Info about Between Horizons – A Sci-Fi Detective Adventure:

Official game description:
ABOUT THE GAME
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Between Horizons is set aboard the Zephyr, humanity's first generation ship en route to another star. You assume the role of Stella, who was born on the ship 24 years ago and recently inherited her father's post as Chief of Security. Dive into the conspiracy behind the incident that threatens to disrupt the Zephyr's social order and foil its mission.
Between Horizons is a modern 2.5D pixel art adventure that brings a branching narrative into a semi-open world. The team at DigiTales has applied numerous lessons from their first game Lacuna and proven solutions to detective game design problems to maximize player agency in the investigation process – all the while maintaining the tight pacing of a meaningful story that will ask you to reevaluate your moral compass and make increasingly tough decisions as the situation aboard the ship spirals out of control.
FEATURES
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*   **An Unusual Adventure:** Between Horizons merges investigation gameplay with a branching sci-fi story in an ever-expanding Metroidvania-style environment.
*   **Think For Yourself:** The flexible evidence system lets you assign clues to cases, confront ship denizens about them, and solve any case with at any point in time. Everything you find on the ship may or may not be connected to the mystery at hand.
*   **Failure is Very Much an Option:** There are no second chances — submitting a wrong solution means the story will go with all the consequences. A new and improved auto-save system will make sure there is no going back, as the story branches and ends based on your decisions.
*   **Set Your Course:** Underneath the game's exciting and plausible sci-fi plot lies a number of thought-provoking problems inviting you to weigh intergenerational responsibility against personal freedom.
*   **A New Dimension:** Timeless pixel art merge with 3D environments and modern visual effects to create a unique visual style.

Release date: 25 Mar, 2024

Categories: Investigative Gameplay, Choice-based Narrative, Puzzle Solving, Deductive Reasoning Puzzle, Open-World Exploration, Metroidvania, Single-player Story, Moral Decision-Making


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging, well-written story and characters (weight 0.95): The game features a captivating and well-written story with memorable characters, plot twists, and multiple endings, creating an immersive and engaging narrative experience. The story explores interesting themes and keeps players invested throughout the game.
- Unique and appealing art style (weight 0.8): The game features a unique and appealing art style, combining pixel art with 3D environments to create a visually distinctive and immersive experience. The art style enhances the game's atmosphere and contributes positively to the overall aesthetic.
- Pleasant and atmospheric soundtrack (weight 0.66): The game features a pleasant and atmospheric soundtrack that complements the story's tone and enhances the overall experience. The music is well-done and fits the locations and moods of the events.
- Enjoyable and easy to play (weight 0.6): The game is enjoyable and easy to play, with comfortable controls and a smooth gameplay experience. The game is suitable for casual play, allowing players to enjoy the narrative at their own pace.
- Well-designed and logical puzzles (weight 0.56): The game offers well-designed and logical puzzles that require investigation, deduction, and critical thinking to solve. The puzzles are challenging but fair, providing a sense of satisfaction when solved and contributing positively to the gameplay experience.
- Improved over previous titles (weight 0.17): The game improves upon previous titles, offering a more streamlined experience with less grind and better graphics. The game is a worthy successor, retaining the core elements while enhancing the overall gameplay.
- Interesting generation ship setting (weight 0.09): The game is set on a generation ship, creating an interesting and believable Sci-Fi atmosphere with authentic scientific themes. The ship and its inhabitants feel alive due to the attention to detail.
- Immersive character development details (weight 0.04): The game creates a sense of immersion by giving each character their own history, age, job, friends, and family, which can be discovered through conversations and PDA information. The protagonist's personality can be shaped through dialogue choices.

