Second Opinion: Deep Beyond
Deep Beyond is a short narrative adventure. Sam gives his take on the game, a second opinion.
Deep Beyond. Credit: Avix Games
Andros reviewed Deep Beyond a couple days ago. I played the game as well, so I thought I’d offer an alternate take since my feelings were very different.
Deep Beyond is a short story about Lilly, an archaeologist getting mixed up with artifact thieving pirates that have kidnapped her mentor and adoptive father, Howard. If you’ve played the Uncharted games, this kind of story should be familiar, except here there are no compelling characters or humor.
You walk around in first person, able to select highlighted objects. Interaction is very limited. If not for the handful of puzzles in the game, I’d have labeled it a walking simulator. Every area in every chapter of the game is linear, putting you on rails to your objectives.
Deep Beyond. Credit: Avix Games
The dialogue is poor, not helped by the line readings of the voice actors. The game’s emotional beats just don’t land; it all comes off as hollow. There are three endings that have minimal consequence, because Deep Beyond didn’t make me feel anything towards these characters or give me enough time with most of them to care. You mercifully don’t need to do much to see all the endings, though the inability to skip dialogue makes it a bit insufferable. Perhaps in another writer’s hands, Deep Beyond’s story could have been great.
The game’s striking visual style—cel-shaded environments with limited color pallettes varying by scene, all hard shadows except some judicious use of halftone dots—is undercut by lackluster and stiff character animation. There’s a particular scene that was painful to watch because the character in question’s hands were animated such that he looked like he was flailing mannequin arms. It bothered me in particular that the developers chose to omit every characters’ eyes. In a game where I should feel sympathy and attachment to characters, it’s a very poor choice to remove one of their most expressive features. The eyes are the windows to the soul, after all.
The game is short. It took me around 80 minutes to see all the endings and earn every one of the nine achievements. Despite the low price, I can’t recommend Deep Beyond. There are far better narrative adventures for you to invest your time.
At least you can pet the dog.
Deep Beyond is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 3/10
Played on: Steam Deck
