Beyond Contact

I went in expecting another anonymous survival sandbox and came out genuinely charmed by a small Australian studio's quiet confidence in its own aesthetic. Beyond Contact wears its love of 1960s pulp science-fiction comics openly: the top-down world of Ketern pops with vivid alien colour, the cutscene still-art looks hand-inked, and the ambient soundscape does something rare for the genre - it actually rewards you for standing still and listening. The background score drifts between eerie electronica and something almost hopeful, which fits a game whose underlying story is about cooperation rather than conquest. The structure is straightforward. Story Mode puts you in the AtmoSuit of Quinn Hicks, a Space Corps operative marooned on a dying planet, tasked with helping the native Brachylon survive a growing cosmic catastrophe. Conquest Mode strips the narrative away and gives you open-ended survival against waves of Corrupted enemies, massive base-building room, and no story obligation. Both modes support online co-op, and this is where the game genuinely sings. The research system - built around scanning bio, mineral, and crystal data from the environment - feels relentlessly grindy when you are running it alone, but becomes a satisfying division-of-labour puzzle with even one partner. Solo play is doable; it just requires patience with repetitive loops that co-op dissolves almost completely. The crafting and base-building are the heart of things, and Playcorp got that part right. Unlocking the fabrication table, wiring up a power grid, designing farms inside protective habitats, genetically modifying crops for yield - there is real texture here, and the drip-fed progression of new blueprints keeps momentum alive across multiple sessions. The three playable characters each carve out distinct roles: Quinn plays as a well-rounded generalist, Kangah as a combat-forward warrior, and Professor Zaine as a builder specialist. Switching who you bring to a co-op session changes how the early game feels, which is exactly the kind of low-key replayability an indie survival game needs to justify return visits. Criticism is fair, though. The camera sits at a fixed top-down distance with limited zoom range, and during dense combat encounters the restricted view is genuinely frustrating - you will take hits from enemies at the edge of frame more than once. Controller support in particular drew complaints at launch, with menu navigation behaving inconsistently. Keyboard and mouse is the safer choice. Combat itself is serviceable rather than exciting: red telegraphed danger zones tell you where to step away from, and early weapons like the pickaxe and security baton eventually give way to creature-drop weapons and researched gear, but the moment-to-moment fighting never quite matches the satisfaction of the building loop. The world of Ketern, while pretty, does not always feel distinctively alien - some reviewers noted it blends into a familiar sci-fi colour palette rather than asserting a truly singular identity. What stays with me is the handcraft in the smaller details: the fully voiced story, the care in the tooltip writing, the way the ambient sound layers shift as you cross biomes. This is a studio putting genuine feeling into a genre that often runs on formula. The rough edges are real, but they are the rough edges of something built with intention.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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