Duty
and Beyond (D&B) is an
independent, freeware point and click adventure made by Wandering
Adventures employing Adventure Game Studio (AGS). It has been awarded
with two 2006 AGS awards: best gameplay and best puzzles.

D&B
is straight point and click adventure, deep to its roots. Move from
one room to the other, collect wrench, rope, pearl (and not forget
your must-be-in-your inventory pickaxe, tape and penny-sized coin),
talk to character, guess what he/she wants, combine inventory, come
back to character, get something in return, go for another path, start
again. Sounds boring or just another installment of an overused recipe?
Actually, it is not. Even those who are not particularly fond of this
particular type of sub-genre (hey, I’m talking to you, the one
playing “Aura: Fate of the Ages”) will find the game at
least entertaining, if not completely addictive. Two main reasons
underlie this statement: (1) design, extremely good game design and
(2) Pixelated, low-resultion graphs, yet attractive and original art
and general aesteshics.

The
game runs in a glorious 320 x 200 resolution (at 32-bit color) and
most of the time the clickable area involves a tiny square in the
middle of the screen. Sure, first impression is not particularly jaw-dropping,
but as time passes it is very difficult not to become fond of the
graphs. What is the secret? Consistency. Throughout its course, screen
after screen, the game is faithful to this style. The colour palette
is really charming too: strong, warm reds, yellows and green, lots
of green borders. Inventory items are good examples of the path taken
by the author in terms of graphs. First, the bad news: most of the
content of the inventory can be barely recognizable as representative
of any “real world” object. That is, a a square blue thingie
is supossedly a “blue tape”, while a concentrincal brown
line is a “rope”. But again (and here comes the good news),
drawings are not ugly in themselves and they share style. So, soon
you became familiar with the idea that, at least in this game, the
items are intended to be just icons an not real world representations.
You will find many animations, too. Tiny animations maybe, but they
add a lot to the general atmosphere. Have to climb down a rope? You’ll
see your character moving down. Walking in the woods? Butterfiles
move here an there.

The
story works just fine, but is far from being flawless. Succinctly,
you are a pizza delivery guy who is in his way to do your job in a
remote mansion. When arriving, you realize that, in order to finish
your duty, you’ll have to complete a rather complex scavenger-like
hunt in the puzzle-loaded mansion. Oddly enough, you stumble upon
coworkers and colleagues as well, all of them also involved in your
situation. Granted, it’s not really deep, complez nor tought-provoking.
There are a couple of attempts to create tension and the feeling that
there might be, indeed, an overhanging story. Sadly, these efforts
fall short since (1) Game’s lenght is quite important and more
often than not these bits of story remain isolated in the middle of
big chunks of fast-paced puzzle solving and exploration and (2) The
finale is extremely disappointing and feels more like a rushed attempt
to wrapp up the game. D&B is divided
in theme-based zones that should be quite familiar for the seasoned
adventurer (medieval village, egypt-like temple, see later for details).
You have to explore them, collect items and solve (mainly inventory-based)
puzzles. There are plenty of places/rooms to visit in each region
and characters to interact with.

Puzzles
in D&B run the gamut from incredibly
simple to being fully embebbed in shrouded logic. Most of the time
are fair, tough. As said, inventory-based are, expectable, the most
abundant. Riddles and guess-the-combination also make their, sometimes
notorious, appeareance. Interestingly, here and there you will be
required to interact with the enviroment to avoid obstacles. While
not innovative, the latter fit really well with the platfform-like
design of the game. Most, but not all, are hinted. Yet, I felt that
objects in the — most of the time highly crammed — inventory lacked
useful descriptions, which would had helped winding up the game.

Now,
some concerns in regards with a specific section. There is a rather
lengthy part where you have to maneuver a mini-sub. Not only the movement
of this apparatus is quite clumsy but also the layout of this part
of the game is get-object, go back, give object to character to “unlock”
certain path in the place you had been before, all wrapped in a sometimes
warped logic. This is just a an example to show that sometimes D&B
asks for too much backtracking and the general design of the gameworld
does not get along with this.

Specifically,
the layout of the gameworld, with its many rooms and doors can be
sometimes a bit daunting and it was sort of frustrating to have to
resort to the walkthrough just to realize that I had missed a certain
area and, hence, a necessary item. In fact maybe there are too much
rooms, many of them alike, which springs the suggestion that a little
bit of condensation of places wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
Also, pixel-hunting makes its appearance here and there, so be warned.
And it’s one of the worst pixel-hunting I can remember from
my gaming experience (don’t get nervous “Men in Black”
from the mid-90’s, your bomb timed-puzzle that can only be deactivated
by clicking a single pixel won’t be surpassed). Sometimes vital
hotspots are completely hidden in the background making their finding
difficult even after checking the walktrough. More often than not
the only solution is to carefully and and slowly sweep the screen
with the mouse. But truth be said, sometimes –yet, not always–
pixel-hunting seems to be a rather necessary side effect of the graphic
style and if so, it’s a good trade-off.

The
game shines when capturing the spirit of some old point and click
games, those that privileged exploration and puzzles over story and
character development. Specifically, the game is divided in “worlds”
connected to the mansion where your quest starts. In each of these
worlds you have to collect some item supposedly conducive to the big
finale. The whole concept is by no means innovative, but works fine.
Each world feels definitely distinctive. First you go to a submarine
filled with funny alien people whose society seems to be founded upon
bureaucracy. Yet, things get better in the second world, your run
of the mill medieval-scenario with castles and goblins. Here are tons
of items to collect and characters to interact. And the puzzles are
fresh and inspired. They are still mainly inventory based, but now
they make use of every play in the book: character interaction, item
colecction and combination, interaction with the enviroment, riddle-like
problems. They are not very difficult, not very easy, so, a great
chapter for any adventurer. Later you will also have to visit an egiptian
temple and.a London full of conspiracies.

For
the one familiar with the AGS world, many references are inserted,
including the search for blue cups (the AGS logo) as well as references
to other games, notably Spooks and the Trilby saga. Duty
and Beyond is by all means a tong-and-cheek product,
making fun of itself and the genre all the time. In one section, when
trying to examine an amulet, the main character will say “It’s
an amulet. Due to the low resolution I can’t really describe
it more”. Yeah, it’s funny. Of course, the only problem
being that the low-res also helps the pixel-hunting to be an even
worse nightmare.

Total
gameplay time reached – at least for this reviewer, not very
skilled when it comes to solving puzzles — around 9 hours, which
is a fairly decent amount of time and that’s without having
completed all the side-quests. Because D&B
also offers optional puzzles and quests, a refresing and not very
usual idea in adventure games. According to the author, completion
of such optional paths allows watching and optional ending as well
as, of course, getting all the points. Indeed, the game features a
Sierra-style point system with a sound signal reminiscent of Gabriel
Knight I. I found this feature quite interesting, serving
not only as a reward that pushes you further in the game, but, more
importantly, also works as a sort of highlighter, helping focus attention
in relevant items or pieces of information. Also, neither bugs nor
dead-ends were noted while playing D&B.

In
summary, D&B is a game not to miss.
Not only for its freeware status and its friendly download size (4.3
MB) but mainly because you would be losing a well-designed old school
game. It may be the case, though, that you will have to fill some
of the holes of the story with your imagination. But even after this
drawback, I can easily recommend the game to any and every adventurer.
The game can be downloaded
free of charge from the archives of AGS and receives a solid B
from this reviewer.

Final Grade: B
(find
out more about our grading system)