ANDYou may remember the Reigns series for its excellent tie-in to Game of Thrones: his signature is Tinder-style card swiping, where you make quick decisions about what to say or do by swiping left or right, before watching the consequences unfold. . After crash-landing on a random planet, you’re forced to join an intergalactic rock band, which seems fair since you accidentally killed his guitarist with your runaway ship. From there, you travel through the stars, landing on any planet you find, picking up stowaways and slimy space creatures, and occasionally making a discovery about the universe (or your mysteriously sentient ship).
You also die, a lot. I have rarely played a game in which death is so frequent and so fun. I inhaled a deadly space mushroom, was suffocated by several fluffy space bunnies, and my manager, who is also a shark, literally bit my head off. I exploded, expired, inhaled, starved, and once accidentally vaporized all life in a solar system by plugging in a guitar amp. Each time this happens, you are resurrected on the last planet you visited, ready to leave again; there are no lasting consequences in Reigns, only momentary catastrophic setbacks.
This doesn’t completely eliminate frustration; I lost almost every space fight I got into, which got old quickly, and if you want to make real progress by acquiring new guitars or visiting a particular planet, random misfortune can start to seem less pretty. Scenario repetition also starts to appear quite early, within a couple of hours. But Reigns is never boring, and I’d like to get back to him soon to see what nonsense happened next.
Reigns Beyond works like a crazy space adventure that you can immerse yourself in for 10 minutes straight, and the wit and pacing of the dialogue are impressive. But I did wonder why I was part of a band. Sometimes when you land on a planet you play a concert, but these musical interludes are repetitive, unchallenging, and inconsequential. It’s funny and surprisingly broad as a space team comedy, but as a bandmate comedy it’s comparatively shallow. I also wonder if the name doesn’t hold him back at this point: Reigns made sense when it was a game about being a variably competent monarch, but it doesn’t scream sci-fi comedy, and I think that’ll end up happening. As a result, a lot of people passed through: a minor tragedy, since you won’t find anything like these few hours of stupidity in space for less than five dollars.
after newsletter promotion