I love mystery games. It’s no secret that one of my absolute favourite games is the Case of the Golden Idol, specifically because of how thoroughly it allows me to use my rusty old logic pipes. I like being able to deduce an answer, and actually have to think about why that is the answer. It’s fun, it’s satisfying, and it brings me joy.

But this is not the Case of the Golden Idol. This is Between Horizons, and oh lord, is it not Case of the Golden Idol.

logic

Between Horizons is a sci-fi detective story set aboard an interstellar spaceship. You play as Stella, the head of security, as she investigates increasingly disruptive activities which threaten to derail the ship’s journey to a new planet and a new home for those on board.

As a result of the game being a 2.5D projection, the vast majority of its puzzles are word games, asking players to look at a series of phrases and sus out the solution. While I took very few screenshots so as not to spoil solutions for later players, one example of this style of word puzzle might be that, given four numbers that equal 18, with each of the two sets of numbers having an equal sum as the other set, find the four numbers. Others are like the puzzle depicted in the above screenshot - they require a bit of attention, but once the question being asked is clear, so is the solution. Puzzling and tricksy, these ain’t.

This makes the third style of puzzle feel frustrating in comparison. Stella is, as previously mentioned, a detective, and part of how she solves mysteries is through interrogating witnesses and gathering evidence. Various pieces of evidence from around the ship can be shown to certain characters, prompting them to tell Stella what she needs to know. Despite this being a narrative game, however, and despite there being an active attempt to undermine ship leadership and Stella herself, this process of evidence gathering is never particularly difficult. Everyone, when confronted with a random pill bottle or an observation about their mother, will immediately spill their guts about the ship’s resistance movement. No one lies. No one obfuscates. Evidence is clearly labelled as important and the context within which it’s important. The hardest part of the game is remembering where the person Stella is meant to show the evidence to is, and which of the little faces in the evidence book is them.

Between Horizons is a mystery game, yes, but the mystery isn’t the ship sabotage. The mystery is instead why so much of this game seems to be apologia for autocracy, and especially the abuse of power by police.

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos begets chaos. Instability begets instability."

One of the key elements of Between Horizons is that the choices Stella makes throughout the story are meaningful and shape its outcome. This ranges from consequences if Stella solves a case incorrectly to story moments where Stella can choose how to respond.

This is not a new system, and there are many, many narrative games to the point that, short of walking simulators, I’d argue there’s an expectation on the part of the players that they be able to shape the narrative. It allows for better immersion, and for the players to feel as if their actions are more broadly meaningful rather than meaningful solely to them. However, for this choices matter element to feel effective, the choices need to be actual choices, meaning the player has to feel as if they have shaped the character in such a way that a choice is reasonable. There must be RPG elements, however small, for choices to actually matter.

Between Horizons faces two fundamental problems with making a choices matter system work. The first is that some of its choices are based on how the game’s puzzles are solved. Given that they are very simple puzzles, inputting any solution except the right one is the result of an active choice on the part of the player. That there are achievements for consistently providing the correct solution disincentivises answering the puzzles wrong, but more generally, the point of a mystery game is to solve the mystery. Asking the player to not solve the mystery when mysteries are the heart of the game fundamentally misunderstands what draws people to the genre in the first place.

That said, players could still make the choice to intentionally provide an incorrect solution. The problem here is that there’s no reason to do so. As much as the game advertises that players have a choice, the reality is that, short of self-sabotage, there’s no reason to ever make these choices.

This screenshot looks great as a thumbnail, by the way.

While I don’t generally comment on the length of a game, since how each player experiences that time varies widely, in the case of Between Horizons, the length is very much indicative of the general lack of development of the narrative. Over the course of three hours, the player is introduced to a setting and its context, dozens of characters, a bivvy of locations, and a story about trying to undermine everything the player just learned. It’s a dizzying amount of information to convey, and the consequence of trying to do so is that none of it gets anywhere near the development it needs to actually be compelling. Each of the characters the player meets are barely more than faces on a screen. Locations never become familiar, instead being navigable solely as spaces on a map. Characters are constantly moving between story beats, making the world feel fundamentally inaccessible and alien. The only characters with whom Stella interacts are those that she can find or that actively tell her to talk to them, which, given that one of the parties is actively hiding from her, means the only position she’s ever really given a chance to interact with is the status quo of the autocratic regime.

When a choice springs up two hours into the game, then, Stella hasn’t developed as a character. No one has. While the incentive to overturn the status quo may be obvious to me as an outside observer, within the world of the ship, it’s even more obvious the harm doing so would cause. There is no incentive for the choice to actually be a choice - there is a right answer and a wrong answer, and nothing more.

And while the game makes it clear the player should choose democracy, that’s not the reality the game’s story is telling. While characters players barely know yell about democracy, everything in their actions and the greater context shows that ultimately, the correct answer is autocracy.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Between Horizons wants to be a narrative game, but asks the player to do all the legwork in making its narrative satisfying. It wants to be a mystery game, but provides mysteries that are trivial while also asking the player to botch their solutions just to see what different ending they get. It wants to be a game of depth and meaning, when ultimately, most of its playtime is spent scouring rooms to find the one person you’re meant to show the one clue to to actually progress the story.

There’s so much here that could have been good. The setting is excellent, and the look and feel of the game are good fits for that setting. It’s in its execution, however, that Between Horizons utterly misunderstands how to achieve what it’s trying to achieve and be an actual story. It wants players to make decisions about the future of humanity, while offering no incentive for them to ever do so.

Developer: DigiTales Interactive
Genre: Narrative
Year: 2024
Country: Germany
Language: English
Time to complete: 3 hours
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/Skf64bEritA