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Beyond Eyes review

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  • Beyond Eyes review

    One summer Rae, a blind girl of around seven years old, strikes up a friendship with a local stray, whom she names Nani. Each day the cat stretches through the bars of an iron gate into Rae's idyllic garden, and the pair plays among the butterflies and daisies. The relationship blossoms, and Rae, for whom no friends come knocking, nor any parent appears to break their routine, comes to rely on Nani for company and comfort. Then, one day, Nani doesn't show up. Rae, who constructs a bright mental image of the world around her entirely by sound and touch, imagining, for example, the whereabouts of a motorcar from the dirty noise of its engine, or a tree from its autumn rustle, decides to head outside of the garden in search of the cat. Beyond Eyes shares, then, a goal with many other video games. It is a rescue mission in the Super Mario tradition, a grand fetch quest, albeit one viewed through a completely unfamiliar lens: disability.
    As in Sony's The Unfinished Swan, the form of the world around Rae is hidden beneath a whitewash. A sudden sound in the distance (a crow's craw, a toad's croak) will see the creature momentarily burst into existence on the screen, before fading back to white. In all other cases, the world builds and spreads around Rae only as she moves through it, sensing the difference, for example, between the gravel crunch of a path or the lush bounce of grass underfoot, or that acoustic narrowing that happens when you walk from a field to a tunnel. The environment accumulates in a higgledy, foreign logic. You see the crow before the branch on which he sits. You notice the sheep before the bale of hay that separates you both. Washing flicks on the line and springs into being before you catch the posts on which it's suspended. You see the river long before the bridge that will carry you across its tinkle and froth. Beyond Eyes builds its world like a live watercolour painting. The landscape seeps out around Rae's feet in pastel colours as she plods onwards with cautious determination.
    At times, Rae's ears play tricks on her. At first she sees fallen branch, scraping along the road. But when she draws closer, it transmutes into its true form: an umbrella. What Rae perceives to be a car from its idling motor and oily scent, turns out to be a lawnmower, pushed in fussy rows by a gardener. These moments provide constant reminders that, while pretty, the world that you see on the screen is also treacherous. A second sense, usually touch, must be consulted before your mind map can be trusted. Even then, some doubt inevitably remains.
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