Streamline
  • Home
  • Spotlight
  • Reviews
    • Action
    • Strategy
    • RPGs
  • Most Hardcore
    • Devices
    • Gifts
    • Gadgets
  • About Us
  • Android-Human Fall Flat-Candyland-001
    Human Fall Flat Mobile Launches Brand-New Level: Candyland
  • Feature image
    Dunk City Dynasty Launches Globally on May 22
  • feature image Sky
    Sky: Children of the Light Review
  • Android--Carrion--001
    Carrion Review
  • Odin: Valhalla Rising title
    Norse Mythology-Inspired MMORPG Odin: Valhalla Rising Launches This Month
  • Android-MythWalker-001
    MythWalker Expands Adventure With Over 20 New Story Quests
  • Tribe Nine feature image
    TRIBE NINE’s Chapter 3: Neo Chiyoda City Arrives
  • Android-Blade of God X: Orisols-001
    Blade of God X: Orisols Review
  • Android-Darkest Hero--001
    Darkest Hero Review
  • Bleach: Brave Souls feature image
    Bleach: Brave Souls Launches Gift Campaign With Smartphone Wallpapers
  • Collect Or Die Ultra Title Screen
    Collect Or Die Ultra Launches On Google Play And iOS
  • Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Android
    Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Review
  • Once Human Launches Cross-Platform Test
    Once Human Launches Cross-Platform Test for Mobile & PC
  • Archero 2 title
    Archero 2 Review
  • upjers feature image
    Upjers Brings ‘Love in Pixels’
Hardcore Droid
Hardcore Droid
  • Home
  • News
    • News
    • Spotlight
    • Interviews
    • Consoles
  • Reviews
    • Action
    • Adventure
    • Strategy
    • RPG
    • MMOs
    • Racing
    • Indie
    • Hardware
  • Best Of
    • Top 10 Games
    • Best RPGs
    • Best Action
    • Best Puzzlers
    • Best Strategy
    • Best Indie Strat
    • Best Indie RPGs
    • Most Hardcore
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Game Jobs
    • Archives
    • Attributions
    • Opportunities
  • Adventure
  • Puzzle

Beyond This Side Review

  • April 28, 2020
  • Pam K. Ferdinand
Beyond This Side marketing image
Spread the love

A Hand in an Alley

Beyond This Side, a narrative-driven point-and-click puzzle title developed by Glim Games, follows Sam as he endeavors to unravel the tragedy of his wife’s disappearance. The police, who have long since moved on to more promising cases, recovered only her severed hand in the trashcan of a filthy alley. Sam, grief stricken, returns to the alley every day and soon discovers that his wife’s death might have an otherworldly explanation. Told in episodes, with the third and final one as yet unreleased, the game sets up what could have been an intriguing supernatural mystery.

Beyond This Side deformed man

Not Beyond Much of Anything Really

Beyond This Side is mediocre in almost every way and fails to stand out from the myriad other games on the market exactly like it. For a supernatural whodunit, the story is interesting but not unique. It’s sufficiently intriguing that you want to know what happens next, but you’re never on the edge of your seat. The mystery picks up a bit by the end of the second episode but, lacking a third installment, it comes to an anticlimactic end. And the trudge to reach this point in the story means I will definitely not rush to the app store when Glim Games finally releases Episode 3.

Excessive amounts of text make progressing through the game a slog, and a majority of it is pointless. The goal is to build a backstory and flesh out the characters so that you feel invested in what happens to them. But I don’t care if a pizza is moldering on the bed or that the girl likes Stephen King. I’ve played games that presented similarly mundane information and drew me into the world, rather than bore me as Beyond This Side did.

Speaking of writing, the game was apparently written by a non-native English speaker who still had a decent command of the language. This results in errors that are more jarring than, say, a game that’s poorly localized from beginning to end. Poor word choice or strange phrasing stand out all the more because it doesn’t occur regularly. Add in frequent typos, punctuation errors, occasional odd spacing, even poor font choice, and the in-game text overall diminishes the gameplay experience and adds to the impression of an unpolished game. That’s a big fail in a story-driven title.

Beyond This Side game screen

Nice, but Not Nice Enough

The graphics in Beyond This Side, with hand-drawn backgrounds and characters, present one of the game’s only strong points. But even the visuals aren’t particularly unique or mind blowing. While skillfully done, it’s not anything that even a casual gamer wouldn’t have seen before. Additionally, the character models are rather unpleasant to look at. This is of course subjective, and another player might find their design charming. However, I found the characters’ bulging eyes, blank stares, and odd forward-leaning stances to be disconcerting. Rather than build a connection with them, I became indifferent and even a little repelled. They lacked charisma. I didn’t identify with them at all and therefore didn’t care about their stories.

