Journey Beyond the Edge of the World

About this game

You open your eyes and find yourself aboard a fishing ship, floating aimlessly in the ocean. You have no recollection of how you got here. Or of who you are.
You hear a strange sound coming from the bridge. And you start exploring …

This is Journey Beyond the Edge of the World. An atmospheric first-person adventure game set on a ship lost at sea.
Uncover a mysterious retro-scifi story set in 1953, through exploration and puzzle solving.



By combining pixelated retro graphics with modern visual effects and incorporating 3D audio in its gameplay mechanics, Journey Beyond pulls you into its world.

A world confined to a fishing ship, lost at sea — with a twist, because multiple timelines are accessible through portals, giving access to previously locked-off areas, items, story fragments. Over the course of the game, you explore more and more of the constantly changing and evolving MS Constance and find out what happened to the ship and to its crew.

The deep narrative is encapsulated in an engaging puzzle-centric gameplay loop which revolves around finding and combining items, repairing broken devices and interacting with the environment.

Solving a puzzle unlocks a narrated music track and advances the main storyline about the journey’s sole survivor — the Unnamed Fisherman. A story about loss and hope — and about making and accepting choices.




Go anywhere and interact with almost anything on the ship: Discover new places and objects that tell you something about a lost crew member or about a part of the story.




Handcrafted sounds take you into the world through Spatial Audio, providing three-dimensional sound that works on regular headphones. Use it to focus on specific sounds and discover hidden memories; allowing you to step through time and to uncover new parts of the story. *

* Accessibility features will include non-spatial options upon release




Advancing the main story requires solving increasingly complex puzzles. Fix broken navigational equipment, repair a leak in the ship’s hull, use ropes in environmental puzzles. It is all about finding the right item for the right purpose.




The year is 1953. In the early morning hours, a decommissioned fishing trawler is leaving the port of Hamburg, Northern Germany to go on an expedition into the unknown. On board, an unconventional crew made up of fishermen, small time criminals, scientists, artists. Led by a mysterious and secretive stranger from out of town – who is keeping the true nature of the journey from everyone else.

Following a range of surreal events, the ship gets into a storm and all onboard are lost to the sea.

All but one: The Unnamed Fisherman, who is unwillingly taken on a journey to uncover the true intentions behind the trip and into their own troubled mind.

The mnain story is told through narrated ambient music tracks. Each story chapter is locked behind a puzzle. Solve the puzzle – unlock the music. With each chapter, the ship and it’s surroundings change, adapting to the events that take place in the music; taking you closer and closer to the Edge of the World – and beyond.




The pixelated retro look of the game is complemented by atmospheric lighting, modern visual effects, and a realistic water simulation, making for a truly unique visual experience.

Game features

• Exploration of an interactive ship
  
• Spatial Audio as a gameplay mechanic
  
• A compelling mystery retro-scific story set in 1953 about a ship lost at sea …
  
• … and about loss, hope, and about making and accepting choices
  
• Item-based and environmental puzzle solving
  
• Narrated ambient music
  
• Handcrafted sounds
  
• Pixelated retro graphics …
  
• … with atmospheric volumetric lighting & modern visual effects
  
• Realistic water simulation

About the dev

Journey Beyond the Edge of the World is solo-developed by me – Markus Koepke. I have worked as a freelance cinematographer and post production generalist in the advertising industry for more than a decade. A couple of years ago, I found a new passion in making games. Crafting visually unique virtual worlds with a strong narrative is super exciting to me. I also make electronic ambient music, and Journey Beyond lets me blend the two art forms in a unique way.

Latest news

• Announcements·10 Sept 2024Official

  The demo is dead, long live the demo!

