Ah, space. The final frontier. Well, it’s just got that much closer with Reigns: Beyond taking us to the stars. If you’ve already heard of it, that’s because it came out on Apple Arcade four years ago, but the card-swiping experience is now out on the Nintendo Switch.
I’ve played Reigns before, but I didn’t expect to be playing guitar while floating through space. I also didn’t expect to be harassed by a shark via intercom or to ferry passengers through the cosmos, but here we are.
You can get an idea of the story from our original Reigns: Beyond review here, or you can keep reading to see how it holds up on Switch. Actually, let me just tell you – it runs absolutely fine, looks really nice, and is an easy game to play on the handheld system.
So what do you do? After you crash land your spaceship and accidentally kill the member of a band, you then, uh, take over and join the band. Swings and roundabouts, right? Now you’re a lead guitarist and the captain of a spaceship, how fun.
You and your crew – aka your bandmates – then set off to different planets to accomplish different deeds like playing concerts and looking for a cure to a mysterious disease. But remember, this is a choice game, and everything matters.
This offers some replayability, with the different paths you can take through the cosmos, changing which planets you visit first. You could, if you really wanted, make all the wrong choices and see what happens. I didn’t do that though because I’m a good noodle.
As you hop from planet to planet visiting stores and playing gigs, you collect a range of different guitars, unlocking more songs to delight audiences on your interstellar tour. What? You wouldn’t have a collection of sick axes if you were a spaceship captain?
I really enjoyed Reigns: Beyond and its effortless humor, which comes across remarkably well given the small snippets of text you get on the cards. Beyond offers a simple gameplay experience, with a small amount of head-scratching as you figure out which options to pick without depleting your resources.
If you’re interested in learning more about the game, we have an interview with the team that you might find fun. If not, then here, we can recommend some more space games and funny games for you to play.