Beyond the Doors

It's got good bones, but the content is just a little thin as of right now. Though, that annoying bug that wigs your mouse controls around whenever you step on trash is going to drive me up the wall.

The immersive-creepy sim feeling is there, the basic game loop is there. But as another review said, it really just feels like a less polished VotV in how similar the base loop and UI feels right now, which isn't bad as a beginning but it needs time to expand and find it's own character. If you're wanting more of what games like Voices of the Void bring and are willing to invest and wait some time for updates and content to get fleshed out than I'd say it's a go for it.

Note: I should mention the Linux version is next to unplayable for me, but the windows version via proton experimental works just fine! The graphics were default set to high for me which was causing some fps issues, but bringing down the graphic settings to medium cleared up all fps issues for me.

I like it, and I get what it's trying to accomplish. It needs more features and systems to get there, but it's a good foundation. Praying this isn't another "Shadows of Doubt" situation where the dev calls it done too soon.

I give it a positive review, but i'm more mixed on it, while I do think theres some promise to be had with it, and some really fun elements that could be explored, it just isn't quite there yet and is very lacking in a few areas.

Tl;dr: its alright, but it needs alot more variety, and tries to lean to hard of the VotV crutch while lacking the understanding of how it needs to function for it to work.

We technically play as a janitor in this game who "Spies" on the other tenants, and thats interesting enough of a premise, I enjoy the little microphone set up and daisy chaining wires together, but I don't see much of a point in doing it? you get 1 request every day, and with each day taking a *very* long time, there just isn't much of a money flow to it, granted, I haven't seen how high the payout gets, nor have I tried selling sounds to the other person you can play as, but I just don't see much of a need to?

On top of playing as a janitor, we get cleaning duties and some delivery, and again, these are nice things to fill in the gaps of time, but they're extremely repetitive. there is *no* way to expedite the cleaning process, everything is 1 by 1, and there is just so. much. garbage. if there was maybe a vacuum to carry large loads of the stuff to bins, it'd make the cleaning 10 times easier and more fun. The delivery system, while basic, feels much more profitable long term, you get requests very often, and you get 8 hours to complete a 30 minute task, getting 90 bucks sometimes on the simplest orders, making me wonder why would I ever even record?

The bottom line is for me, that there just simply isn't enough right now, you have a very long task run in the background, followed by very repetitive yet much more profitable interactions.

Some personal things for me to add to this game, would be a few things

1.we're a janitor, allow us to clean peoples rooms at their request like the delivery services, these rooms can be standard, or they can be weird, we can do our job or just go and snoop around for items and easter eggs, uncovering a mystery to unfold

2.Add variety to the cleaning process, allow for us to purchase things that quicken the cleaning process, while also creating new ways to clean, wash some windows, fix little things like we can with the lights, Dust corners and furniture, and make it more then just staring at the ground, holding left click.

3.Maybe have us try to hide our attempts of spying in some way? these neighbours are weird but they aren't stupid, and things can get very cluttered and obvious after enough wires, i'm not sure how I would go about this but do expand on this system in some way.

4.I understand the VotV inspiration, but try be less like VotV, its not that I don't like the style or the direction, its just that it feels like some elements just want to be like VotV, rather than understanding the appeal of it, go in your own direction, make some interesting and unique scares, or references to things you love, other than the fact that you are trying to look like VotV.

The VotV inspiration isn't unnoticed, and while I like the game as is, it feels rather like it wants to be VotV without understanding how it works and its appeal, It's open, chalk full of easter eggs, with an extremely interactive and finiky console, listening to noises while we're all alone, hearing whats out there, players use their open world space to explore, filling in the time by fixing things, noticing the little bits and pieces that start showing up to haunt them, and the fun easter eggs.

This game needs to understand the fact that it wants to work in a confined space, occupied full of "people", with us actively serving them, and exploiting them for our own benefit, it needs that interaction between these things, rather then a knock at the door and walk away.

for an early access game, it gets a positive review, but for a game in its state? a current 6.5/10, I would LOVE to contribute or give more feedback on a game, and share some ideas as this game is developed

Its honestly just boring, unpolished and buggy. It feels like a ton of features were just straight taken from other games without any level of inspiration and the other features are shallow and added to feel like its adding another degree of "complexity" to the game.
The UI is buggy, I had to keep going into the settings menu to get my settings to actually save.
The main devices (server laptop/computer/reciever/transmitter) are buggy and incredibly confusing when first using them. When you do learn how to use them, theyre okay. The tutorial at the start misses a ton of detail and really needs to be redone.
Theres a lot of random friction points that just makes this game into more of a chore. Downtime is incredibly boring. The SFX is incredibly minimal. The player controller feels incredibly janky. The selection menu on items falls apart when you want to quickly repeat the same action on multiple items quickly. The art style is cool but misses the mark when it comes to detailing the enviroment. A lot of things are only labeled when you look at it through the UI, so finding a specific door is just a lot of wandering about.
I doubt ill play it again, everytime I found myself feeling slightly engaged, a bug or something else would pop up and just rip me back out.