  My fellow seafarers, the Steam Demo has been disabled for now. Those of you who have already downloaded should still be able to launch it from the directory directly (outside of Steam). Also, if you have received a Steam key for the demo from me, you will still be able to access it for now. I thank you all for playing and for providing feedback. Soon(TM) I will be opening up a new preview branch with private key access exclusively for Discord members. I've spend the past half year or so working on the current demo, and I'm now ready to leave it behind. I learned a lot about the type of game I want to make, what works and what doesn't, and while there is still stuff to figure out, I am now confident enough to go into the next phase of development. This will also mark a big shift in how I work. For the foreseeable future, I will be looking at greyboxed levels and placeholder stuff, as I'm setting up the rest of the game. This will be difficult for me as I always need that visual connection to get a feel for what I'm doing. But, I'm happy with the visual approach I laid out in the demo and I need to take a step back now. My plan is to layout the entire game from start to finish; with placeholders for some puzzles and story sequences. The goal is to have, by the end, a full "prototype" of the game, that I can build the final game on. I feel really good about this approach, especially since I've spend so much time on this one part of the game; I now need to get on with it and see if everything flows together the way I imagine it in my head. There is also this whole part of the game that I haven't really talked about much in public yet, and those are the music sequences. They need a lot of iteration to make them work the way I have planned; they might not work at all. We'll see! But it's time to get into the meat of it now! The type of access I will be granting on Discord will be for specific demo levels that showcase stuff like: Puzzles Specific puzzle concepts for which...
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• Patch Notes·28 Aug 2024Official

  Pre-Alpha (Gamescom) Demo now playable for a limited time!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44459252/7a756f4826f7e094e10d631e40daa677898097b8.jpg Hey everyone! Last week I had the honor of presenting Journey Beyond the Edge of the World at Indie Arena Booth / Gamescom. It was a wonderful (and exhausting!) experience. While initially planning to only have this demo up on Steam through Gamescom, I've decided to keep it up for a while, most likely for the next two weeks. I've also fixed a couple of bugs and glitches that came up during playtesting. I won't be fixing all glitches, as I'm currently in the process of rewriting most of the game's systems anyways. But some had to be adressed. See the change log below. Thank you for playing! Changelog 0.2.26 Fixed FMOD "muffle sound" parameter not being reset after ingame restart Fixed “that” IK glitch when holding the note Fixed rope occasionally glitching through hatch Fixed IK glitch that made hands appear broken on stairs Player can now squeeze between broken mast and Trawl winch in chapter one
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• Announcements·8 Dec 2023Official

  New Teaser! Plus a look on the journey ahead

  A new teaser ~ basically a new game Hey everyone! 3 months ago, I started completely overhauling the game in its then current state. I had realised a couple of things, one being: I needed a bigger boat! But also in general I felt much more in touch with what I wanted the game to be. So I spend a lot of time resarching, writing, modelling. What had once been a basic test scene for trying out mechanics and visuals (and, frankly, a mess of a project file), slowly transformed into something that will be the actual basis for Journey Beyond the Edge of the World. I feel super proud of what I achieved and very confident for the next steps in the development process. And, I made a new teaser to show off what the game has turned into. Do check it out, and don't forget to turn up that volume. I hope you will like it! The game 3 months ago ... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44459252/391811b766324106007cdbf5f6fb24a187d16d7b.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44459252/c289b8a810ec753d70c2a5bf5d4739b91d10b627.png ... and the game now {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44459252/1ca03fa09579c45d7a54b41830dc73759c8c372a.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44459252/4179ad43c4d9e2612a90d9de558ba6c12158d3ec.jpg My plan is to head into full production with the start of the new year, until then I will be finishing up some major systems and preparations. I will try my best at frequent updates, now that the development phase is starting to head into that more interesting phase with plenty of stuff to show off. A little tease on that front: Once I've cleaned up the project file after hacking some barely working stuff in last minute for the new teaser (yep, that's how game trailers are done, lots of smoke and mirrors my friends), I will work on a system for prodecural environmental interactions. If you don't know what that is, stay tuned. If you do, well, also stay tuned. You can join my Discord here: https://discord.com/invite/y4WKmbRD9c Cheers! Markus
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