Review: Reigns: Beyond (Nintendo Switch)
From a studio that has nailed the swipe-based adventure game format, Reigns: Beyond takes the format familiar to Devolver Digital connoisseurs intergalactic. You play as a rockstar and spaceship captain, travelling with your band and crew from planet to planet, playing gigs and earning the fame and fortune you are destined for.
As a space captain, you have to successfully manage the needs of your ship and crew while travelling. You have to establish your priorities when it comes to ensuring that your ship is running smoothly, as well as making sure that your crew find acceptable compromises when they disagree on a planned course of action. The gameplay here takes the form of swipe cards offering you dialogue options. Trackers show how well the needs of the crew and ship are balanced on your journey.
You get to chart your course through the various regions of outer space. It is up to you to decide if you want to stick to safe areas where the crowds at your gigs might not be as enthusiastic or to risk venturing into the realms of space pirates in the hope of greater rewards after your shows.
When you land, you can look through the shops to buy new things for your ship, instruments, and general inventory. You can go to the pub to chat to locals, which will help encourage people to come to your shows and help you glean information about what might await you in other areas. Then, you play your show.
Playing the gigs takes the form of a mini game where you guide a guitar through the song it plays, hitting your marks along the way and earning a cheer from the crowd that reflects your performance. The mini game is fairly simple, and it was one of the few aspects of the Reigns: Beyond that make it evident that it was designed to be playable across multiple consoles, including mobile. This element isn’t hugely optimised for Switch controls, but it’s still decently fun to play and not difficult to score well, so you won’t hold up the narrative trying to get a good reaction from your audience.
Each mini game is accompanied by an original song by Sam Webster. These tracks ground Reigns: Beyond in a suitably awesome atmosphere that gives the game the futuristic, rock ‘n’ roll vibe it needs to match the story. The game boasts more than 1,400 decision cards you can select on your adventure with your crew of charming and wonderfully written and designed characters, including a wealth of quirky aliens who end up as much a part of the family as the human crew you initially set out with.
There are multiple narrative paths to follow, each with its own unique ending but equally whimsical and clever writing no matter what you choose. This studio clearly knows what they’re doing. The writing is great and the soundtrack is great. The port from mobile to Switch is noticeable once you know to look for it, but overall works as well as you could hope for it to. And you get an awful lot of content for the low price.
