Beyond the Rift is a game for three players. Each player is responsible for one aspect of play, from creating the world beyond the rift, to describing its dangers, to overcoming those dangers and finding resolution for the city of Tower.

What’s the game like?

The style of play is meant to model the journey of metroidvania video games like Hollow Knight. The world is developed as you explore, with mysteries being solved in your group’s descriptions of them.

In many metroidvania games, the layout of the world and the lethality of encounters means that players are expected to retrace their steps to return to challenges again and again until they overcome them, or to find paths that can be opened with newly discovered tools. In Beyond the Rift, that backtracking is summarized through the roll of the dice. A single roll will tell you what the Echo’s efforts look like in the story: do they overcome the obstacles in front of them with ease? Or do they have to try again and again before they finally succeed?

Beyond the Rift is designed with the goal of focusing the player’s attention on the overall arc of their journey, so that when you play, you have the same kind of experience I have when playing Hollow Knight.

What do I need to play?

Beyond the Rift is designed to be fully playable with anywhere from one to three players, and no two players are required to share the same play materials, making this a perfect game to play remotely. You can also play it as a solo experience.

To play, you will need:

The full game is expected to take between one and several hours, but your group can pause play at any time. When you set the game aside, the Weaver in your group will want to make sure that any cards that have already been played remain separate from the deck, to ensure that the same cards aren’t played more than once.