XING: The Land Beyond

About

XING: The Land Beyond is a single player puzzle game. It was developed by White Lotus Interactive and was released on September 21, 2017. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and positive reviews from players.

You died. Welcome to XING: The Land Beyond, an atmospheric first-person puzzle adventure for desktops and virtual reality. Enjoy your peaceful escape from the chaotic world of the living, and travel the lands of the dead.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

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89%

Audience ScoreBased on 255 reviews

graphics58 positive mentions

stability7 negative mentions

Beautiful and immersive visuals with diverse, detailed environments.
Engaging and intuitive puzzles that gradually increase in difficulty, providing satisfying challenges.
Relaxing, atmospheric experience enhanced by a soothing soundtrack and emotional storytelling.

Platforming and jumping mechanics can be clunky and frustrating, sometimes requiring jump assistance.
Occasional bugs and glitches, including getting stuck in geometry and physics issues.
Linear progression with some backtracking required; lack of save points within levels can lead to replaying large sections.

graphics
102 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
57%
40%
3%
The graphics are widely praised as stunning, beautiful, and immersive, featuring highly detailed, varied environments with excellent visual effects and artistic design reminiscent of classic adventure games. While some users note dated elements or minor glitches, the overall graphical presentation is a major highlight, complemented by plentiful settings for optimization. However, the game can be demanding on hardware, requiring powerful PCs to fully enjoy the visuals at maximum quality.
- “The game's visuals and art style are absolutely gorgeous, the locations are lush, interesting to explore and carefully crafted.”
- “Gorgeous graphics, great presentation, good story, well executed puzzles, decent game length, and amazing music and atmosphere.”
- “The graphical presentation of all the environments (day with clouds and sun dappling or streaming, night, the night sky and the cosmos... towards the ending especially... waterfalls, brooks, rivers, desert sand and windstorms, snow and snow storms, ice, rain... goodness; every environment known to man is presented here beautifully).”
- “Graphics are rather dated, but reasonable for the application.”
- “The one problem with this game is that it's resource hungry, and you're going to need a beefy PC to run it, unless you turn the graphics settings down a lot.”
- “It's ok, even though I have spent more time fiddling around with the graphic settings than actually playing.”
story
93 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
28%
69%
3%
The game's story is a series of interconnected, poetic tales about lost souls navigating the afterlife, delivered through well-voiced rhyming poems that evoke emotional and atmospheric engagement. While some find the storytelling emotionally moving and unique, others criticize the forced rhyme scheme and feel the narrative serves more as a backdrop to puzzles rather than a deeply integrated experience. Overall, the story is appreciated for its beauty and mood, though its impact varies among players depending on their preference for narrative depth versus ambiance.
- “The story is told in poems (quatrains, to be specific), and it's about the stories of the dead.”
- “The puzzles are simple, but the interplay between story (featuring fantastic voice-overs) and solving make the experience rewarding and engaging.”
- “Instead of telling just one story Xing: The Land Beyond tells you many seemingly different ones in a beautiful and poetic way, only to unite them all at the end.”
- “I enjoyed this early on, but ultimately the insipid storytelling (rhyming couplets are literally never a good idea), awful first-person platforming, and puzzles with increasingly complex and annoying execution requirements (time spent solving puzzles should be spent thinking, not running around a level to implement a solution!) dragged it down.”
- “Also, it has the classic Myst-clone problem of puzzles existing solely for the player, rather than being integrated into the story.”
- “Not only do they all end in death (which may be expected since you're playing through the afterlife), it's also often a sad and senseless death that provides little closure for the story.”
music
76 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
54%
41%
5%
The music in the game is widely praised for its beautiful, soothing, and atmospheric qualities, often described as non-intrusive and enhancing the relaxing and immersive experience. While some note occasional repetitiveness in the loops, the overall orchestral and ambient soundtrack effectively complements the visuals and puzzles, creating a harmonious and enjoyable gameplay environment. A few players prefer to mute the music in favor of natural sounds, but most agree the soundtrack is a key highlight.
- “The scores (and there are a lot of musics for each chapter and area in the game) are deep, lush, majestic, haunting. Think "big movie music", folks.”
- “I should mention the incredible sound design and music - not only are they beautifully implemented in a certain unusual way, but also they are essential for creating a truly relaxing, cozy atmosphere of the game.”
- “One thing I really want to give note to is how amazing the soundtrack is, it knows just when to stand out and captures the majesty of adventure very well.”
- “The music was irritating, so I turned it off.”
- “The god awful music.”
- “Maybe to emphasize an important event or area you have entered, but this music mostly plays on a loop over and over and it is just terrible.”
gameplay
63 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
70%
5%
The gameplay of the game is generally praised for its solid, intuitive mechanics and innovative puzzle design involving environmental manipulation like day-night cycles and weather changes, offering varied and satisfying challenges. However, some users note issues with certain mechanics such as jumping controls, occasional glitches, and a linear progression that limits exploration and puzzle variety. Overall, it provides a smooth, engaging experience with a moderate difficulty curve, especially appealing to fans of thoughtful puzzle adventures.
- “It's beautiful, quite original, the puzzles are smart and challenging but not impossible (and don't have only one way to reach the solution), the mechanics and gameplay are intuitive and smooth, you can check your status any time and, well, I'm just loving it!”
- “The puzzle mechanics in Xing are mostly environmental, including fantastical feats of wizardry such as manipulating the weather, time of day, and direction of the wind.”
- “Each world presents a new mechanic, such as changing from day to night, making rain, freezing the water, and controlling the wind.”
