Beyond Oasis Review | Aged like wine

Retro inspired titles are the main theme for many indie developers, one doesn't have to search hard to see the huge number of indie projects reminiscent of games from the past. To truly understand them, one must look at the source, see for themselves what inspired such a huge community.

While it hasn't been yet the source for such inspiration, Beyond Oasis is still a classic, worthy to be taken a look at.

Aesthetics

Just a bunch of rat-men dancing around a fire, nothing dangerous at all ...

The pixel art used has aged really well, thanks to the usage of vivid colors and huge, detailed sprites.

I really enjoyed the animations, elaborated and effective, plus a detail I noticed is that you and the enemies get up almost instantly if on the floor, giving the fights a really nice feeling of an adrenaline rush.

The soundtrack is the typical one you can expect for the genesis, using the synthesizer to emulate the sounds of the instruments and I don't really like it the music that the console could offer, everything sounds too high-pitched or noisy to my taste.

While I didn't like the music, the sound design is actually fine, sure a lot of stuff is compressed, like the expressions when the characters are fighting, but overall the various sound effects are serviceable

In summary, the game is still pleasant to see to this day, not so much to hear though.

Game Mechanics

 

It looks way more threatening than it actually is

Beyond Oasis is an action adventure with a top view prospective.

The two main statics are hit points and spell points, to increase them you need to find hearts and gems, both can be retrieved from hidden chests or are rarely dropped from defeated enemies.

At the start of the adventure, you have a varied set of move-sets that make the combat quite interesting, with some attacks executable only after a precise input from the d-pad.

You also can pick up a limited amount of food and weapons, the food recover either your hit or spell points, specific meals recover both.

While the default dagger can be used without any restriction, the other weapons you can carry such as swords, crossbows and bombs have limited usages before breaking, but the exact number is displayed in the weapons menu, so you can always check and be ready when one runs out.

Later on, you unlock the ability to summon elemental spirits, which are summoned by aiming the bracelet to an element correlated to that spirit and casting.

There are a 4 spirit in total, each one with its own abilities and use cases, for example, the first spirit you unlock is the water one and she is able to extinguish fires, heal you and cause a water tornado that hurts enemies.

The spirits are also used to solve puzzles or to traverse an environmental hazard.

Keep in mind that, as long as you have a spirit summoned, you slowly burn away your spirit points until you run out of them, at which point the spirit vanishes until you refill the points either by waiting or by eating food.

I really liked this mechanics, they are fun and allowed for many interesting situations and choices.

The main and only type of quest is to get to a place and either talk to someone or defeat a boss, with a flag on where you have to go visible on the map, a little useful hint, but it doesn't spoil what you actually have to do to continue.

To save, you either use the original in-game save system or the emulator.

During my play-through I only used the original one which has a restriction that doesn't allow you to save in the dungeons, only in the over-world.

About the world, it can be divided in two sections: the over-world and the dungeons.

In the over-world you regenerate your spirit points and is the place you are going to visit the most in your journey, while the dungeons are smaller sections with a precise set of challenges, usually following the theme of needing your precedent unlocked spirit the most, with exception of the very first dungeon of course.

I think the game is just right in terms of challenge: not too frustrating, but if you snooze during a session you get defeated easily, as expected.

There isn't any way to modify the difficulty and there doesn't seem to be any kind of reward for finding all the secrets.

It took me 6 hours to beat the game.

For the PC version, the manual given is bare-bones, delivering very little information, you are better off using the official PDF file here.

In short, the game is very fun to play even to this day thanks to a varied move-sets and an interesting magic system.

Narrative

The few cut-scenes are dedicated to the dialogues between characters

Like many games of 4th generation, this title is very light on narrative elements, even the manual doesn't say anything more than the in-game movie. The starting cut-scene is only used to contextualize everything.

While treasure-hunting, the main protagonist, Prince Ali, finds a gold bracelet which shows him a vision: its original wielder, the sorcerer Reharl, controlled the elements and fought the malicious Agito, the wielder of the silver bracelet.

The silver bracelet has been found and someone is using it to push an evil scheme, it is now Ali's duty to stop them with the powers granted by the gold bracelet.

This is the only narrative piece you are going to receive, apart a minor twist towards the end.

As you can already guess, this game isn't reliant on a story to deliver an enjoyable experience.

Recommendation:

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Beyond Oasis is an action adventure game that has aged well, easily a recommendable experience even after many years from its original release in 1995.

Available on Steam, iPhone and Android.

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