Reigns: Beyond Review (PC)

I think this crew isn’t suited to space battles. I can understand how a pirate fleet, with experience and maybe superior numbers, can overwhelm my ship. I will accept that a super-secret organization has tech that will ensure victory. But I cannot deal with the fact that an already damaged vessel with a bounty attached managed to disable our shields, survive a boarding attempt, and then deal enough damage to destroy our reactor.

After reviving on the nearest planet, I decide to implement a policy of non-violence. So, we travel forward, landing on a few asteroids where we pick up mysterious coins and plants, and on another planet where we play a concert that’s warmly received. And then the entire crew decides they’re very interested in huffing pure oxygen. I indulge them and we all die soon after.

The Sandman brings everybody back and I make a note about indulging the crew’s more niche requests. Another gig and some nice planetary visits happen in quick succession. Someone decides they want to inspect the ship for bad vibes, which seems like a great idea. The ship computer suggests investing in a new form of propulsion. There are too many narrative threats to follow. I decide to challenge a mysterious ship, breaking the non-violence policy. A big explosion engulfs the ship again.

Reigns: Beyond is developed by Nerial and published by Devolver Digital. I played using Steam on the PC and it is also offered on the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. The game uses the already familiar structure of the franchise to power space-based science fiction adventures.

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The opening is fast and kinetic in more ways than one. The player’s ship crash lands on a planet, killing one guitarist in the process. The rest of the band become your crewmates and decide to fly around the universe looking for gigs and purpose, helped by the powerful Sandman Artificial Intelligence, whose nature is also a mystery.

Every moment of Reigns: Beyond involves cards and all of them feature text, so there’s a lot of writing in the game. The developers have drawn inspiration from all the big science-fiction franchises around and the quality is pretty high. The humor can be hit or miss, and big emotional moments are laced with irony.

I struggled to connect emotionally with the crew and the many other featured characters, mainly because I was always more interested in keeping the adventure going than in engaging with their personal quests. The shark manager is the exception but mainly because he has a tendency to make requests that lead to the player’s death.

The franchise’s structure is a testament to the power of simplicity. Cards appear, players read them and then decide whether to flick them, mobile dating app style, to the left or right. Each move is associated with a choice and a narrative emerges as players move through each branch. Constant choices govern almost everything players do, from battling other ships to talking to trading.

The exception is playing music. Players might become spaceship captains, but both the crew and the manager insist on playing concerts when landing on planets. This takes the form of a simple and frankly boring rhythm game during which players get a guitar avatar and need to collect a constant stream of hearts. It seems like a good idea once or twice, but I ended up looking for an option to turn off the mini-game.

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Reigns: Beyond asks players to take into account the effects their decisions have on spaceship integrity, energy levels, crew condition, and life support systems. It’s often easy to get into a doom spiral connected to one when flicking quickly and only half paying attention. An extra layer of warnings might have helped me avoid catastrophe a few times. But death is not the end, with the super powerful Artificial Intelligence cloning the crew and rebuilding the ship on the most recently visited planet.

Then it’s time to fly again, discover another potential story to pursue, commit to better balancing the demands of the crew and the integrity of the ship, and think of ways to become capable of actually winning a space battle. The loop has an addictive quality and it’s very easy to spend an hour making binary decisions, feeling excited, but failing to actually accomplish much.

Players new to the series will be disappointed by the limited implementation of the space-traveling rock band concept. Maybe a patch can implement an option to skip the rhythm sequences altogether. Fans of the Reigns concept will find that the binary choice card system is as good as ever.

Reigns: Beyond uses the same basic presentation as other titles in the series, with an always-present card at the center of the screen. Always keep in mind the four status icons at the top of the screen and enjoy how hard the developers have worked to give characters and planets unique personalities. It’s a clean and efficient interface, which works well on a variety of platforms, but can become somewhat boring. The song sections seem primitive when compared to the rest of the experience.

And for a game about a space-traveling rock band, the music is too tame. The gig tracks are associated with collectible guitars and become boring after they get played two or three times. The rest of the soundtrack is pleasant but does not have any standout riffs.

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The Good

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