GameLog Page

Please sign in or sign up!

...blogs for gamers

Find a GameLog

... by game	... by platform

[ advanced search ]

HOME	GAMES	LOGS	MEMBERS			ABOUT	HELP

dkirschner's The Pale Beyond (PC)

[October 29, 2024 06:31:19 AM]

I don't remember where I got this. Amazon? It's in my Steam account. Humble Bundle? Somewhere for free or in a bundle...Anyway, it wasn't on my radar, but it sounded interesting and it was so good! The Pale Beyond is a narrative, point-and-click(ish), survival, resource management game. You are recruited for an expedition to the South Pole to find a missing ship that was searching for [mystery]. Once you arrive, things go south (ba-dum!). Your ship gets trapped in the ice, the captain abandons ship with several other crew members, and you are thrust into the leadership role.

After the caption & co. left, I had 25 people to manage. Those people have different roles. There are "key" story people like a photographer, the head engineer, the doctor, and the benefactor's contact, who is clearly withholding information. They can't die except through narrative choices. Then there are the regular sailors, some more engineers, scouts, and a medical team. They can die. Every day, you talk to the crew members. They will petition you for things, argue with you, your relationship (and their relationships with one another to some extent) will increase or decrease. This is the "loyalty" meter. You want them loyal to you so they don't mutiny, and for some other reasons later on. I actually had a really rare ending that netted me the rarest achievement I currently have on Steam (0.8% of players!) because of how my relationships played out. It's pretty easy to figure out which dialogue options increase loyalty (hint: be kind and understanding for the most part).

You also have to manage food and heat resources. To get food, you'll need to use scouts to explore the ice around you and send crew to hunt game. To get heat, you have to constantly fuel the boiler with whatever you can find, from animals you hunt to resources you scavenge from the ship. There is also a morale to manage. If you don't provide enough rations or fuel for heat, morale goes down. Sailors will get malnourished, which, if left untreated with food, turns into scurvy. If that's untreated, the character dies. Sailors will get "freezing," which, if left untreated with heat, turns into frostbite. If that's untreated, the character dies. They can also become demoralized, which decreases the whole expedition's morale unless that's treated. You can send crew to the doctor for scurvy and frostbite, and they'll recover. The game progresses from summer to winter, so it gets colder and colder, which means that crew freeze more and more often. And as game becomes scarce, if you haven't managed food resources well, hunger becomes more common too.

So, you're constantly managing your human resources too because you need people to hunt and perform a variety of other tasks. If people are out sick, you can't use them. And if they die, well, you've got less mouths to feed, but also that's fewer resources you can get. I think I had one sailor die fairly early on, then I had a bad week about halfway through the game and lost another three. I ended the game with 21 crew out of a potential 25. Not too bad!

I really liked the story. Each of the main story characters plays a big role in the expedition, and they all have backstories and whatnot that influence their behaviors and relationships as the expedition progresses. Even the minor characters (the regular crew) have histories and relationships with one another. What the game does so well is create a horrific survival setting, and you feel it as you play. Like, it's life and death out there. The game plays out in several "chapters" where story events happen and then the setting and conditions for resource management change a bit. It kept me on my toes the entire time, and I never got bored. I often felt in a precarious position, like one mistake, one poor week of resource (mis)management could have a domino effect and ruin the expedition. I only died one time, and that was because of an inevitable story event that I didn't anticipate would happen (at least, not as soon as it did). The ending is different than what you would expect and, although it changed the game up, I thought it was neat. If you want a harrowing polar adventure with some challenging resource management and decisions (that isn't overwhelming with the amount and complexity of mechanics!) and a well written story, then this is a good bet.