Hey there,
I streamed this game! Overall, it’s a master at crafting a vibe, but it’s also a master at feeling obtuse and unwelcoming to the player.
From Beyond the End of End (which is a mouthful, so if I reference the name, I’ll just call it “of End”) starts by opening lots of questions to the player, with plenty of proper nouns with lots of Strange Capitalization of Random words so you know those things are probably important or something. But that doesn’t matter, what you do know, as the player, is that this is a pretty cool looking world.
Unfortunately as the player enamored by all that glitter you were blind to the fact that “of End”’s obtuse title menu is a sign, signaling the it’s unwelcoming nature; the title menu hiding it’s options menu in shame gives the humble yet simple quit option a whacky name to obscure how one might exit. The strange capitalization and proper nouns, again a sign signaling the obtuse nature; this story will never be made clear to you.
If you want to understand what is going on: sorry, you’re out of luck. Is this due to the fact that this is a sequel to a game that I never played? Perhaps, it’s hard to say. But considering how often the game just wants to wax poetic with its metaphor and words but never actually say anything meaningful, to me it seems more like a sign that the game just has no interest in involving the player in its story. It will do it’s own thing regardless of how much the player actually wants to enjoy the game, which leads to a rather annoying and frustrating experience.
This type of lack of care for the player’s enjoyment goes further into the UI/UX of the game as well. For example, at one point in the story my screen got another whacky pixelated filter that lowered the resolution of the game. I don’t know why this happened; it could have been scripted, it could have been because I dared to accidentally eat a healing item because the UI design provided little feedback to what my selection and cursor were doing. What I do know about this effect is that for the very first fight in the game I couldn’t read any of my attack commands. I think any game that would harm legibility deliberately should really reconsider how they are portraying their effects.
This UI/UX problem runs deep into the veins of “of End”. You will find some equipment, but this equipment is not equipped in the player’s “equip” menu, but instead another menu entirely unrelated to the player menu. In the player menu, as previously mentioned, there’s little feedback by not having new windows pop up, every action looks like the same action. There is no margin either, so items get crammed all the way to the last pixel available on the space at the very top of the screen. Tutorials don’t exist, but the game will certainly throw state names at the player and just tell you to figure it out yourself.
This comes to a head when the design of the levels have no sense of flow; there is no clear common path to travel as the player. The path forward will be obscured by trees with no indication that the path forward is by traveling through those trees.
I would love to go into more detail about the music, since this is my area of expertise, but this review is plenty long. I think it’s important to make the point that this game has the potential, but it’s got a lot of cleaning up to do. As it is now, I am certain I am not the only player who tried playing “of End” and felt like the game’s indifference to me (as its player) was frustrating and unwelcoming and therefore just peaced out. It really feels like a game that was made for one person and one person only: the developer. He would be the one to know the non-existent game manual front-to-back, he would be the one to know the non-existent lore compendium inside and out, he would be the one to know how to navigate the world, operate the menus blind, and take advantage of the strategies that lie within the game. However, it seems like us plebeians who are not the dev cannot partake in this fun.
I hope that the dev will work hard to clean this game up, as its ability to establish a vibe is on point and if things were more approachable, I could see this being a great game to get lost in.
If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.