Beyond Galaxyland Review

Beyond Galaxyland is a classic fish-out-of-water story, with combined inspirations of Star Wars and Final Fantasy. While the Star Wars inspirations are clear throughout, from Doug and Boom Boom’s outfits, and massive Land Walkers on the snow-filled planet Arcos, but all those RPG elements? The turn-based combat? The elemental abilities? The intense boss fights? All of those are clear homages to Final Fantasy, and I absolutely adored it.

Now, when I was drafting this up, I wrote a lot about the story. However, in order to prevent this from being a massive spoiler-filled review — honestly, there’s so much to talk about in terms of story, but I like to keep some secrets, so I’ll stick to the main beats here. Although, there will still be some spoilers, so keep that in mind while reading this. I’ll try to not reveal too much.

But, let’s set the scene first. While our prologue takes place in the future, our main story begins in the present day, following two teenagers, Doug and Rosie. These two friends have made their way home from school, and Doug is excited to show off his pet guinea pig, Boom Boom, to Rosie. Rosie is equally excited, and Doug’s parents are frustrated with their son for letting his pet run loose while he’s not home. Doug is not to be deterred, but nonetheless, promises to keep a closer eye on him. Promising to be back in a minute, it’s safe to say, Doug will never be back at all.

At this point in time, a mysterious planet-destroying disease known as The End has already started on Earth. Terrified, Doug and Boom Boom flee one of the infected, and find themselves sent through a portal to Galaxyland. Galaxyland is essentially a cluster of man-made planets that are controlled by a company known as DreamCore, which is controlled by Queen Zero. While Doug has been restrained to prevent him from reacting badly, Boom Boom has been put through a Converter, turning him into a super-intelligent giant guinea pig, with a Han Solo-like outfit. Naturally, the poor little guy is absolutely traumatised by this change in events.

The two of them are sent over to the planet Erros, but more than anything, Doug wants to get home. He wants to save the Earth and see his parents again, thus, it’s become his main motivation. Both Doug and Boom Boom are joined by a DreamCore bot known as MartyBot, who is great for providing both exposition and as a tutorial feature. Sent to a jungle planet filled with dinosaurs and other creatures, as well as other humans, Doug soon is sent on errands and catches the attention of a space terrorist known as The Malefactor. Of course, that’s not his only ally.

Doug is also joined by Meela, a young genius who manages to get a spaceship up and running so they can hopefully get to Earth. He’s also joined by his old friend, Rosie, who was also sent to Galaxyland, but unlike Doug, she arrived earlier due to time-space shenanigans. And of course, who can forget Pablo? Pablo is a mysterious lizard-man who is quite agreeable if I do say so myself. With all of these allies, Doug and the others basically travel all around Galaxyland, where each planet has its own ecosystem, fauna, and unique creatures living on each one.

So, let’s just talk about the planets quickly, specifically the ones in Galaxyland. We have Neo, which is something of a capital city. Full of neon lights and a cyberpunk aesthetic, it’s essentially a wretched hive of scum and villainy. We then have Arcos, an icy planet where the aforementioned Landwalkers are, it also includes possibly my favourite side quest. Without spoiling too much, think of a combination of Alien and Jurassic Park, with a healthy dose of murder mystery thrown in. As mentioned before, we have the jungle-like Erros, and we’ve also got Crystalis, which feels straight out of a fantasy world. There’s also Juno, which you won’t be able to access until you’ve upgraded your ship at the races, which is being orbited by the Juno Zolom, a clear homage to the Midgar Zolom of Final Fantasy VII, and equally terrifying. Getting to that abandoned mining facility wasn’t easy, let me tell you.

Of course, you can also explore outside of Galaxyland in Beyond Galaxyland; hence the name. Once you steal a warp drive, as Doug quickly finds himself in a life of crime, you can input coordinates to travel to places like an intergalactic race track. There are two different types of races you can take part in. There are the bike races, where Boom Boom pilots a bike and has to avoid obstacles, all while managing to get past the other racers, and the ship races, where Boom Boom pilots the ships around a course in either time trials or in a circuit. These are without a doubt, a lot of fun.

