Hands-on with Beyond Eyes: Into the Great Unknown [PAX East]

The idea of being blind terrifies me to no end. In the vast pantheon of Tom Johnson’s fears, it definitely ranks somewhere in the top three, so you could color me equal parts confused and intrigued when I found a game that dealt with that very concept as it’s core conceit.

Developed by Sherida Halatoe and Team 17, Beyond Eyes is a first-person exploration game, much in the same vein as Gone Home. The game has a very basic premise in that you’re playing as a young girl named Rei as she ventures into the scary and unfamiliar outside world in search of her lost cat. Where Beyond Eyes differentiates from other games of its ilk is that Rei is blind, and as such the world around her is strange and unfamiliar.

The world starts off completely white, with only a very small portion of it in your immediate surroundings being filled in. As you make your way through the environment, you sort of “paint” it in. It’s a very simplistic style choice, but it really works for the game, especially when paired with the its watercolor aesthetic.

It was interesting to see how the game toyed with the idea of having you perceive things the way Rei would. In one specific instance, rustling cloth is heard in the distance. Rei, in her sheltered naïveté, fills in the source of the noise in the distance as a clothesline. However, as the source is approached it’s discovered to be the haggard remains of a scarecrow, which startles Rei, altering the soundtrack to give an increased feeling of dread for what lies ahead.

It’s not very often that a game is able to give me anxiety over not knowing what is coming next, but this small, simple experience managed to do it.

Currently the game is slated to come to PC, Mac and Linux in 2015.