Reigns Beyond review

There are video games inspired by pretty much everything you could feasibly imagine at this point, but when Reigns released back in 2016 its Tinder style gameplay felt rather inspired. The idea of managing a medieval kingdom all by swiping either left or right on a series of binary decisions was just wonderful, and alongside a whole lot of charm it made for a very memorable game. Since then there have been a whole bunch of Reigns spinoffs, based on everything from Chinese history to Game of Thrones. Now the series is taking its first steps into the sci-fi realm with Reigns Beyond, with a musical twist.

Reigns Beyond starts with your character waking up on a spaceship with no idea of how they got there or who they are. This isn’t just any sci-fi craft though, The Sandman is one of the most powerful military ships in the galaxy and is run by an incredibly powerful AI. The ship is more than happy to do your bidding, though, as long as you can find a group who can help pilot it, which thankfully a nearby planet can provide in the form of a failing indie rock band.

The Bear Lovers have been traveling from planet to planet playing small gigs for some time now, but are currently lacking a member and struggling to continue their journey to musical stardom. Thankfully you’re pretty handy with a guitar and without anything else to invest your time in, join up with the rest of the gang on a quest for rock glory.

Before you go and play a few gigs though, you’ll have to choose a destination and make it there in one piece. You’re free to pick any direction to fly the ship in, with only vague planet descriptions to help you make that choice. Once you set off time will pass with every choice you’re offered, but making the wrong choices will very quickly lead to death, and will respawn you back to the last planet as a new clone aboard the ship.

There are four core stats you have to keep an eye on in Reigns Beyond: Power; Oxygen; Crew Morale, and Shield. Each choice you make will affect one or more of these values, and if any of them drop to zero you’ll die horrendously in the dark void of space. Whenever you’re deciding on swiping left or right you’ll be able to tell which stats will be affected, but not if they’ll be affected positively or negatively. A bit of common sense will go a long way in figuring this out, though, for example, when you scold a crewmate for wasting power by plugging in their guitar for a jam session it’ll raise the power as they reluctantly stop rocking out, but it will also lower morale.

Once you arrive on a planet you’ll have a selection of things you can do. You can go to a shop to buy new items that might get you out of a jam later, hang out at the bar and meet new friends who might decide to join the crew, or if there are enough people you’ll be able to play a gig there. A successful gig will net you some extra cash and social media followers, but only if you’re able to rock out hard enough in the basic rhythm mini game.

When the band starts playing one of their trademark songs you’ll be presented with a guitar floating above a track that twists and turns through a psychedelic environment, and your goal is to collect enough hearts that are placed on the track to effectively impress the crowd. This is done exclusively by moving from left to right to grab the hearts, but it’s a nice (if rather repetitive) change of pace from the decision making.

Although becoming a successful indie rock band is supposedly the main goal of Reigns Beyond, the most fun you’ll have with the game is trying to complete as many tasks as possible. Whether it’s by finding a manager or landing on a moon, any particularly unique moments can be checked off your task list as you progress through the game. The fact most of these involve interesting characters like a teleporting god-like alien, or a prisoner-bear with a taste for blood helps too, because you’ll really see the wacky charm of the game by following these fun narrative threads.

As enjoyable as traveling the galaxy in Reigns Beyond is, the game does have a few issues. The map of space you use to choose direction doesn’t tell you where you have and haven’t been before, so if you don’t remember a planet’s name you’ll just end up going round in circles. The simplicity of the game doesn’t really lend itself to longer sessions either, especially when you start seeing the same choices over and over again.

Reigns Beyond is a fun sci-fi romp, with the unique gameplay you’d expect from the series, and a whole lot of charm. The simplicity of the game might not mean you want to play it for hours at a time, but if you’re looking for a nice way to spend portions of twenty minutes at a time then you could do much worse than dying in space with a whole lot of wacky characters.