I’m glad the developers warned players that you would need a controller to play Beyond Galaxyland, as I would definitely struggle with a mouse and keyboard. While my PlayStation 5 controller wasn’t perfect on it, as it hasn’t been fully optimised with the game, that didn’t cause too much of an issue. Sure, the button inputs weren’t accurate, but once I knew which one was which, it wasn’t a problem. There was only one moment early on when I was trying to press the right trigger to attack a baby velociraptor, where I had to unplug the controller and find out which button I had to press on the keyboard. No buttons worked, but that was legitimately the only blip that I had.

When it comes to combat, you’ve got a classic turn-based RPG system, with a quick-time button to defend from your enemies. Timing is everything there, and I wasn’t always the best at it, but that was because you had to pay attention to the enemy’s animation. Before entering most battles, you can scan a creature by taking a photo of it by holding the left trigger, and then pushing the right trigger. These will allow you to know how much health each will have. But that’s not all. See, you can also trigger this ability in battle, but it will use up AP. You only get a certain amount of AP each turn, and you can gain more by successfully hitting your opponent, defending, or just outright ending your turn without doing anything. Conserving AP is important, as, clearly inspired by Pokémon and other monster-catching games, Doug can use his AP to Capture enemies to then use as Summons. Of course, some enemies can’t be caught, but these will have a specific icon in the corner if that’s the case. Personally, I was just excited that I could catch a Giant Sloth; that’s right.

Of course, there are also the usual features such as crafting items, looking for Tokens, and learning which element is weak to which. But hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me just explain the Tokens quickly. Around Galaxyland, you’ll find some Tokens that will have Boom Boom’s profile printed on them. Using Boom Boom’s gun (yes, the robots gave the guinea pig a gun, and he can get a rocket launcher!), you can shoot targets by switching to Boom Boom with the L1 button, and you can collect 16 in total. With these, you can unlock creatures to battle in the Battle Arena on the Casino Ship, where you can earn two items. One by using Steal, an ability that both Rosie and Pablo have, and another by outright defeating the enemy in the arena. If you think you can use this area to farm EXP, then Beyond Galaxyland has already thought ahead. You can only gain EXP the first time you’re victorious.

Now, it’s not just the combat, but the platforming and puzzle elements are fun too. I particularly liked how developer, Sam Enright, included a Skip Puzzle option if you’ve not solved it after a number of tries. While I didn’t use this function, I was glad it was there, as if you’re not good at platforming or puzzles, it does offer more accessibility. While the puzzles and platforms were challenging, they were of the fun variety, so I couldn’t complain. In fact, one feature I particularly liked was how later, in the casino, I could control Boom Boom to traverse the vents to unlock the tripwires that I had to get past. These offered a good challenge, as you had to dodge the security cameras and disable the tripwires while also getting past the internal tripwires in the vents.

There’s plenty of freedom in the side quests, and you can always go back to them by reloading your save before you enter the final boss fight. Oh, before I forget, Beyond Galaxyland has no autosave settings. So, if you mess up, you can always return to a specific save point. You can have multiple save files. Of course, the only save files I have are from my first playthrough, and for New Game +. In New Game +, you start over from the beginning, but you carry all the items, summons, equipment and photos over to that one. You can also make it more challenging for you as well in the options, but the only downside is that New Game + won’t give you the option to skip cutscenes, aside from the prologue, which was a bit of a bummer. This was a little frustrating, but more for those who don’t like cutscenes. Personally, I didn’t mind too much, as I have to admit, the story is delightfully done.

Each character has their own distinct voice, and there is a lot of comedy and heart to everyone! Doug is realistic in how he responds to his trauma, while he cries a fair bit at first, this only makes sense, as he is dragged from his home to an entirely new area. Boom Boom doesn’t speak until later, and when he does, he’s just a Boom Boom trying to get through his life! Rosie spends a good deal of time in bed when she finds out what happens to Earth, and Malefactor is a Space Karen who can throw terms and conditions around, driving bots insane, and yet, we, the player, don’t know whether we can trust him because no one else does!

Honestly, I don’t think I can recommend Beyond Galaxyland enough. I’ve adored this experience so much, and it really brought me back to the old days. With beautiful pixel graphics, some catchy tunes in the soundtrack, and creative environments that I had so much fun exploring, I think that this really is a game for everyone. There’s heart, soul, and a lot of love that’s gone into Beyond Galaxyland, and it brought me on a nostalgia trip that I just couldn’t help but love.

Plus, Boom Boom is one of the best mascot characters I’ve ever seen in games. This guinea pig isn’t afraid to blow things up and commit crimes to save Doug, and I love him for it.