Beyond the Long Night is an incredibly odd game. You play as a little dude that can wear different hats, and those hats can change the gameplay a little bit, but you have to unlock them to wear them. You don’t walk in this game, but instead fly around on a handful of balloons that offer perfect aerial control, allowing you to fly through the air and shoot at the various denizens of caves and temples that are trying to stop you reaching the surface.
Each enemy is a threat, but the world around you is frequently trying to kill you too. There are spike traps that deploy with frightening efficiency, and corridors lined with a mix of timed and proximity-based turrets to try and work your way through. Beyond the Long Night doesn’t want you to succeed, possibly ever, and will throw all manner of things at you as you try and make your way up.
The good news is that there are plenty of upgrades to find, and while one upgrade is good, the real power comes from finding and combining as many as possible. Your initially straight and boring shots can eventually end up wobbling around manically, firing at triple the normal pace, and setting everything they touch ablaze for more damage, and also to clear the way of painful thorns.
You also have a dodge that can be upgraded via some of these items, and superpowers like long-range laser attacks, or shields made up of little ghosts to use. The control scheme is simple and easy to grasp, the enemies are rarely surprising as such, but generally get you if you’re being careless, or just because there are a lot of them in a single room. Make no mistake though, you’re going to die while playing this, and you’re going to die a lot, because it’s incredibly hard.
The things that drive you forward are a mix of that “one more go” feeling that so many roguelikes rely on, and also an interesting bunch of characters you can stumble across in each journey. They all have stories to tell, and talking to them or giving them certain things can help progress all of their tales. It’s a fun way of giving the game some overarching progression, but things can feel sluggish at times when you’ve been hounded by auto-firing turrets too many runs in a row.
Beyond the Long Night is a fascinating game with a lot of difficulty to overcome, and there are plenty of fun systems to play with. It also has the “god run” thing that keeps a lot of roguelikes alive, because getting enough power-ups can have you feeling untouchable right up until the point you mistime a dodge and get skewered by a mix of giant bees and spike traps. It’s undoubtedly fun, but the difficulty curve could be a little bit too much for some.
