The Black Beast Demo

Games that provide you with a choice are not always superior to linear experiences, but more often than not they are more enjoyable for some reason. Being forced to follow a strict path through the levels and the story itself can be a bit boring, while having even the simplest choices at your disposal usually makes the experience feel more natural and immersive.

The Black Beast is an adventure game with point & click and visual novel mechanics that allows you to explore a weird world and interact with its inhabitants. You can freely explore a couple of rooms in an attempt to complete missions, interact with characters and find useful objects, while the story as a whole is pretty dynamic as well. However, the demo at hand is pretty short, so don’t expect too much variety.

The whole thing takes place in a dream world where time itself has stopped, which in turn gave birth to some very weird characters and places. You play the role of a girl as she explores this world in search of answers, but you can choose whether to focus on her problems or on other characters you meet along the way. Obviously, you can play the game multiple times to see all the possible routes.

Since there are a few puzzles in there as well, you have to interact with certain items in order to solve them, as well as pick them up in order to use them. Dialog is also important, because you can extract useful information from other characters. The levels are basically two-dimensional, on the other hand, so you can only move backward or forward most of the time.

The graphics have a special charm as well, even if they can be a bit too simple and sketchy sometimes. The lack of color is an interesting choice, and it actually makes sense when you think about the world you are exploring. However, sometimes it can be a bit difficult to read some of the text, mainly because there’s not enough contrast to make the letters visible.

Even if it’s just a short demo at this point, The Black Beast has all the right elements required to make a memorable adventure game. Hence, we can only hope that the whole story is going to be told at some point in the future.