Name: Between Horizons Review: Unraveling Mysteries Aboard the Starship Zephyr
Item: Between Horizons
Author: Arash Nahandian

When the very future of humanity rests upon an audacious multi-generational voyage across the stars, even the slightest disruption could unravel the entire mission. Such is the high-stakes premise underlying Between Horizons, a sci-fi noir adventure that thrusts players into the role of Stella, newly-appointed Chief of Security aboard the colossal Zephyr generation ship.

What begins as a routine investigation into network sabotage quickly spirals into a tangled web of intrigue and mystery. Someone is willfully undermining the precarious balance maintaining order and purpose amongst the Zephyr’s 1,300 inhabitants. With her own father’s shocking death casting a looming shadow, Stella must put her fledgling detective skills to the ultimate test. Every scrap of evidence, every environmental clue, every probing interrogation brings her closer to unraveling the conspiracy…while raising deeper existential questions over the price of survival.

Part classic point-and-click adventure infused with modern sleek visuals, part philosophical thought experiment on humanity’s boundless ambition, Between Horizons invites us on a deeply immersive interactive voyage. Grab your space suit and PDA – the game is afoot and the future itself hangs in the balance.

The Weight of Our Future

Set aboard the gargantuan colony ship Zephyr, Between Horizons thrusts us into the life of Stella, a young woman born into a civilization wholly detached from the Earth they left behind centuries ago. The Zephyr remains locked on its multi-generational voyage towards Eurus d, a habitable exoplanet that represents humanity’s last hope for continued survival and evolution.

When Stella’s police chief father is killed under mysterious circumstances, she inherits his former role, quickly becoming embroiled in a dangerous web of secrets that threaten to derail the entire mission. What begins as a simple case of network intrusion steadily warps into a far more insidious conspiracy – one that calls into question the loyalties and true motives of the Zephyr’s disconnected populace.

Amid this propulsive overarching mystery, Between Horizons shines in its rich world-building and poignant existential underpinnings. The immense scale of the Zephyr, with its self-sustaining biodomes and meticulous social stratification, is vividly realized. Even more gripping are the game’s philosophical ponderings on humanity’s drive to endlessly defy our own limits, the isolation of being untethered from our cosmic birthplace, and the intergenerational tensions of those who will never reap the rewards of this endless journey.

Regrettably, the character writing and development leave something to be desired at times. While Stella herself emerges as a nuanced and relatably flawed hero, many of her shipmates come across as one-note personalities. Their methodical dialogue branches feel crafted more for funneling clues than for creating fully-fleshed individuals. Still, the overarching narrative is engrossing enough to prop up these deficiencies.

Gumshoe in Zero-G

At its core, Between Horizons is a classically-structured point-and-click adventure infused with modern detective sensibilities. Players guide Stella across the ring-shaped decks of the Zephyr, scouring every nook and cranny for clues, environmental hotspots, and characters to interrogate. Her trusty PDA serves as an indispensable portable database, vacuum-sealing every crumb of evidence into digital form for revisiting later.

The central gameplay loop is delightfully mired in deductive reasoning challenges of all shapes and sizes. From cracking cryptographic codes by deciphering alphanumeric ciphers, to meticulously cross-analyzing personnel logs for holes in alibis, to simply spotting contradictory statements in dialogue trees – Between Horizons revels in putting players’ little grey cells to the test. The best puzzles foster an immensely satisfying “Aha!” moment when the final piece clicks into place.

That said, the game doesn’t always nail its balance of logic puzzles versus more traditional inventory/exploration-based fare. Too often, solutions boil down to exhausting every possible conversation thread and pursuing every potential red herring. While realistic to the grind of real detective work, it can admittedly grow tedious at times when all you crave is that sweet dopamine hit of cracking the case.

Where Between Horizons truly shines is in the surprising amount of freedom afforded by its crime scene sandbox. At any point, players can submit what they believe to be the solution to any given case file – an arrestee, a motive, the works. Remarkably, the game doesn’t pull punches and will gladly let you bumble forward while accusing the wrong culprit. Such mistakes can then dynamically ripple outward, altering future events and even allowing crimes to progress unimpeded.

This same branching narrative architecture also accounts for major overarching narrative choices beyond just whodunits. The fates, relationships, and character arcs of nearly every named soul aboard the Zephyr can be shaped and reshaped based on Stella’s decisions and prioritizations. It’s an impressively open-ended game …so long as you’re fine with coping with the messy consequences further down the line.

Retrofuturistic Eye Candy

Between Horizons presents a rather unique visual aesthetic, melding classic pixel art character sprites with swanky voxel-based 3D backgrounds. It’s an eye-catching fusion of retro and modern sensibilities that, for the most part, gels into a cohesive retrofuturistic universe. The chunky low-res look of the human inhabitants sells the Zephyr’s spartan, utilitarian interiors while the enviro details convincingly convey the grand scale of this gigantic colony ship.

