Beyond Eyes: A game about isolation, growth, and a lost cat

In Beyond Eyes, players will guide ten-year-old Rae as she ventures beyond the safety of her house in search of a cat called Nani. Blinded in a firework accident when she was three, Rae was left traumatised and reluctant to leave the safety of her home and garden.

“The basic narrative is her trying to find a cat,” Tiger & Squid creative director Sherida Halatoe tells us,  “but at the same time it’s also a  story about growing up, overcoming fears, and learning that things are not always what they seem on first impressions. I wanted the player to go on that journey with her.”

Rae’s blindness is represented by a watercolour-inspired world that is filled in as she moves through it, like a passive Unfinished Swan. Noises briefly reveal what waits in the distance, although the ambiguity of sound means you can’t always trust Rae’s interpretation of the world.

Elements of the world that Rae doesn’t recognise are represented by abstract smears of colour and loud noise. The threatening purple streak to the right of the page, for example, turns out to be a busy road. Once Rae negotiates it, she won’t be so afraid the next time

“Sometimes it can be [useful in] keeping her away from harm, while at other times the player can actively encourage her to confront her fears,” Halatoe says. “And that helps in later parts of the game, where if she has overcome a fear, she’ll become more comfortable with a certain problem and that will help her and open up new areas to explore.”

Halatoe is working on Beyond Eyes with Team 17, which signed the game, for release later this year.