The standard in a roguelike game is that you’re dashing and slashing on the ground and you can get airborne with a few jumps. What if you could fly around the room with no floor to even think about? This unique presentation is front-and-center in Beyond the Long Night, a title that was Kickstarted by “three audio devs” in Noisy Head Games and published by Yogscast Games. After three years of development, it finally sees its release this April. Is this quirky movement enough to sell this roguelike?

Beyond the Long Night sees you move around each procedurally-generated room floating around with balloons a la Balloon Fight, but with even more control. You’re also granted a snappy dodge and the ability to pick up torches and bombs for your arsenal. However, your starting basic attack is so wimpy that the first enemies you fight take several hits to go down.

This makes ones like the bees and vicious plants a hefty challenge in the early goings of the game, granting you no beginner’s luck with only four hits to work with. Some of my runs only lasted six minutes due to hard-to-discern spikes in the terrain, making it feel like I didn’t earn my deaths.

As you traverse the world in Beyond the Long Night, you’ll encounter a cast of whimsical characters that serve as shopkeepers and other unlocks you’ll need multiple runs to fully realize. Whether it’s the annoying kid or the farmer that raises motivational cows, these individuals make up the best part of Beyond the Long Night and serve as a nice distraction during a stressful run. Unfortunately, I found that the music and sound effects, while sounding great, are nearly inaudible at max level. I found this to be a bit of a shock coming from purported audio developers.

The difficulty curve in Beyond the Long Night is steep, considerably more so than most roguelikes. That is saying something when the genre is already one of the toughest around. While most of the damage I took felt like my error, the more frustrating part is the timing puzzles that seem impossible to surpass. With no tutorials or indication of how to beat these, you’re left to figure out how to do as best as possible during your runs. This is a case of a game that could actually benefit from some hand-holding. There’s no shortage of things to unlock, but I wish the early section had some sense of growing stronger instead of struggling against the easiest enemies the game has to offer.

In the massively-explored roguelike genre, Beyond the Long Night does manage to eke out a bit thanks to its easy-to-learn, hard-to-master freedom of movement. Otherwise, it’s bog-standard and a little too hard for its own good as no sense of progression or “getting good” is felt across runs. Developers Noisy Head Games have potential, but it doesn’t feel fully realized in Beyond the Long Night. This may not appeal to fans of the genre just yet.

A PC review copy of Beyond the Long Night was provided by Yogscast Games for this review.

Beyond The Long Night

13.75

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Fun Movement
• Charming Characters

Cons

• Poor Difficulty Balance
• Frustrating Timing Puzzles
• Quiet Music/Sound