Common complaints:
- Linear story, weak choices, rushed ending (weight 0.37): The game's narrative suffers from a rushed and linear story, limited impactful choices, and a disappointing ending. Many reviewers felt their decisions had little consequence, leading to an unsatisfying conclusion. The game's short length and lack of replayability further compound these issues.
- Poor UI, confusing evidence management (weight 0.25): The game's UI and evidence management system are poorly designed, leading to player frustration. Reviewers cited issues such as a lack of sorting options, unclear evidence presentation, and difficulty finding relevant information. This makes solving cases more tedious and less intuitive.
- Numerous bugs and glitches (weight 0.18): The game suffers from various technical issues, including bugs, glitches, and camera problems. These issues disrupt the gameplay experience and can sometimes force players to restart the game. The presence of these bugs, even after a year of release, is a significant concern.
- Excessive backtracking, tedious traversal (weight 0.13): The game involves excessive backtracking and running around the ship to find specific characters or evidence. This tedious gameplay mechanic reduces immersion and makes the game feel drawn out. The ship's design and the lack of clear guidance contribute to this issue.
- Underwhelming graphics and art (weight 0.1): The game's graphics and art style are underwhelming, with limited animations and disproportionate character models. The world lacks interactivity, and the overall presentation feels uneven. This contributes to a less immersive and engaging experience.
- Inconvenient fast travel system (weight 0.1): The fast travel system is limited and inconvenient, requiring manual navigation and not saving much time. This makes traversal tedious and frustrating, especially given the relatively large map size.
- Confusing plot, poor worldbuilding (weight 0.09): The story contains questionable plot points and confusing reveals, making it difficult to connect with the characters and the world. Reviewers found the lack of detail and development in the spaceship environment and the rushed pacing to be detrimental to the overall experience.
- Cases lack depth, plot holes (weight 0.08): The cases in the game are either too easy or contain plot holes, leading to a lack of depth and meaningful relationships with the crew. Some reviewers felt the cases could have been more difficult and better fine-tuned. This impacts the overall engagement and replayability of the game.
- Clunky interface and controls (weight 0.07): The game's interface and controls are clunky and unintuitive, making navigation and quest management difficult. This negatively impacts the overall user experience and slows down the gameplay.
- Poor character information, hard to find (weight 0.06): Character information is disorganized and lacking in detail, making it difficult to find specific characters and learn about their backgrounds. The lack of meaningful dialogue options further contributes to this issue.
- Dialogue and visual presentation issues (weight 0.05): The game suffers from various presentation issues, such as characters looking in the wrong direction during dialogues and foreground objects obscuring the screen. These issues detract from the overall immersion and polish of the game.
- No free saving, no skip function (weight 0.04): The lack of a free saving feature is annoying, as a single misclick can waste a lot of time. The game lacks a skip function, which becomes tedious when replaying for achievement completion.
- Investigation lacks consequences, depth (weight 0.04): There are no consequences for inquiring on every piece of evidence, and the best way to present evidence is to throw all the evidence to one person instead of thinking carefully. The investigation sometimes involves wasting time on things that feel "out of the way".
- Specific puzzles were frustrating (weight 0.04): Some puzzles were frustrating, taking a long time to solve due to focusing on the wrong detail. Some puzzles didn't make much sense to the reviewer.

Gameplay feedback:
- Engaging detective gameplay and cases (weight 0.29): The core gameplay revolves around detective work: investigating crime scenes, gathering evidence, interrogating suspects, and making deductions to solve cases. The game emphasizes logical thinking and provides a sense of accomplishment when cases are solved correctly. The cases are well-designed and engaging.
- Irreversible case conclusions (weight 0.26): Players must carefully consider all evidence before submitting a final conclusion for each case, as there is no option to revise or change the answer once submitted. This mechanic encourages thorough investigation and thoughtful decision-making. The game does not explicitly confirm when all possible actions for a task have been completed or provide the results, requiring the player to analyze information and evidence to draw conclusions.
- Meaningful choices, no manual saves (weight 0.08): The game features a single autosave file and no manual saving, meaning player choices have lasting consequences. The story is shaped by these decisions, leading to multiple endings and increased replayability. This also means that mistakes cannot be undone.
- Play as security officer Stella (weight 0.07): Players take on the role of Stella, the ship's security officer, who becomes a detective to solve crimes and uncover secrets. The pool of suspects grows, each with half-truths and hidden agendas, adding complexity to the investigations.
- Gameplay similar to Lacuna (weight 0.04): Reviewers noted the gameplay feels similar to Lacuna, with familiar mechanics and a 2D side-scrolling quest format. However, this game has an open world feel, unlike the more linear structure of Lacuna.
- PDA and scanner are important (weight 0.04): Stella's PDA is crucial for navigation and reviewing clues, conversations, and case files. The scanner is used to collect evidence within rooms.
- 2.5D pixel art style (weight 0.04): The game features a 2.5D pixel art style and a horizontal navigation system that works well with the ring-shaped game world.
- Explores social and ethical themes (weight 0.04): The game explores themes of social structure, empathy, and the right to self-determination within the confines of the generation ship's society.
- Dialogues and clues are saved (weight 0.03): Clues are carefully preserved and used in interrogation, and all dialogues are saved and can be reviewed later, aiding in the investigation process.
- Varied and complex puzzles (weight 0.03): Puzzles involve breaking down timelines, attributes, visual elements, and math, and cases vary, requiring figuring out locations, timing, or other variations, not just apprehending suspects. Quests include determining a server's location by pinging from different locations and a quest involving medicine.
- Dynamic, logically designed world (weight 0.02): The game world is logically designed and reacts to the story's progression, creating a dynamic and immersive environment.
- Solve cases with evidence (weight 0.02): Choices depend on information found through investigation. If the answer to the case is known, it can be solved immediately with evidence without investigation.
- Keyboard controls, unique interface (weight 0.02): The game primarily uses keyboard controls and features a unique interface where dialogue topics replace the traditional inventory system.
- Favors provide additional clues (weight 0.01): Doing favors for other characters can provide additional clues, encouraging players to engage with the game's social dynamics.
- Fast travel available (weight 0.01): Fast travel is available on the map by clicking on a specific room, which helps mitigate the tedium of traversing the large ship.
- Limited, rigid interaction (weight 0.01): Interaction is limited and somewhat rigid, mainly consisting of visiting locations and talking to people.

