Beyond the Invisible: Darkness Came Reviews

I do enjoy HOGs and I find them quite relaxing. Beyond the Invisible: Darkness Came (I'm not sure why they all have these nonsense compound titles) is no exception with a pleasant supernatural plot, a nice atmosphere, and mildly engaging puzzles that will keep your mind sharp without punishing you. However there is only about 5 actual hidden object scenes in the whole game (including the bonus chapter) so might find it a teeny bit disappointing in this regard. There are no trading cards included but there are 15 trophies and even if you finish the game on hardest difficulty the lesser achievements are not stacked (which is very annoying) so you'll have to play through it all over again to win them. I was happy at 12/15 and left it at that. There's quite a lot of spelling mistakes too, so I'm assuming it was translated into English was developed by a non-Anglo team.

Intresting and challenging puzzle game. But i swear, if id get a cent for every time this dude says "Hells Bells!" id be a millionaire

There were maybe three interesting and fun puzzles to solve here, the rest is a slog. The voice acting is actually really good, but the english translations they had to read are just embarrasing and to be honest after an hour or so it becomes agrivating to hear speech butchered like that. Worst offence of all is that at the very end of the game.. seriously like second to last screen.. there is puzzle where you have to arrange paintings in a certain order but the game freaking bugged out on me and even though I have the pictures in the right order (looked it up) it won't go through as solved. I play on hardest difficulty in these games which means no skips which means that's it.. can't finish now. I'd have to start over on lower difficulty and yeah... no thanks. I watched the ending on youtube so at least I got that. Anyway, this is a solid pass from me, not even worth it for free to be honest.. there's just too many annoyances to recommend pushing through this thing even for free.

Barely any puzzles, some of the solutions for 'furthering the story' are downright silly (I figured them out but from a logical point it's... just dumb and makes you shake your head like wtf). The story was as much as you'd expect from a hidden find game, so nothing surprising there; anddddd like others have mentioned there's a barely any hidden find puzzles in this or puzzles at all. I couldn't get the tutorial achievement to even pop up too, gave it multiple tries and just gave up. tldr; Not very puzzley, hidden find like, or anything worth while. Buy another game, there are better ones.

You must play through three times to complete the difficulty achievements - it should be once if you play on the highest difficulty. You must delete your profile (and create an new one) before playing it again on a different difficulty - that is stupid, You must play the bonus game too (a little over halfway through anyway) to unlock the Careful Seeker III achievement. Fairly short for a HOG. The story is ok; the art is good. There are very few HOPs and mini-games.

It's a decent HOG but I can't exactly recommend it because of what I perceived to be moon logic and bad game design. Moon logic if you're unfamiliar is when it seems basically illogical for that to be the solution.. There were several instances in this game where I didn't see any remote connection to why that would work and I literally just tried every item i had on it until it worked and I was like "WHAT?! That couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't even work but OK, game, moving on..." Another issue I had with the game is things in the environment you would think would be it, weren't it UNTIL an event was triggered. Like my brain was like "ok this must be the place.. oh.. I can't interact with it.." then you do some other stuff and get stuck... turns out I was right the first time but it was locked behind some event trigger or something.. and I can't say it was a glitch because it happened several times throughout the game. I know some older HOGs used to do that but I don't like it personally because in my head im telling myself "don't bother clicking on that house because you already tried it and it didn't work" .. oh but NOW it works because the storyline wants you there or something.. just gives us the option to go there even though it's locked right now, we'll know we have to come back later, HOGs do this all the time. Those are my main complaints about it. I liked it generally speaking but those issues could be deal breakers and I couldn't recommend it in good conscience knowing that someone might get frustrated with it. My favorite part is at the end when you go to Alfheim, if you will. I wish there was a whole series of games set in an Elven kingdom like that, it was gorgeous and magical and stimulated my imagination in wonderful ways and I loved it. That is all.

I'm not sure how I managed to finished this game in 2022. Because there are achievements lacking, I decided to play it again. Upon starting the game, I discovered that there is no way to change the difficulty level and the tutorial ended abruptly, so no achievements for either of those. The box with the ampules (match the pairs) must be bugged as nothing is active to pick up, hindering further progression. So, if you are someone who likes to 100% achievements, give this one a pass.

This is one of those games that really needs a "so-so" rating instead of a positive or negative. I'd put it around a 5 or 6/10. First off, if you're an achievement hunter, bear in mind you will have to finish the game THREE times to get them all, as there are achievements for finishing the game in each of the three difficulty modes, and I've read that finishing in Expert mode does not unlock the "lesser" difficulty achievements. It's my understanding that starting a new profile allows you to choose a different difficulty level for the next playthrough. Translation is a little off, although I've noticed that the English voice acted lines are slightly different and "cleaner" in translation than the translated subtitles. I didn't run into anything egregious, translation-wise, and I found the "Americanisms" and slang kind of endearing, honestly. (Hell's Bells! lol) The gameplay is pretty basic HOG/puzzle style although the gameplay progression isn't always the most intuitive. Using the hint button outside of the HO scenes and minigames will not affect your achievements, however, so there's an "out" if you're getting irritated. The story itself isn't awful although I felt like there was a lot of imagery that was very strongly "borrowed" from Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (especially the hint button itself, goodness. You'll know it when you see it.) The story itself doesn't feel like a copypasta, though, so I found it engaging enough. Overall, I got this for $2.49 on sale and I don't feel like it was a waste of a couple bucks for two hours or so of gameplay. I'll eventually go back and play through again for the last two difficulty-level achievements and the idea doesn't make me nauseated or anything. However, if you're very attached to the higher-budget and higher-quality Artifex Mundi and similar games, you may be annoyed or impatient with this one. If that's the case, put it on the back burner until you've exhausted the current supply of HOGs out there!

Beyond the Invisible: Darkness Came is a breathtaking game with challenging puzzles. The story-line takes you to a mysterious city and world where you have to find out what happened. The characters have a good voice-over and have a unique art style that fits well with the hidden object game. I give this game an 8 out of 10!

I am a little hesitating with the negative here, but there’s no neutral and I can’t recommend this game. Most of all, it is frustrating and coarse, some of the objects have to be clicked right there in the single pixel, some of the items are not clickable, but after you do something else in other location they become clickable, have fun walking around searching. Next, the objectives, the items you use, some of the puzzles are not logical at all, like putting the toy crane on the top of the building to take something of… tiny tiny plastic toy crane. So, when you are done walking around pointlessly and wondering how an umbrella is supposed to fight off the wolves, you have time to listen to the music. One third of the game an alarm siren is giving you a headache, and then battle horns take over, prepare aspirin. The good thing I can say about the game is the idea of “comic noir style” cut scenes, but again, only few of them are done in this style and the inconsistency is bugging me. The map is useless to be honest, nothing is marked there and you need to guess which location is which. It’s not even good for the achievements collectors as you need to play the game 3 times on every level of difficulty to get 100%. I’ve finished the whole game just to write a justified review, skip this one, there are much better HOPA games out there.