Important! This game is completely standalone. No RPG Maker VX RTP is required to play.



Introduction

The Beyond is a freeware survival horror/adventure game created with RPG Maker VX. It is a psuedo sequel to the game One Night, however the story and locations are unrelated to the previous game and this game serves as a stand alone game.
The Beyond is not a normal RPG Maker game. In The Beyond, you find yourself trapped in a "haunted" mansion known as The Beyond, and are soon under attack by a strange, and evil power. Using your brain and your reflexes, you must think and fight your way to safety, solving puzzles and defeating horrifying enemies to make your escape.
In order to escape the terror, you'll first need to understand the cause of the nightmare. Make sure you collect all the clues so that you can understand the fate that has befallen the mansion. But, be careful. You are always in danger, and it is easy to let the fear overwhelm you. Don't give in to the evil.

Story Outline

Mairstone Manor

Also known as The Beyond, this mansion was built in the early 1950's by renowned ex military general and historian Thomas Mairstone.
It is situated in the rural coal mining town of Black Valley in the isolated midwest. The entire town is isolated, being situated in a remote valley, and sorrounded by acres of dense forest. The locals fear The Beyond, and blame it for several disapearances of townspeople, including the mansion's owners, and bizarre phenomena that has been recently occuring in town.

Black Valley

An isolated midwestern mining town founded in the mid 1800's. The town's mining industry has been inactive since the 1920's due to the mines being closed for an undisclosed reason. Black Valley has a population of only 300, only a small fraction of the 1200 people it housed during the mining era.
Reportedly, Black Valley is a center for paranormal activity, with many bizarre incidents being reported each month.

Characters

Two playable characters are featured in The Beyond, each one playing in a different way and having their own unique reasons for being drawn into the mansion. Each character also has their own unique endings. To see all of the game's endings, you'll need to play through as both characters!

John Faraday

An ex police officer turned private detective. John has been hired to investigate the mysterious disapearance of a group of journalists conducting research on the mansion. John has decided to search for clues in the last place the group were known to have visited, and so heads for The Beyond itself.

Sara Wickson

A horror fiction writer seeking inspiration. It's been a while since Sara wrote a big top seller, so in order to gather material to write her next novel, Sara has decided to spend a night in the infamous mansion known as The Beyond.

Game Features

> True fear will take over as you explore the mansion, uncovering the many secrets it holds. Atmospheric graphics and sounds, combined with some genuine psychological engineering will make you feel the ultimate terror.

> A fantastic challenge awaits you, with fiendish puzzles to solve, horrifying enemies to defeat, and two different characters and four endings to experience.

> Streamlined systems such as a health indicator and custom item usage system help you keep track of notes, clues and items.

> Rivetting, tense combat, using the completely customized Decision Proximity Semi Active Battle system (DPSAB) which allows enemies to deal damage based on the direction they strike from, and allows actions performed outside of battle to affect your battle performance.

Screenshots















Download

You can download this game by selecting it from the index on this page and clicking "download now."

http://rpgmaker.net/users/DarkGaia/

Mirror
Additionally, you can download One Night 2 from here:
http://www.filefront.com/16934675/One-Night-2-SEv3.2.exe/

System Requirements

Reccomended System Setting

Windows XP/Vista (Windows 7 untested)

1GB of RAM or higher reccomended

1.5GhZ CPU or faster reccomended

100MB free hard drive space required

DirectDraw compatible graphics card required

MP3 compatible sound card required

Minimum System Setting

Windows 2000/XP/Vista

512MB of RAM or higher

1.2GhZ CPU or faster

100MB free hard drive space required

DirectDraw compatible graphics card required

MP3 compatible sound card required

Final Words

I would like to thank all the fans of my games who have spurred me to create this, as well as all the people who helped me create it in various games, the game would not be the same without you.

