Sep 08, 2015 Beyond Eyes tells the story of a young girl who was tragically blinded by a fireworks accident one summer night. After her unfortunate accident, Rae, now blind, befriends an orange stray cat named Nani. Their meeting is short-lived, however and Nani moves on.
Easy 'Adventure' achievementIn Chapter 4, after feeding the seagulls, turnaround and go back to the bridge. While on the bridge, you can interact with the flowers on the right side. This will cause a cutscene where Rae will pick some flowers and drop them in the stream.
After the cutscene, proceed over the bridge, and stay to the left wall. You will reach an open gate. Go through it and over the bridge you saw in the cutscene, and interact with the flowers that are stuck on the rock to the side of the bridge to get the 'Adventure' achievement.
Easy 'Attraction' achievementCollect all five butterflies in Chapter 6 to get the 'Attraction' achievement. They are found in the following locations:Butterfly 1: This is near the start of the chapter. Follow the train tracks to the end, turn 90 degrees right, and walk forward slightly to your right to find it near two tree stumps.Butterfly 2: This is by B1. Follow the tree line from the right side of the tracks to get it just before reaching the stream.Butterfly 3: After you exit from the tunnel, stay to the right wall, and keep following it along the trees/bushes to find it.Butterfly 4: Keep following the same path from B3 to reach some train tracks.
The butterfly is by the logs on the opposite side of the tracks.Butterfly 5: After crossing the stepping stones, go left until you hit a wall. Turn to the left, and follow the wall until you reach a metal fence. Turn left again to reach an opening in the fence. Go through it to find the final butterfly.
Easy 'Bravery' achievementAt the end of Chapter 3, after you climb over a fence, a dog will scare you and you will be forced to move backwards, eventually making you trip and fall. Once you get back up, simply interact with the dog to get the 'Bravery' achievement. Easy 'Courage' achievementIn Chapter 2, after you see the scarecrow and cross the fence, stay to the right, and you will come across a pen with a cow. Simply walk around the pen and pick up some flowers, then interact with the cow. You will drop the flowers. Pick some more flowers, and give them to the cow again to get the 'Courage' achievement. Easy 'Lonely' achievementIn Chapter 3, you will meet Lily, who will ask you to get a ball for her.
Follow the fence on the right side of the path to enter the park. The first thing you will reach is a roundabout. To the right of it is the swing set.
Simply interact with the swing to get the 'Lonely' achievement. Easy 'Persistence' achievementIn Chapter 2, after you see the scarecrow and cross the fence, stay to the left, and you will come across a bridge. Go over the bridge, and you will see some crows. Move towards them, and they will turn into chickens. Open the pen, get behind a chicken, and guide it over the bridge to get the 'Persistence' achievement. Easy 'Thoughtful' achievementIn Chapter 4, while walking through the streets, Rae will notice there is bread close. Pick it up, and proceed along the path.
Once you walk over a bridge, turn right, go through a gate, and walk along the stream until you see the ducks. Interact with them to get the 'Thoughtful' achievement. AchievementsAccomplish the indicated achievement to get the corresponding number of Gamerscore points:Closure (200 points): Complete your journey.Additionally, there are nine secret achievements:Courage (80 points): Feed the cow by hand. Imagination (200 points): Find all Nani experiences.
Truth (100 points): Discover everything's true identity. Persistence (80 points): Get a chicken across the bridge. Bravery (60 points): Overcome your fear of the dog. Attraction (80 points): Collect all 5 butterflies. Thoughtful (60 points): Feed the ducks. Lonely (60 points): Sit on the swing.
Adventure (80 points): Follow and free the flower.
This whimsical and original game mimics the disorientating effects of blindness, but fails to build meaningfully on its initial idea.