The biggest crime committed by the developers of Beyond This Side is the frequent regurgitation of puzzles. The two key elements of this game are its story and the puzzles used to progress that story. Unfortunately, the puzzles are not innovative or even fun for the most part. They are nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve even occasionally dabbled in puzzle games.

To make it worse, you will do these same lackluster, uninventive puzzles multiple times throughout the game. You’ll reconstruct numerous photos and torn sheets of paper. More than once, you will have to slide four blocks from the right side of the screen to designated slots on the left. Digging through the trash looking for a lost item isn’t very compelling the first time. But when you have to do it three times in a row, maybe now in a desk drawer or in a toolbox, it’s enough to make you sigh with exasperation.

Beyond This Side creepy characters

I’ve Already Moved Beyond It

Beyond This Side cost $2.99 for the first two episodes. That price of course may change, but unless it drops to a dollar, it will be too high. The game can be completed in about two hours. Yet as I played, I had the unshakeable feeling that I could be doing better things with my life. By the time Episode 3 comes out, I will doubtless have forgotten about the game entirely. And if I do remember, I still won’t care enough about how the story turns out to finish it.

Is it Hardcore?
2

Not at all.

Beyond This Side is a point-and-click adventure game that is mediocre in nearly every way. Offering an uninspired story and puzzles, as well as an underwhelmingly short experience, gamers will be better served if they take their money elsewhere.

Related Topics
  • Android Adventure Games
Pam K. Ferdinand

Her introduction to video games, Donkey Kong on the ColecoVision, came when she was three years old. What was meant to be a temporary babysitter turned into a lifelong passion. An enthusiastic fan of survival horror, RPGs of all kinds, and first-person shooters, Pam is willing to try most game genres except sports. She is also an avid reader, a dabbler in foreign languages, an artist in her spare time, and a journalist for an online gaming news site.

Previous Article
Hero Rescue 1
  • Puzzle

Hero Rescue Review

  • April 20, 2020
  • Macy Pingree
View Post
Next Article
isoland-amusement-park-00
  • Indie
  • Puzzle

Isoland: The Amusement Park Review

  • April 28, 2020
  • Luisa Aparisi
View Post
You May Also Like
Android-Human Fall Flat-Candyland-001
View Post
  • Adventure
  • News
  • Platformer

Human Fall Flat Mobile Launches Brand-New Level: Candyland

  • Oula Onyango
  • May 24, 2025
feature image Sky
View Post
  • Adventure
  • Indie
  • Miscellaneous
  • MMOs
  • Puzzle

Sky: Children of the Light Review

  • Tamanna Chandel
  • May 21, 2025
Bleach: Brave Souls feature image
View Post
  • Action
  • Adventure
  • News

Bleach: Brave Souls Launches Gift Campaign With Smartphone Wallpapers

  • Tamanna Chandel
  • March 14, 2025
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Android
View Post
  • Adventure
  • Indie
  • RPG

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Review

  • Oula Onyango
  • March 8, 2025
Train Hero
View Post
  • Adventure
  • News

Train Hero Now Available On Steam And Google Play

  • Oula Onyango
  • February 11, 2025
Shadow of the Depth-001
View Post
  • Action
  • Adventure
  • Indie
  • RPG

Shadow of the Depth Review

  • Oula Onyango
  • February 7, 2025
Duck Detective Feature Image
View Post
  • Adventure
  • News

Acclaimed Duck Detective: The Secret Salami Coming To iOS and Android

  • Tamanna Chandel
  • January 25, 2025
The Legend of Heroes: Gargahv---001
View Post
  • Adventure
  • RPG

The Legend of Heroes: Gagharv Review

  • Oula Onyango
  • January 23, 2025
The Latest
  • Human Fall Flat Mobile Launches Brand-New Level: Candyland
  • Dunk City Dynasty Launches Globally on May 22
  • Sky: Children of the Light Review
  • Carrion Review
  • Norse Mythology-Inspired MMORPG Odin: Valhalla Rising Launches This Month
  • MythWalker Expands Adventure With Over 20 New Story Quests
  • TRIBE NINE’s Chapter 3: Neo Chiyoda City Arrives
  • Blade of God X: Orisols Review
  • Darkest Hero Review
  • Bleach: Brave Souls Launches Gift Campaign With Smartphone Wallpapers
Meta
  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
Hardcore Droid
  • Reviews
  • Spotlight
  • Hardcore
Core Gaming on the Android OS

Input your search keywords and press Enter.