With the roguelike being explored from so many angles in such a short period of time, it has become more difficult to find one that introduces something new to the genre. Just about everything ¾ from the twin-stick shooter to the rhythm game to jaunts in space ¾ has been explored to the point where it all sort of blends together. Beyond Dimensions seems to encapsulate this, as it feels like a bunch of different elements of different roguelikes have been thrown together into one big pile of a game. Whether you think this is a good thing or not is a different story.

Speaking of story, the game is rather unusual in that it doesn't really have a solid one. One minute, you're being told that you have to travel through several dimensions to restore magic to your world. The next minute, you're being told that you're seeing filler text that replaces a proper story. Every reboot of the game gives you something different as far as premise goes, and that also occurs for the dialogue in the cut scenes. There's even support for user-submitted story introductions, further diminishing the need for the game to have a solid tale of its own. In essence, the story becomes rather trivial to the experience, something we're seeing in a few of the more recent roguelike releases.

Though the game may not have a stable story, it features some structure as far as level themes go. You start off in a standard medieval dungeon, but it only takes a few levels of progression before you move on to an underground military bunker. From there, you somehow make it to a cityscape ruled by dapper-looking dinosaurs before traversing through a mashup of all three themes for the final encounter. The change in locales comes with encounters with the appropriate beasts, so at least the enemies you encounter are varied if you make some progress per run.

At its core, Beyond Dimensions is a roguelike by way of twin-stick shooter, and while the game's Steam page may lead you to believe that the title fully supports controllers, gameplay tells you otherwise. In the tutorial, you can move around with the left stick and aim with the right one, but you can't progress unless you use your keyboard and mouse to complete the rest of the actions. Once you leave the tutorial, you'll still need to manually configure the game to use the controller buttons while ignoring trigger functionality. With the game using PC button-naming conventions instead of the controller icons and those names being much harder to read due to the font size, you're better off using a keyboard and mouse combination for the game unless you have a Steam Controller handy.

With that control scheme disclaimer out of the way, the mechanics are both familiar and fresh. As you traverse the randomized dungeons, you'll use your magic abilities to rid yourself of any enemies you encounter, pick up extra boosts, and find the crystal that lets you exit the stage. All three of your given abilities run from the same mana pool, but since that replenishes rather quickly, you're rarely in a position where you're waiting around for mana before you can do something. Those abilities fall under three different categories. Attacks can range from a focused energy beam to slow-moving fireballs to a faster-moving wave of energy being thrown out against enemies. Defensive abilities include health refills, shields to block attacks, and temporary cloaking while you also have modifiers, like increased luck or speed.

One of the more interesting things about the spell system is that you initially have no control over what you're equipped with. You start your first run with everything randomized, with the conceit that you can only pick out certain abilities when you unlock their fairly high requirements. Since you don't retain anything else once you die, your grind is really geared toward unlocking what you want to make an epic run near the end. Though it is tempting to stick with your best loadout of spells once everything is earned, the game is more fun if you leave everything randomized since you'll have to compensate for things your loadout fails to cover.

One part of Beyond Dimensions is very disappointing: the enemy AI. No matter what world you occupy or what enemy you encounter, every single foe simply rushes at you to attack or get smacked down. Foes with projectile weapons shoot from off-screen but generally behave in the same way; they fire a shot, get closer and then fire again. It can be surprising at first, but it quickly gets tiresome since this is the only behavior any enemy ever exhibits, something that is only balanced by how short the title is.

As far as presentation goes, it is pretty lackluster overall. The idea of making your sprite-based character wander around polygonal worlds is pretty cool, especially since you can import some creations from the Steam Workshop, but it would've been nicer if the 3-D worlds you visit actually looked good. The medieval dungeons look appropriately dark but with loads of brown, while the enemies look terribly boxy. That boxy nature is more intentional in the underground bunker levels, but it fails to look impressive while the cartoon world of the dinosaurs looks too simplified to be considered good. The effects look rather basic, which makes you wonder why the engine struggles to produce a smooth experience if you increase the anti-aliasing levels beyond 2. On the audio side, the effects are pretty grating when they aren't generic, and some may actually make you believe that your speakers are cracking. The music is pretty decent but not particularly memorable.

The aloof nature of Beyond Dimensions may make it intriguing at first, but it doesn't hold together in the end. The adherence to many roguelike conventions is good, and the choice of a randomized spell system keeps things fresh until you unlock the spells you want for the big run. The variations in theme are also good, but the static order in which those themes appear can be disappointing when randomization governs every other aspect of the game. Though combat can be good due to the possible spell variations, the simple enemy AI can bring that down while the presentation feels too simple when scrutinized. In the end, Beyond Dimensions isn't a bad roguelike twin-stick shooter, but it could definitely stand to be better.

Score: 6.5/10