Performance notes:
- Solid performance, Steam Deck verified (weight 0.05): The game generally exhibits solid performance, with multiple reviewers specifically noting smooth gameplay on the Steam Deck in both handheld and docked modes. Some reviewers reported no performance issues at all.
- Minor technical issues exist (weight 0.03): The game has some minor technical issues. These include a rare instance of freezing during a cutscene, as well as some small flaws and bugs like typos and imperfect menu navigation. Some of these issues have already been addressed.

Recommendations:
- Strongly recommended for genre fans (weight 0.55): Many reviewers recommend the game, especially to fans of detective, sci-fi, and narrative-driven games. Some suggest it's best for those who enjoy the developer's previous title, Lacuna. The game is often praised for its engaging story, intriguing cases, and meaningful choices.
- Consider price relative to content (weight 0.25): Some reviewers suggest that the game might not be worth the full price due to its length or amount of content. They recommend waiting for a sale or considering the game's short length when making a purchase decision.
- Simple detective work (weight 0.23): The game is recommended as a visual novel+ for those wanting a short sci-fi story, but not for those expecting a challenging detective game with plot twists.
- Not universally recommended (weight 0.13): Some reviewers do not recommend the game due to issues like bugs, translation errors, a weak plot, or a feeling that it doesn't live up to its potential. Some reviewers suggest that the game is only worth buying on sale.
- Compared to the game 'Lacuna' (weight 0.11): Several reviews compare this game to the developer's previous title, Lacuna. While some feel it's a worthy successor or even better, others find it inferior in terms of polish and gameplay. This comparison is a key factor in their recommendation.
- Improve evidence system organization (weight 0.05): Several reviewers suggest improvements to the evidence system. They propose features like categorizing evidence by character, item, case, or timeline, and allowing players to draw their own conclusions by assigning evidence to cases.
- Narrative adventure with branching story (weight 0.02): The game is a narrative adventure where players talk to people, investigate, and explore. The story continues regardless of the player's success in the investigation, but the ending may vary.
- Play the free demo (weight 0.02): The game has a demo available, which reviewers suggest playing.
- Improve side mission failure (weight 0.01): The game should fail the side mission for having too much time go by rather than to have time frozen and all progress halt because there was a single mention of the next thing to do that was scrolled by other interactions.
- Emotional statement (weight 0.01): This point shows signs of review bombing. The reviewer uses emotional language without specific details.
- Game of the year (weight 0.01): This point shows signs of review bombing. The reviewer uses hyperbolic claims without evidence.

Other player notes:
- Automatic saves, branched plot (weight 0.03): The game uses an autosave system without manual saving or chapter select. The plot is branched, encouraging multiple playthroughs despite the lack of save control.
- Hybrid 2.5D art style (weight 0.03): The game features a hybrid 2.5D art style, combining pixelated character sprites with 3D environments. One reviewer suggests adding a film grain filter to improve the visual style.
- Simplistic political expression (weight 0.02): The game contains political content, but its expression is less mature than its predecessor, presenting a simplistic view of dictatorship versus democracy. The game facilitates democratic reforms without violence, but power remains with the original elite.
- Ethics committee's role unclear (weight 0.01): The game mentions an ethics committee, but the player never interacts with them, leaving their role and influence unclear. This lack of presence may detract from the game's world-building and narrative coherence.
- Endings lack uniqueness (weight 0.01): The game's endings feel too similar to each other, diminishing the impact of player choices. This suggests a need for more distinct and meaningful consequences based on player actions.
- Enhanced exploration over Lacuna (weight 0.01): The game shares qualities with Lacuna, but its open nature enhances exploration and detective gameplay. This comparison highlights the game's strengths in providing a more expansive and engaging investigative experience.
- Investigating community destabilization (weight 0.01): The story centers around investigating events that threaten the stability of the community. This suggests a narrative focused on uncovering secrets and resolving conflicts within the game's setting.
- Repetitive soundtrack (weight 0.01): The soundtrack is considered pleasant, but becomes repetitive over time. This suggests a need for more variety in the music to maintain player engagement.
- Stella: head of security (weight 0.01): The player character is Stella, who inherits the position of head of security. This provides context for the player's role and responsibilities within the game's narrative.

Emotions:
No emotions}