If you enjoyed The Beyond or have a question or comment, please post back with some feedback! I love to see feedback, good or bad, so don't feel afraid to share your thoughts on my game. Enjoy!

the screen tone actually looks really good for a horror game, so high five there. I'm a little bored with the fact that every horror game in rm is invariably dark (laying down a lighter screen tone heavy on yellow and brown, for instance, is good at evoking a stuffy and oppressive atmosphere, something I'd like to see more of,) but whatever. I think you have the saturation cranked a little too high in the caves, though; even within that little field-of-vision bubble it's a strain to see detail on the ground.

also I'm happy to hear the word "puzzle" somewhere in the description. pure horror rarely does well in rm; the games that make it make it because they do something interesting beyond the basics. I'm sure you know how pessimistic I am about 2D horror games, but whatever, I'll give it a try.

Hey thanks for the show of interest man. I try hard. I did think myself that the caves were a bit iffy, but in the end I kept them like that as it would cause too much inconsistency to adjust them.

This game's certainly scared players in the past, I hope it can scare you too. And I hope you enjoy the puzzles, get stuck on any and there's answers in the readme file in the game's install directory.

I'm trying to achieve the pure horror formula in RM. If you like horror games, you'll find nothing out of the ordinary here.

BTW, this is my second horror game. One Night is the first. You should search that out (it's on .org somewhere) if you like this game a lot.

well, as far as the caves go, it could just be a matter of tweaking the colours in the tileset itself. making the ground a bit lighter and less saturated than the water, for instance. it'd help with distinguishing things, and it'd at least keep people from noticing "hey, the player character suddenly isn't hella blue in this map"

p.s. your system requirements bar is huge, bro. are there that many people using computers that can't run rmvx?

That's an idea. I'll see if I can tinker with the tileset for the next patch.

Yes, strangely enough VX seems to lag on a lot of computers, so to be safe, I chose the requirements that suit my other game Legionwood (known to be the laggiest VX game ever) to be safe. The Beyond is generally a lot less complex than that though, so you could be fine with lesser settings, I dunno.

lots of ''pop-ups''?

Nope, not a one. I didn't need to use those sorts of scares. There are other genuine scares in this.

I've try it, and, yeah, it's scary O_O
Good thing: I like how many puzzle and i almost jump off my chair when those shadowman show up and when the dead man is alive and fighting you. >_<
Nice mapping, and good idea to use RMXP graphic rather then RMVX. ;)
And yep, nice lightone too.
Bad thing: Rarely save point. Sometimes my mum called me to shutdown PC, so sometimes i must repeated it over and over D: .
Teddy bear as enemy. I understant why you choose it, but it's so cutee and it feel no scary at all. (try a live girl doll or what >_> )


Well, you work great for horror game, it's really make my heart beat so fast :D
Caution for other people: Don't play it at night, this will scare you off even if the sun is shine.

Ah. Glad you enjoyed it. The save point structure is replicating a common feature to horror games in that tension is increased if you can't just save wherever you are. Perhaps I will implement it in a different way in the future, allowing you to save everywhere but limiting it somehow.

Well this looks great, i am a true fan of horror, so i am definatly gonna play this. downloading it now! i hope this is as good as i'd expect it to be ^^

Cool! Remember that it is the prequel to another game so if you enjoy it, try out One Night as well. Also the third game in the series is on it's way.

Hey man, think you can give me a hand, i should be able to pass it cause is so early in the game but i can't, i can't get past the chest where you have to enter 3 numbers. I've looked everywhere for clues or little shiny diamond thingies, and i still can't find nothing, no keys nothing. where do i go? XD

Turning the Lights off and my Speakers up was a bad idea.....

This game is so well planned and it really shows in the fabric of the game. This game isn't necessarily trying to be up front with the horror it builds up from time to time to get you are your weakest. This is an example of a very good horror game.

When playing it, this was one of the few RM games that I really didn't want to stop playing it just keeps you hooked.

Personally I love it.

This sold it to me, I'll give it a try :D

Wow, what a comment! Thanks so much for saying that. I actually think I do quite well on making horror games but that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Remember, this is the second game in a trilogy. The third is on it's way, while the first, One Night is buried somewhere on this forum.

Those having problems with solving puzzles: There's a Read Me in the game's install directory with the puzzle answers in it.

A very nice atmosphere, I jumped when I saw the first shadowman, and was edgy throughout the game haha. Turning the lights off and the speakers up really makes it creepier.

