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Beyond Galaxyland is a 2.5D adventure RPG with a sci-fi setting. The game follows the tale of Doug, who has been taken from Earth and placed on an artificial planet by a mega-corporation. The player then must guide Doug through Galaxyland (a galaxy of artificial planets) and help him find his way back to Earth to find out just what has become of it. The visuals are pixelated in nature, but there's a mix of modern visual techniques in there, too, such as dynamic shadows, depth of field, and other visual niceties. It all blends well. And the game runs great on the Steam Deck.

What is Beyond Galaxyland?
This is a question that I didn't know the answer to before playing! Having just glanced at the game when being offered to play it, I thought Beyond Galaxyland was a platforming adventure. While there are platforming elements to this game, and it's definitely an "adventure," the core game itself is an RPG, with turn-based battle elements, leveling up, equipment, and a party system in place.
Long story short, an "infection" has reached Earth, and a mega-corporation has "rescued" you and other selected humans from the planet, and relocated you to a planet created by this mega-corporation, many other alien races have had the same thing happen to them. It's now up to our protagonist, Doug, and his now-sentient Guinea Pig, Boom Boom, to figure out what this infection is, what are the true aims of this mega-corporation, and if Earth is even still around! Travel across different planets terraformed by the corporation, and see if you can discover the truth!
I think this story is the highlight of the game for me, and it makes me eager to see just what is the twist in this game, and who are your real friends and foes.

What follows is an epic and often humorous adventure through space, as Doug meets new friends and foes in his quest to find his way back home.
How Does Beyond Galaxyland Play?
Beyond Galaxyland feels pretty nice to play. It has platforming elements and controls like one, allowing you to jump, double jump, and move into the foreground and background at times to advance.
In the platforming sections, there are occasional puzzles, although they are generally fairly simple. Plus, I did notice that after a few tries of a puzzle, I got the option to skip it. I'm not sure if this is the case for all the puzzles, but it is nice that if you're here for an RPG/Story and not a puzzle game, it isn't forced upon you.

Battles are handled in a typical turn-based fashion, like earlier Final Fantasy games or a Mario RPG would play, even down to being able to attack an enemy in the "overworld" before entering a battle scene to get the first hit in.
Once in combat, you are presented with your usual options, a basic attack, abilities, and inventory to use tonics (potions) and other items. However, we also can "summon" a creature here. In what is a bit of a twist compared to other games in the genre, you can capture creatures that you encounter in battle, gaining the ability to summon them in later battles and use their special abilities to your advantage.


Much like the games in the Mario RPG series, there are timed elements here, too; if an enemy attacks you, the better you time pressing the A button when their attack hits you, the less damage you will take. Likewise, when attacking an enemy, you hit the A button to make your attack each time, depending on how many turn points you have left. These things aren't necessary for the game, but you can often feel a bit detached in turn-based games, which helps keep you engaged with what's going on.
Finally, at a certain point in the game, you gain access to a ship, which allows you to leave your "designated" planet, and explore other planets, intended for aliens, this opens up a much more diverse set of environments, as well as a bunch of more content for you to explore!

Beyond Galaxyland feels tactile and responsive. It utilizes vibration feedback to good effect and uses visual effects to enhance what's happening on the screen. It also has a unique soundtrack that often hovers in the background, adding to the ambiance.
How Does it Perform on the Steam Deck?
Beyond Galaxyland runs pretty well on the Steam Deck. There aren't too many graphical settings, but they offer some flexibility. If you want to run at 60 FPS with all the visual bells and whistles, you can run it fairly stably with an 11W TDP Limit. The main time I noticed drops was in the hub area. But generally, the frame rate held quite well.



If you want to save battery life, then you can disable Depth of Field and Motion Blur, then lock the game to 30 FPS and lower the TDP Limit to 5W, and it plays just fine.

At times, the game drops from 60 (to around 40) if you have all the graphical settings enabled, even if you run at 15W TDP. I noticed this most often when around areas with water reflections. Fortunately, frame drops aren't a huge deal in a game of this style, so I could easily ignore them until I moved to an area without reflections.
The controls are excellent, with the developer recommending that you use a controller to play the game, and I have no complaints as far as the game controls.
Of course, Beyond Galaxyland hasn't launched yet, so these performance figures are subject to change.
When Can I Try Beyond Galaxyland?
Beyond Galaxyland was at the last Steam Next Fest, offering a demo to everyone at the time. Hopefully, this means a future demo is likely on or near the game's release. Although no release date is stated on the Steam store page, at the end of the demo we were given to preview the game, it mentions that Beyond Galaxyland is planned to release this year, 2024.

It's hard to gauge how long the full game of Beyond Galaxyland will be but to give you an idea; my demo had about 2-2.5 hours of main story content, which can be extended if you do the side quests available in the game. Given that the demo ended when I was level 6, and you can level up far beyond that, plus there's a New Game+ option, I imagine there will be tens of hours of content in the full game of Beyond Galaxyland.
Beyond Galaxyland is a game to keep an eye on, and fans of turn-based RPGs backed up with an intriguing story should be in for a good time with this one. Worth a wish list for sure!
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