the pale beyond
The Pale Beyond should, by all accounts, be a game that is entirely my jam - something that seizes my attention and does not let go. and while there's lots to like about the game, the tug-of-war between story and systems prevents me from loving it. at least, right this second.
You play as first mate on board a 19th century expedition to the Antarctic that, like so many others from history, gets trapped in the ice. quickly your strange little expedition - who is funding it? why search for a lost vessel? why this strange crew? - becomes a game of resource and decorum management as you try to keep the crew healthy, happy, and fed in the face of all the things that can kill you in the polar south: the cold, the sea, the wildlife, the scarcity of food, to say nothing of the cabin fever and infighting.
The Pale Beyond renders all of this really well - not simply beautifully, but with heart. the crew is well-sketched and well-rendered, with distinct personalities for all of your 20-odd crewmates, making up crude sailors, grouchy engineers, movie-star navigators, prickly scientists, and more. the game does a really great job of making everyone memorable, and interesting, and fun to talk with, and it gives you a great range with which you can express yourself as a newcomer to the crew who finds themselves thrust into command.
but the fun of keeping everyone alive frequently butts up into the fun of talking with everyone and figuring out what the game has to offer. and that's fine! failure can be fun -- except that trying new choices and trying to survive a little bit longer carries the tax of experiencing everything you experienced on a given day. every conversation, every interface popup, every calculation.
"oh no, I have to play the game some more!" feels like a trite complaint, but compare with (the admittedly much more polished experience of) Frostpunk, another game about surviving against the twin terrors of cold and societal pressure. Frostpunk gives you a bunch of information in a relatively concise, readable pop-up, and makes the impact of your decisions relatively clear before you make them. you get both the flavor and you get to make an informed choice about what you're doing - even if you wind up choosing something sub-optimal because it fits your current playthrough.
The Pale Beyond sadly pales (sorry) in comparison when it comes to user experience - I can't fast forward through conversations I've already read, or access all of the ships interfaces in one place, or save during a particular part of the day right before a crucial decision. instead I have to replay the whole day as it stands in order to take the other fork in the path and see where it leads me.
I like a lot of what Pale Beyond is trying to do, and I love stories of survival in the hell that is Antarctica - but after 12 hours of trying to survive, I feel mostly tired and ready for something new, rather than wanting to rehash a bunch of stuff I've already seen. I'll probably return to it again sometime in the future, in order to see what the rest of the game has to offer.