Reigns Beyond review: Swipe right for a pack of laughs

This version of Beyond is actually a port of a 2020 iPhone exclusive available only for Apple Arcade subscribers. Like its progenitor, its card-based swiping feels more suited to quick bursts of play than the longer sessions you might expect for a PC or Switch release.

That’s at least partly because the whimsical plot – you’re co-opted into an intergalactic rock band and travel the heavens looking for gigs – contrives to summarily kill you at frequent intervals. That doesn’t matter as much as you might think, because a swift resurrection as a clone with no loss is always at hand thanks to the sentient AI in the spaceship’s computer who may or may not be your greatest enemy.

Comic tragedy is the stock in trade for the script, which puts you in charge of the band’s spaceship scooting around the galaxy after you accidentally kill the guitarist. But your fellow musicians are the least of your worries given that you encounter a horde of oddballs on your travels, from stowaways to pirates to – most strange of all – a shark-like chap who appoints himself band manager.

Like previous Reigns instalments, the aim of the game is to survive while keeping four gauges – from ship health to crew happiness – from hitting empty due to your actions. The decisions are executed with a binary swipe that can be as simple as choosing Yes or No or as complicated as deciphering which one of two risky options might be best. Sudden death is a rather unfair consequence is some unforeseen cases – who wouldn’t want to be smothered by cuddly space bunnies, though? – but mostly you’re steering the direction of a fairly random narrative.

The developers note that the game features more than 1,700 decision cards – though some lead to the same result no matter what you choose – and more than 60 characters. You will see repetition of scenarios quite quickly but there are many, many branches to the decision tree so it will be a while before you exhaust all possibilities.

You will want to keep playing just for the sheer pleasure of the sharp dialogue – by turns sarcastic and poignant but at its heart drolly funny.

Less successful is the musical aspect that notionally underpins the whole expedition – the tunes at your gigs are pleasant enough but the mini-games that accompany them quickly become tedious.

Reigns: Beyond shows the formula might be running out of legs. But priced at under a fiver it offers plenty of laughs even though it’s more of a game that plays you than you play.