, full-featured RPG.

Your journey starts as human child Doug, as he says ‘I love you’ to his parents, and ends up on a playdate gone horrifically wrong. In an effort to show his friend, Rosie, his gerbil, Boom Boom, he’s chased by an eldritch horror and ends up in the eponymous Galaxyland. While Doug comes to terms with being on Erros, a place supposedly perfect for humans, he learns Earth was destroyed and looks to go back. Doug isn’t just out of his depths because he’s a kid, however - a grand conspiracy around the mysterious Glass Door will have him questioning everything, and ultimately confront his greatest wish to go back to Earth.

The game has a scrappy feel to it even in its marketing. It was a bit unclear to me what ages Doug and Rosie were supposed to be, and the key art has them as older teens if not young adults. The elongated sprites added to this confusion, but it's definitely possible these are two very tall kids. Additionally, the very nervous Boom Boom is shown to be firing a gun with glee. In the game though, Doug and Rosie are written much younger - while anyone would break out into tears in learning their family and Earth were gone, it feels like Doug reacted as a child and not a young adult. This small bit of confusion didn’t affect my enjoyment of the game, but this also shows up elsewhere when dialogue tries to be too clever for its own good. I would’ve liked a faster dialogue option as most of the main cast has nothing interesting to say, save the company-babysitter-bot who’s a bit erratic after being fired and having an identity crisis. Another pass by an editor or voice acting might help players gauge how exactly they’re supposed to process most of this dialogue.

The dialogue isn’t all bad, however: I’m always a sucker for ‘humans, as a species kinda suck, huh?’ meta-commentary. Additionally, the story does go to some pretty interesting places even if the characters driving it aren’t all that interesting. Safety through ignorance, the devil you know, mourning, and revenge are all brought up in brief. As the story closes, there’s also room for more should Sam Enright decide to make a second.

The music of Beyond Galaxyland in particular should be praised without caveat. The credits upon beating the game inform you that Sam Enright was in fact a solo developer on this project - much like other industry polymaths like Toby Fox, it may be worth your time to keep an eye on whatever Sam Enright decides to do next. Some of these tunes are so catchy, I’d say even if Beyond Galaxyland weren’t a video game, it just as well could have been a lofi, groovy album. It’s definitely a choice to have sometimes sinister, sometimes atonally mischievous music play during boss battles, but it absolutely works.

Why yes, that is a Xenomorph in my pants.

Graphically, this game is beautiful. There are varied environments that all please the eye as: from an earth-like civilized planet, to a frozen mining colony, to the seedy underbelly of Neo, to an ancient abandoned alien vessel. The one point I will question in the art direction of this game is that it’s too dark a handful of times. Especially in a game where you’re hunting for secrets and platforming a percentage of the time, with my Switch on max brightness, I had to guess a couple of jumps due to the ambience taking precedence over gameplay. Even still, I found myself in awe at what’s being accomplished in this art style and the amount of vibrancy I found - perfect for a phone lock screen.

The gameplay is varied, but there’s nothing too challenging, making it a breezy experience. There’s a Pokémon-esque capture system which is a bit dubious in morality as you can even catch sentient beings, but it’s well-realised and adds to the fun of discovering new enemies you can convert. You also have the ability to scan just about any living being for your records, and this lets you learn a bit more about the other alien species that populate Galaxyland or how to better handle enemies in combat. There’s minigames that aren’t too taxing and puzzles, but Sam Enright did something I wish was in every game: you can skip them or lower their difficulty. I was having trouble earning a Golden Ticket to save the main character from being sold off as a slave on a giant, opulent, space yacht, and the race organiser, knowing I had failed the race a number of times said something about ‘feeling bad for me’ and gave me the ticket anyway. This is just one example of how smartly designed this game is, and I’ll gladly take a hit to my pride if it means I can move the story along.

Combat allows you to get a first hit in, and if you’re that much stronger than the enemy, you’ll defeat them on the spot. Another great decision so I’m not wasting my time dealing with trivial enemies. Even though the combat is turn-based, you must defend in order to reduce the damage you receive. Beyond Galaxyland isn’t that hard, but you do reach a point where you MUST defend properly or you’ll be at a game over screen after seeing Boom Boom take 150 damage from a charging space cow. I feel like the damage is a bit much (there’s even options in new game plus to INCREASE enemy toughness and make blocking HARDER), but Beyond Galaxyland never had me stopped in my tracks, at a loss for what to do or in an endless cycle of reviving dead characters mid-battle. You can’t defend against enemy special moves, which is kind of strange, but those aren’t lethal, thankfully. Though much of the time you’ll simply be using your basic attack, I did enjoy the limited special moves and summons due to how they affected combat. I will say I did not like the fact that defending incorrectly would make you lose AP, when most of the time if you really are in trouble, you need that AP for a tricky enemy or encounter. It was never backbreaking, but it’s worth pointing out. Enemies also don’t have much variety in how they attack, and most attack VERY slowly. Variety in enemies attacking is important so that the player is actually paying attention when a Core Crawler is attacking them because it might be a feint, a quick attack, or a delayed one like in the Mario & Luigi series. It felt like Sam Enright chose to have them attack slower in place of giving them the aforementioned fast/feint/slow attacks, but all this does is condition the player to expect pretty slow attacks.

The items and upgrades you get are useful, even from random ‘chests’, so I looked forward to upgrades and sorting through loot instead of side-eyeing another ‘sword of 1+ strength’ that I was going to sell to a vendor. A very minor complaint, but chests open too slowly - the items launch themselves into the air, but you can’t grab them until they land. Even stranger is ‘important’ chests will instantly give you their loot, so it feels like this is just an oversight. Beyond Galaxyland also has crafting, plenty of side quests, and some exploration through a bit of platforming.

The game can be slightly too dark at time, even with your Switch at full brightness.

The game’s tone is a bit all over the place, like some of the more poignant Pixar movies or 80s ‘kids’ movies. You play as kids dealing with great trauma, yet you can solve a murder by beating up the shady club owner who did it, all while being assaulted by disco-dancing, moon-walking thugs. It’s more surprising than it is offputting or inappropriate, though I might not want a child to see white ‘blood’ smearing the walls with numerous corpses or a reenactment of Ridley Scott’s Alien both of which you’ll find in Beyond Galaxyland.

Beyond Galaxyland was a pleasant surprise, and never overstays its welcome. The vibrant graphics, subtle but infectious music, and breezy gameplay with plenty of optional content make this a game that respects your time, but if you want to spend more time with it, I have a feeling you’ll enjoy the higher difficulty or side content.