BEYOND TIME

THE GATEWAY BECKONS...

The Quest will take you on an exhilarating adventure where clues and puzzles become your world. Michelangelo's Pieta in the Vatican... gone. The Seti I statuette in the Cairo Museum... gone. The Mona Lise in the Louvre... ALL GONE. Baffling... Mysterious... Intrigue you cannot resist. Solve the enigma that lies beyond...

Challenge your mind and your powers of observation.

Step through the gateway into a 3-D world of puzzles and adventure. Find the clues and worlds will open to you - each more demanding, rewarding, and beautiful than the last. The Mayan City. The Temple of Osiris. The Tibetan Palace. The Ruins of Atlantis.
 
But, beware of the dark mystery that lies beyond. Treachery, greed, and deception plague this fascinating adventure.

World renowned archaeologist, Dr. John Howard, is on a clandestine government mission. His team of scientists are "raiding" the greatest art treasures in history.

Hurry.
Someone, somewhere, somewhen... is killing time.

• A STORY-SRIVEN GRAPHIC ADVENTURE
  Explore the extraordinary realm of time-travel as the riveting storyline unfolds. Discover thrilling plot twists and astonishing scenarios throughout your quest, in an exquisitely rendered setting.
• THE GRIPPING MYSTERY  
  People are disappearing, peculiar sightings are being reported, and priceless relics are vanishing. Something ominous is lurking in the shadows.
• AN ARCHEOLOGIST'S STATEROOM?  
  Discover John Howard's incredible "quarters". Highly respected as a master in his field, but "who is he... really?".
• HISTORICALLY ACCURATE  
  Carefully researched and strikingly beautiful re-creations of paintings, treasures, and relics from the past.
• TRAVEL THROUGH TIME   
  Where your quest begins at the majestic Temple of Osiris. The intrigue and dark mystery begin to unfold, guiding you on an epic adventure. Explore every world and unlock the secrets to this fascinating mystery.
• ENGAGING PUZZLES  
  Test your skills against more than 50 situational and tactile puzzles. Experience over 40 hours of continuous game play at a variety of difficulty levels.
• MANDALA PUZZLE  
  Find this exquisitely crafted puzzle in a Buddhist temple in Tibet. One of the may engaging tactile challenges on your quest.
• STUNNING GRAPHICS  
  Enjoy thousands of photo-realistic 3-D works of art at their best... masterpieces of meticulous detail and striking colour.

~ from the US box

If there's one thing that'll draw me in to a video game, it's the story. Not just what is told, but how too.  The writing, dialogue, cutscenes, gameplay, visuals; all can lend itself to enhance the story, if done well that is. Adventure games, in my opinion, have the opportunity to this better than any other genre but too often they can fall very short. Case in point; Beyond Time. 

Retitled Shadow of the Obelisk is some countries, Beyond Time was developed by Jones & Jones Multimedia and published in the US by DreamCatcher Interactive in the November of 1997. It saw scathing reviews at the time, even being a runner up to Computer Gaming World's 'Coaster  of the Year' in their end-of-year rundown. What you may not know is that this version is not the original game. It first saw a release the year prior as Obelisk: Project Oscar, but only in Japan. Yep, Beyond Time hails from the land of the Rising Sun.

Some puzzles require you to scour your surroundings, such as this door code.

Others won't be solvable - or even accessible - until you've triggered a specific cutscene.

It is perhaps because of this that the plotting of the English-language version feels so disjointed. The story is a basic one - and familiar to those who've played the far superior Timelapse (available on GOG). A bunch of scientists have discovered the secret of time travel, and have used it to steal famous treasures throughout history. They've been using an abandoned temple on the banks of the Nile in Ancient Egypt as a base of operations, but this in turn have disrupted the gods as its sole inhabitant, Manet, gets trapped in a time loop and summons Nefertiti for help and guidance. By coincidence, you, an archaeologist investigating the missing artefacts, stumble upon a time gate and is tasked with holding those time bandits to justice. Or something like that.

It all gets overly convoluted, as techno-babble shenanigans and mythological mumbo-jumbo converge in a tenuous grasp of cause-and-effect. The FMV cutscenes, which appear as monologuing ghostly figures or monologuing diary entries, sit uncomfortably alongside the gameplay. If it seems as if the two were created separately, that's because they were. A team in California reshot all of the Japanese video with American actors for the western release, and apparently a lot was lost in translation. For starters, these new sequences are noticeably blander with actors seemingly wearing the clothes they were wearing while talking to the camera in front of a white background. A far cry from the explorer's garb and pre-rendered backgrounds used in the original. Even if I don't understand it, the original ending was far more exciting too.

You will have a reference book at your disposal to help decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs (left). Each of those

red crystals hold multiple video entries. There are 5 of them in each of the 7 character's living quarters (right).

The game itself leaves a lot to be desired too, and the questionable design decisions cannot be blamed on a poor localisation. If you don't view the copious amount of diary entries blandly presented in a series of otherwise inconsequential bedrooms, it is an incredibly short game. Some puzzles, such as the door codes, are easy and mildly amusing requiring you use your observation skills to search for the answers. Others are poorly thought out and wholesale repeated. There are two 'snake head' puzzles that require you to move around numbers using you maths skills to make sure each add up to the same number. It's a common puzzle that can have a multitude of solutions. Here, it has only one. As such, you are not solving the puzzle, but trying to guess what the designers want through tedious trial and error. And there's two of them!

I really wanted to like Beyond Time, but it left me woefully disappointed. The Egyptian setting is an inviting one, as are the many other time-hopping asides later on in the game, but even the otherwise decent 64x480 256-color graphics are inexplicably shrunk forcing a thick black border around everything. A disappointingly disjointed and uneven attempt at a Myst clone.
 

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox 0.74 running Windows '95. Manual, Clues Booklet and Making Of (running through Windows 3.1) included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

IMPORTANT - Remember to shut down the emulated version of Windows before exiting DOSBox. This could potentially result in errors, lost saves and corrupt data. The program will automatically shut down when you exit the game.

File Size: 1.17 Gb.  Install Size: 1.64 Gb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download


Beyond Time is © DreamCatcher Interactive, Inc
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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