The animation quality is similarly a bit of a mixed bag. While Stella’s walking cycles and reactive movements during dialogue exude charm, many of the supporting cast exhibit fairly rudimentary gesticulation loops when speaking. It’s a noticeable if relatively minor quibble that doesn’t dampen the overall handcrafted aesthetic appeal too severely.

On the audio front, Between Horizons keeps things understated yet immersive. The ambient hums, clanks, and whirring machinery effortlessly sell the illusion of residing within a massive futuristic ark. The multilayered, synth-driven soundtrack expertly oscillates between pulsing sci-fi tension and melancholic, introspective character motifs. Voice acting, meanwhile, is reserved solely for Stella’s inner monologues, subtly personifying her thought process through the capable performance.

In terms of UI and controls, the development strikes an amenable middle ground between fidelity and minimalism. While far from visually overwhelming, Stella’s PDA neatly compartmentalizes all active cases, evidence, and expository data into organized menus. The context-sensitive scanning mechanic keeps action inputs tight and focused. My one gripe lies in the lack of customizable keybindings for keyboard/mouse users.

Steady As She Goes

From a technical perspective, Between Horizons runs like a well-oiled machine befitting its advanced sci-fi setting. Across my playthrough on a reasonably specced gaming rig, I encountered nary a hiccup in performance – no crashes, hard freezes, or graphical aberrations to distract from the experience. Load times between scene transitions were thankfully snappy as well.

More importantly, the game maintained a consistently smooth and stable framerate no matter how packed the environment became with animating characters and particle effects. The locked 60fps does wonders for Stella’s kinetic movement cycles, ensuring a pleasingly fluid sense of momentum as she sprints between locations aboard the Zephyr’s circumferential ring.

My sole technical gripe lies in the lack of advanced graphics options to tweak. While the game’s relatively modest minimum requirements won’t overly tax most modern systems, some granular settings to enable vsync, adjust rendering resolution, or cap the framerate could have benefited players on the hardware extremes. As is, the visuals are effectively baked in at a single preset profile.

That said, these are mere nitpicks in the grand scheme. Between Horizons may not be the most demanding showcase for your system’s capabilities, but what’s here is tightly coded and optimized to run buttery smooth on a wide range of PC configurations. For a richly atmospheric indie gem, that reliability is invaluable.

Repeat Investigations Encouraged

As a story-driven adventure where choices tangibly impact the overarching narrative trajectory, Between Horizons positively beckons for multiple playthroughs to witness its branching possibilities unfurl. With the fates of nearly every crew member aboard the Zephyr hanging in the balance based on Stella’s decisions, there’s ample incentive to retread the approximately 6-8 hour campaign experiencing alternate resolutions.

Will following a different investigation path this time uncover new revelations and character arcs? What consequences might arise from falsely accusing a suspect or prioritizing certain cases over others? The nonlinearity and permanent autosaving nature amp up the tension of each pivotal deduction.

Such a open-ended structure does mean the individual playthroughs can vary wildly in terms of overall pacing. An overly stubborn focus on prematurely resolving cases can lead to short, abrupt anticlimatic endings. Conversely, a more measured approach spacing out the case closures creates a tighter, more naturally flowing dramatic rhythm.

Regardless of one’s preferred playstyle, Between Horizons represents a superbly meaty and engaging detective romp for its roughly $15-20 asking price on PC and consoles. Solving the overarching conspiracy is simply the beginning of the battle to unravel every last shocking secret woven into the Zephyr’s hull. Truly, these mystery-laden star-bound horizons are well worth exploring from every conceivable angle.

Case Closed…Or Is It?

Between Horizons represents a stellar return to form for the classic point-and-click detective adventure, injecting beloved genre tropes with fresh sci-fi flair and branching narrative intrigue. From its painstakingly crafted atmosphere aboard the isolating yet intricately-realized Zephyr, to its web of perplexing mysteries begging to be unraveled through observant deduction, the game expertly immerses players in a immersive investigative experience.

Yet the mysteries extend beyond mere whodunits, as Between Horizons challenges us to confront deeper existential quandaries of what sacrifices are justifiable in preserving the future of humanity. The resonant thematic throughline, combined with an impressive degree of choice/consequence permutations, elevate the narrative above standard genre fare.

That said, the game doesn’t quite stick the landing across the board. Character writing can feel purposefully one-note, puzzle designs veer between engagingly logical and tediously literal, and the open-ended freedom does mean individual playthroughs can vary wildly in terms of pacing and resolution satisfaction.

For patient armchair sleuths willing to go along for an atmospheric sci-fi thrill ride, however, Between Horizons emerges as one of the better holistic detective/adventure titles in recent memory. It effortlessly outshines Navgtr’s comparatively flat Return of the Obra Dinn while providing a more open-ended Choice of Games-inspired spin on Frogwares’ engrossing Sherlock Holmes adventures. The mysteries may not always be elementary, my dear Watson, but unraveling them is always devilishly fun aboard the Zephyr.

The Review