-- Edit:
Just refunded the game, I hope it can evolve into something that isnt a votv clone instead of something being inspired by votv. Votv works for so many reasons, the enviroment, the isolation and the tasks all seamlessly rely on each other, but this game has none of that while also pretending it does. Please figure out a coherent game loop that isnt stupidly tedious and figure out some of your own original features that arent ripped from votv.

The game tries to hard to be VoTV instead of being inspired by VoTV and it shows with how many people are actually thinking there's a connection between the two. I'm not trying to bash on the dev for being inspired by VotV and wanting to make their own attempt of a signal simulator like game but when you just straight up copy mechanics and features and UI from VoTV, to the point that people actually think there's a connection, the game loses all uniqueness and individuality. Dev should really just focus on implementing unique features and mechanics that aren't just poor attempts of copying VoTV. Focus on expanding the main gameplay loop because it looses steam real quick. There's also nothing to do during down time outside of cleaning and being a doordasher which once shade becomes available you don't even need to doordashing aspect goes out the window as far as a secondary income stream. Honestly, this game has potential of being another good immersive sim, but right now it's too early and too heavily inspired by VoTV to have it's own identity.

This game is a simpler version of Votv, in a good way.
Honestly once when this game gets more "bulk" I will probably prefer it over Votv.

(Also since this game is actually on steam, can we get workshop support? I wanna see the goofy things people mod in.)

It's hard to live up to the expectations set by the ambitious and genre-defining Voices of the Void and this game certainly makes a valiant attempt. Unfortunately, there is a lot of issues with the current build of the game, including frustratingly buggy UI, lackluster art direction, and balancing issues. The UI has issues where the cursor constantly gets mis-aligned and you have to either click multiple times in order to click a button, or you have to precisely aim your cursor to where the game thinks your cursor is actually is, both leaving you more prone to mistakes, especially in the shop menu. Balancing is also an issue where after you play for about 5 in-game days you start to live on the brink of starvation due to recordings selling for too little and hunger decreasing too quickly. The graphics are also pretty bare and leave much to be desired in the aesthetics department. Most of it is either derivative of VotV (the mannequin for instance) or lacks real substance. There are some good scares though, but this enters spoiler territory and this game is best played blind.
I understand this game is still in Early Access so it's still in development, but a complete overhaul of the game would be required. Despite this, so far it's a decent attempt.

Takes a lot of inspiration from Voices of the Void while adding its own mechanics with setting up a recording network, but it doesn't quite have the juice yet. It has some promise but lacks a lot of depth right now and 'spooky' events I've seen so far have been pretty boring.

Just play Voices of the Void until this game gets updated and improved.

apartments of the void.
so yeah if you like Voice of the Void you'd like this, there is one problem at the moment though, Lack of content.
there really isn't much to do at the moment, might be a good idea to hold off until there's some more stuff to do.

I know it's early access but this is particularly disappointing. There really isn't much here right now. It's buggy, unpolished and your devices (core part of the game) randomly just explode every like 10 minutes, which is a lot faster than it might sound.

Early access to me, while it's a good way for developers to get playtesting and feedback, but you're also making impressions to people with your first release. This really isn't great.

This is an extremely strong start to a promising Signal Sim/Voices of the Void style game, though I do have some mild complaints as of early access launch. If you're REALLY fiending for some Voices of the Void room cleaning this is your new addiction, it's kinda absurd how many floors there are to clean up right now. It has a slow start but that's par for the course for this type of game so not a real complaint.

The atmosphere is perfect, I've yet to have a ear destroying jumpscare happen. The events that have happened so far haven't been particularly scary but I'm only at the start of day 7 as of the time of review, the mannequin was funny though. The recordings I've heard so far are solid, though there seems to be some inconsistencies with getting them to play once they're enhanced.

Decorations for your room and the apartment complex seem a bit limited at the moment, it's just some posters or picture frames you can put custom images into for now, some pots you can grow seeds in, and a projector that I imagine does something relevant to this complaint but that's too expensive for me right now. I'd love to have some wallpaper eventually.

The basic gameplay loop is good. You get requests for specific types of recordings and recording specific apartments once a day, and to supplement your income in the downtime between these requests you can send other recordings to someone for half the price, clean up the apartment complex, and get random requests to deliver items ordered from the store to tenants, these deliveries in my experience have been where most events happen.

How you actually get these recordings is going to be where most people have some trouble adjusting. It turns into a game of trying to find the most optimal placements for your devices to reach the most apartments possible while maintaining a chained connection to your server in the basement, these devices are fairly expensive to order, though you can also craft them with resources you find as you clean up the building. The explanations and general wording on setting up your network could be a bit better, though enough messing around will make it click.