Good job.

Cool. Nice to see it's getting through a few scares. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

This definitely looks interesting... (Eheh, I look like a total noob, but I don't need to deck out my profile with pictures on every single Rpg maker-dedicated site)

Anyways, it sounds good. I saw the topic for the game, One Night :P

I'm really hoping there isn't any running away from enemies in order to survive, but if there is, I'll probably live :P

It's dark right now... Oh well, I think I can handle it... My computer's speakers are messed up, I can't take them off of top volume, so either I'll have to listen at full-volume and probably die of a heart attack, or keep my headphones in and ruin the experience...

heh, it finally finished downloading. It was quite fun... Though, I haven't beaten it yet... I needed to take a break XD

I'm not good with horror games, especially ghost/haunting related ones... Though I'm fine with horror movies :P

I read a review, stating that there were too many random scary "things" happening on screen, and that they began to lose their effect, though for me it's just driving me more and more insane... I wonder when that goddamn shadowy thingy will finally come and attack me >_>

I think I found a bug. I never found "Shadow Tome 3" and I'm pretty sure I found "Shadow Tome 4" twice. Can anybody else confirm/deny?

Other than that it was a fun game. Took me a a little over two hours to finish.

Here's the answers to the first 6 puzzles for anybody terribly stuck.

You will find that new silent hill game lets you save anywhere. As one of the people who made it said so saving any where dosen't make the game less scary. After whats so great about a scare the second time around?

well, there's sort of a tradeoff there. completely unrestricted saving can allow a really dedicated dude to save just before pretty much anything, thereby guaranteeing himself the best possible outcome and sort of getting rid of whatever tension's present. also, the advent of a quicksave function in many games (which means you don't even have to wait through navigating menus or w/e) has seen a lot of people saving in situations that are totally impossible to recover from, accidentally or just foolishly, and that pretty much ruins the game entirely. it can happen with just a regular "save anywhere" feature, too.

survival horror is often contributed to by a feeling of vulnerability. if you can't just save wherever you like, you find yourself dreading each encounter, which is pretty much exactly in line with that the designers want. of course, I'm not talking about this game so much as I'm talking about the actual survival horror franchise.

and to be fair, the more recent silent hill games have not been silent hill games, if you catch my meaning. The Room was the last hurrah of that particular series, and everything since then has just been trying to cash in on successful property above all else.

I agree with Mawk. I haven't actually played SH Homecoming or Shattered Memories as to me they just don't feel like normal SH games. Origins was perhaps the last one.

Anyway, for this game, I was influenced by Alone In The Dark for the atmosphere and also by the first Resident Evil, you'll notice in the whole haunted mansion setting and the two seperate scenarios. The save system is drawn from the classic survival horror games.

I'm sorry but I think the business card problem is wrong o_o I already looked at the readme file but the numbers dont fit unless the font is playing with me

It says

3X+21-5= 31 ; 2Y+42=18

if thats the case X = 5 and Y = -12

common factors of X added together would be 6, halved it would be 3 and added to the value of Y would be -9, but the answer is 21 o_o I know this isnt really important story-wise or anything but I think you should check it anyways ^^;

Yeah a friend of mine devised that puzzle and as I'm inept at math I was unable to verify if it was an accurate equation.

Update

The site hosting my uploads (RPGMaker.net) overhauled their site URLs today so the links I had posted previously died. I have now updated them. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Looks pretty cool, I might give it a try.

I hope you enjoy it! Remember, it's one of a trilogy of games.

This game looks great! I'm downloading it right now!

Hey great, I hope you enjoy it! Remember, there's also a sequel and a prequel.

Friday, 4th June, 2010

As of this moment (8:38 PM AEST) I have uploaded a new version of The Beyond to celebrate the first anniversary of its release. This new version contains the entire Special Edition version of the game plus a new Expansion Pack which adds new locations, gameplay, puzzles and scares, all up making this the ultimate version of the game and worthy enough to be played even if you've clocked The Beyond before.

Snap it up when it's fully uploaded and approved on RMN... Should be by this time tomorrow.