One summer Rae, a blind girl of around seven years old, strikes up a friendship with a local stray, whom she names Nani. Each day the cat stretches through the bars of an iron gate into Rae's idyllic garden, and the pair plays among the butterflies and daisies. The relationship blossoms, and Rae, for whom no friends come knocking, nor any parent appears to break their routine, comes to rely on Nani for company and comfort. Then, one day, Nani doesn't show up. Rae, who constructs a bright mental image of the world around her entirely by sound and touch, imagining, for example, the whereabouts of a motorcar from the dirty noise of its engine, or a tree from its autumn rustle, decides to head outside of the garden in search of the cat. Beyond Eyes shares, then, a goal with many other video games. It is a rescue mission in the Super Mario tradition, a grand fetch quest, albeit one viewed through a completely unfamiliar lens: disability.
Beyond Eyes
- Publisher: Team17 Digital
- Developer: Tiger & Squid
- Reviewed on Xbox One, and also available for PC.
As in Sony's The Unfinished Swan, the form of the world around Rae is hidden beneath a whitewash. A sudden sound in the distance (a crow's craw, a toad's croak) will see the creature momentarily burst into existence on the screen, before fading back to white. In all other cases, the world builds and spreads around Rae only as she moves through it, sensing the difference, for example, between the gravel crunch of a path or the lush bounce of grass underfoot, or that acoustic narrowing that happens when you walk from a field to a tunnel. The environment accumulates in a higgledy, foreign logic. You see the crow before the branch on which he sits. You notice the sheep before the bale of hay that separates you both. Washing flicks on the line and springs into being before you catch the posts on which it's suspended. You see the river long before the bridge that will carry you across its tinkle and froth. Beyond Eyes builds its world like a live watercolour painting. The landscape seeps out around Rae's feet in pastel colours as she plods onwards with cautious determination.
At times, Rae's ears play tricks on her. At first she sees fallen branch, scraping along the road. But when she draws closer, it transmutes into its true form: an umbrella. What Rae perceives to be a car from its idling motor and oily scent, turns out to be a lawnmower, pushed in fussy rows by a gardener. These moments provide constant reminders that, while pretty, the world that you see on the screen is also treacherous. A second sense, usually touch, must be consulted before your mind map can be trusted. Even then, some doubt inevitably remains.
Rummaging through the pitch drawers.
There are few puzzles in the game, principally because simply working out where to go next is often challenge enough. Movement through the world is arduous and sluggish. These ponderous animations and seemingly listless controls are, arguably, a function of the fact that Rae is worried she might smack into a wall or fall from a ledge at any moment. But they are nevertheless laborious. Rae chooses not to run, and, as you cannot perceive the world's fence and bush borders till you are adjacent to them, you can often spend a minute walking in what you think is the correct direction, only to have to retrace your steps. Mercifully, once you've filled in the blanks, the landscape remains in place (it doesn't fade away, as you press on) - at least, until it begins to rain later in the game, and the sound of the raindrops wipes away your mind-map, making exploration even more exhausting and somehow unfair.
The results may be abstractly authentic. After walking a mile in Rae's shoes, you emerge with what feels like a truer understanding of what it must be like to wander unfamiliar countryside without sight, or guide. But the game couldn't be described as an enjoyable experience. It may offer a whimsical tribute to the power and companionship of pets, and a powerful insight into the specific anxieties of a blind person in an alien place, but the story of your journey to this conclusion is nevertheless bland and uninspired. Where the game offers the whisper of a puzzle (at one point you have to lure a gang of seagulls from a path in order to progress by finding them food, for example), the designers attempt to mask its straightforwardness simply by sending you on a tortuous route.
Rae, in white-dress with a bow for a buckle and mauve Wellington boots, is delightful, if a little twee - a 19th century-esque exaggeration of an adorable child. She encounters the world around her with enviable joy (she giggles at a frog, exclaims an 'ah!' when knocking her shins into a branch, and even manages to tempt butterflies to follow her around). Her amiability coupled with her disability makes criticising the game in which she stars seem cruel and churlish. And this is, at very least, an interesting project, that will, perhaps, leave players with a better understanding of what it feels to journey without sight. But it is, alas, less worthwhile than it is worthy.