- “Mechanically, the game suffers in quite a few areas.”
- “Speaking of not being able to see the mechanic of swapping to night and day and having the world change is nice and all but I found it was hard to see in the dark making me biased towards one world state which made some puzzles more frustrating than they needed to be.”
- “- puzzles and mechanics feel/seem too game-like, existing solely as puzzles/obstacles for the player, and not as true, integrated parts of a real, believable environment.”
atmosphere
28 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
68%
21%
11%
The game is widely praised for its beautiful, tranquil, and immersive atmosphere, featuring varied and visually stunning environments complemented by exceptional sound design and music. Its relaxing, meditative mood contrasts intriguingly with darker story elements, creating a unique and cozy experience that enhances the engaging puzzle gameplay. Overall, the atmosphere is a standout aspect that draws players into a magical, poetic world ideal for fans of atmospheric puzzle adventures.
- “This game's main appeal to me comes from its meditative, tranquil atmosphere and gorgeous, varied environments.”
- “I should mention the incredible sound design and music - not only are they beautifully implemented in a certain unusual way, but also they are essential for creating a truly relaxing, cozy atmosphere of the game.”
- “The atmosphere and each place you visit is beautiful and unique from one another, from temples and deserts to forest areas.”
- “There's a very chill, new age (occasionally schmaltzy) feel to the story and atmosphere.”
- “Considering the otherwise very soothing and relaxing atmosphere, the stories are surprisingly dark and morbid.”
- “It's mostly about the atmosphere and the spoon-fed poetic story snippets along the way.”
optimization
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
45%
15%
Optimization for the game is generally well-regarded, with good performance on high-end hardware and ample graphics settings to balance quality and smoothness. However, VR mode is more demanding and appears less optimized, leading to performance compromises for some users. Developer updates have improved performance over time, but some players still note blurriness and optimization shortcomings in VR compared to other titles.
- “Well-optimized graphics, natural locomotion, beautiful environments, tons of content, no long loading screens.”
- “I had no performance issues; I played it in non-VR and it ran perfectly maxed at over 100 frames per second on my 2080.”
- “Graphics settings are plentiful by the way - oversampling is there, on 100% by default which is a little blurry but up to 140-150% and everything looks pretty sharp (of course with some impact on performance, but still very playable).”
- “VR is very demanding, but it also feels poorly optimized compared to other good looking VR games I've played.”
- “The game suffers from some serious performance issues.”
- “While nice graphics come at a cost, part of the problem is just poor optimization.”
emotional
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game offers a heartfelt and emotional experience, with beautifully told, poetic stories enhanced by strong voice acting. While some narratives may feel naive, the overall atmosphere is immersive and touching, evoking genuine emotional moments and a sense of peaceful, reflective exploration.
- “Stories are emotional with good voice work.”
- “The stories throughout are beautifully told in the form of small, beautifully written poetic verses and have some quite emotional moments.”
- “Outstanding: an emotional experience to view, involve yourself in, and to listen to as you're playing.”
stability
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
88%
The game's stability is marred by several bugs affecting jumping mechanics, object physics, and occasional graphical glitches, particularly in later areas. While most issues are minor and not game-breaking, long loading times and some visual inconsistencies detract from the overall experience. Despite these flaws, the game's core performance remains generally stable.
- “The game is extremely buggy in regards to jumping and object throwing/bouncing physics, which, combined with poor choices of checkpoints and 'jump assist' targets, makes navigating through the game painful.”
- “Additionally, game loading requires very long time and there are some particle glitches - could be seen only in right eye, but not in left.”
- “I did see a few graphical glitches where glowing elements of objects would appear through the environmental geometry.”
grinding
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
80%
Grinding in the game is occasionally tedious and can feel repetitive, particularly with puzzle elements like switch and key finding. However, engaging visuals and the overall journey help maintain enjoyment, preventing the experience from becoming frustrating or overly monotonous.
- “But they do get a bit tedious.”
- “The action can be quite tedious at times, but the visuals helped make up for that - enjoy the journey, not the destination.”
- “The puzzles are all tedious switch and key finding.”
replayability
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
Replayability is somewhat limited due to only four worlds to explore, but the need to collect extra runes, including some missed on earlier stages, provides a reason to revisit previous levels.
- “But I'm missing a few runes on previous stages, so there's definite replay value.”
- “There are only 4 worlds to visit, and even with the extra runes you have to collect there is limited replayability.”

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76%Critics’ scoreBased on 1 critic reviews

Xing: The Land Beyond Review – Drop Dead Gorgeous
Cogconnected.com
76%

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XING: The Land Beyond
€19.50
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14h Median play time

14h Average play time

14-14h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 1 analyzed playthroughs

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Frequently Asked Questions

XING: The Land Beyond is a puzzle game.

XING: The Land Beyond is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Virtual Reality, Steam Deck and others.

On average players spend around 14 hours playing XING: The Land Beyond.

XING: The Land Beyond was released on September 21, 2017.

XING: The Land Beyond was developed by White Lotus Interactive.

XING: The Land Beyond has received mostly positive reviews from players and mostly positive reviews from critics. Most players liked XING: The Land Beyond for its graphics but disliked it for its stability.

XING: The Land Beyond is a single player game.

Similar games include Aporia: Beyond The Valley, MIND: Path to Thalamus, RiME, Call of the Sea, Jusant and others.

XING: The Land Beyond

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