My main complaints have to do with gathering the resources for crafting and device malfunction chance. You can't move crafting materials into your hotbar like you can with tools or consumables, so your only way to move them around is physically picking them up and dragging or throwing them. Recipes call for a LOT of these items, so you can end up spending almost all of your downtime just throwing things down and dragging them into the crafting room.

You might think to not be so reliant on crafting items, but in the early days this is going to be essential for being able to afford upgrades as the devices you're crafting can cost more than what you make in a day if you have to buy 2+. This becomes even more of an issue when you realize your placed devices have a random chance to break. Over 6 days I had 3 of my devices break, and after the 2nd broke I even invested into tier 2 of reducing the malfunction chance. And of course, the downtime spent fixing your network means those recorders aren't recording, so your main source of income is being threatened by this. You're going to need to constantly send out all of your extra recordings to earn more than you spend if you get unlucky the way I have so far. It's so brutal that I'm already committed to ignoring other types of upgrades until I have malfunction chance reduction maxed. Edit: The first patch seems to have toned down the break chance and made getting the reduction cheaper to get, no clue how effective the change is but I appreciate the fast response!

Despite these issues I've really enjoyed what I played so far, the improvements from the original demo release are very clear and I'm happy to see them. Excited to see where things go!

if you like voices of the void you will love this 100%. it has one glaring issue and that is the lack of instruction, which is really important in a game like this where you're managing receivers and recorders and stuff. the horror is done quite well and it always feels like theres a mystery to be solved. very much worth the price, even in its early access stage.

Overall quite engaging, once you figure out how connecting all the bits and bobs works of course. The concept and setting are rock solid, all that's really missing now is just continued polish of the mechanics that are present, and much like with VotV, more events and "side" things to do. Decorating the room is already quite enjoyable, hope to see more of that.

There are a few issues that still need figuring out, some bugs to fix, and a little more content.
What I see right now is pretty fun though. If you played Tunnet and/or Voices of the Void, give 'Beyond the Doors' a try. It has a fair price point and the Devs are passionate and open for critique on Discord.
The horror is well paced and there was a moment that actually made me feel uneasy, but there are not jumpscares as far as I can tell.
So if you are looking for a game to play over an evening or two, give this a try.
I hope we get some cool updates in the future, keep up the good work!

I'm stuck on the tutorial :(

What does it want me to do with the connecting the last receiver in the chain. I have no clue what i'm meant to do i've looked all through out the help section and since this game is new theres no videos or guides on what to do can someone help me D:

*edit*
Ive spent some time playing the game last night fr this time and it diffidently wears its inspiration on its sleave im a big fan of votv and this game controls and feels exactly like that, I like the small space the game takes place in it's very peaceful to just chill, pick up trash, record the tenants fo that bank and teh scares are just infrequent enough to really catch you off guard at times. There was this one time I was just delivering some stuff to a room on a high floor and seeing a door open to a white void while I couldnt move made my jaw drop for a second and really unnerved me. One thing I wish was that this game had it's own identity from votv as for now this game is just the same game but in a smaller space and with less to do. I'd get this game but I can't say the same for other's due to the limited amount of things to do. It is fun to buy and decorate especially with the posters :3

Tried to deliver a beer and got teleported to a maze full of plastic chairs. 10/10 i'm too scared to play again

I enjoy the prospects of more votv clones. I feel this game would benefit from some oppressive ambience at night. Cleaning seems more tedious and the help screen seems lacking. I also felt the drain of resources should be 25% slower. Keep an eye on this one.

I am loving the idea behind this game. I like uncovering the small mysteries and managing everything. I can't wait for the full release :}

The first tutorial part is a bit exhausting, but it definitely grows on you. Once you get past that initial "where does this cable even go?" phase, the game locks you into that dusty basement desk and doesn't let go.

Atmosphere: The 90s analog horror vibe is spot on. You can practically smell the damp concrete through the monitor.

Sound Design: 10/10. Playing with headphones made me check my actual room door because I thought I heard a noise behind me. No cheap jumpscares, just pure, constant dread.

Mechanics: It’s not just a walking sim; you’re a technical operator. Wiring up devices, chasing signals, and analyzing data on a DOS screen is surprisingly addictive.

The Bottom Line: If you don't quit in the first 20 minutes and actually learn the system, you're in for a chilling, immersive experience. If you like Voices of the Void or Iron Lung, this is a must-buy.

The idea behind the game is interesting. Managing the network and uncovering small mysteries around the building feels engaging. A promising Early Access title.

As a fan of both Tunnet and Voices of the Void, this is a very fun and, currently, smaller experience than both of them. I'm very excited to see what the team does with this!

It feels a bit like Voices of the Void Apartment Edition. There is some instruction struggle. Though I like where this is going... I hope it gets a lot of love. The price is right for an Early Access game...