Beacon Pines: Video game stories that do something new often get my attention, and the option for player agency presented by Beacon Pines made me want to learn more. Charms are found as you explore the title’s down-and-out rural community.
Each charm is a phrase that may be used at certain moments to take the tale in unexpected and harsh directions. Plus, you can go back and forth between these major turning points at will, testing out new vocabulary in older sections to see how it fits in.
Beacon Pines is OUT NOW!! Explore this cute and creepy adventure today on PC, Switch, and Xbox (and launching on Game Pass!):
🌲 Steam: https://t.co/N0G7JbpImc
🌲 Xbox: https://t.co/vnyRXUwzGv
🌲 Switch: https://t.co/aj7xFP2JY0
💬 Beacon Pines’ Discord: https://t.co/Q0OJEdhQxd pic.twitter.com/N0grWjv9iv
— Beacon Pines – OUT NOW on Xbox/Switch/PC! (@BeaconPines) September 22, 2022
Beacon Pines
Beacon Pines, however, has a lot fewer customization options than I had anticipated. Instead, it’s the kind of well-written plot and compelling characters that are very unusual in video games. You’re in charge of Luka, a 12-year-old protagonist with several tragic traits. Six years ago, his father died under suspicious circumstances, his mother disappeared, and he now lives with his neglectful grandmother.
You’ll move the plot forward by guiding Luka around Beacon Pines and chatting with the locals, most of whom haven’t fared much better since the “Foul Harvest” put an end to the local fertilizer industry that employed half the town. Now, a business known as Perennial Harvest has set up shop in town, and its suave CEO, William Kerr, can’t help but crack a smile.
That probably seems like a bunch of clichés you’ve heard before, and Beacon Pines delivers on all of them. When Beck, the new kid in town, joins your group, envy erupts; you must contend with the local bullies; and, yes, things are not as they seem in this seemingly idyllic agricultural hamlet. My mind went to Spielberg, E.T., and The Goonies when I was playing Beacon Pines; yours could go to Stranger Things.
Usually, this kind of familiarity bores me (thus why I stopped watching Stranger Things in its second season), but Beacon Pines succeeds in two crucial respects. First, and this may seem like a backhanded compliment, but the writing is honest. When it’s time for a joke, the characters crack one, but the humor is never winking, self-referential, or glib.
No matter how far you take the story, the characters of Luka, Rolo, and the rest of the cast will always seem grounded in reality, and their emotions and problems will never feel out of place. They seemed genuine, which facilitated simple emotional investment.
The second is that if Beacon Pines has any element of surprise, it is the story‘s willingness to go to such lengths. Just so there’s no confusion, it’s never very gory. Despite an early sequence in which you share trash with a bagged-up body, I’d classify this game as comfortable horror, given it looks like a Disney XD program and has anthropomorphic animal children as its protagonists.
In many respects, it’s the ideal game to play as the days become shorter and Halloween nears. (Here’s a bonus: you could turn it into a fun Steam Deck game. However, it may also be accessed with Game Pass.
But since you may go back and change your choice, the story can take some very unusual turns (and, without giving anything away, often tragic ones). Nothing is ever really lost since the sentient book telling the narrative will interject and provide another branch if you get stuck, but knowing that your choices will have such far-reaching consequences adds depth to the experience.
It is not Luka who is moving between the timeframes, but rather the player. That’s a big deal since it suggests you have information your protagonist doesn’t. Unfortunately, there isn’t much room for the type of interaction I was hoping for, where you had to push Luka into risks in one timeline despite what you’ve learned from another.
The story may be seen inside the game’s in-game book as a tree with branches, however, the branches are quite far off from one another. This ensures that the story is never dull, and that the player is constantly on the cusp of learning something new about the characters and the mysteries at play, but that the information gained in one chapter has no bearing on the decisions the player makes in another.
I use the term “choose” because, at these junctures, the reader must decide which word to insert into the narrative next, although the extent to which the reader really has a say in the matter is up to debate. First of all, there aren’t too many charms to locate, and each one can only be used once. There is no hint in those phrases as to what effect they may have on the plot.
You got to decide whether it should start raining harder or not in one particular situation. Another lets you decide whether Beck should tickle your bullies or just appear “weird” around them. The judgments involved here are like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings: their effects are unpredictable and far-reaching.
Due to the fact that you may redo every choice and play every branch to its inevitable end in the five or so hours, it takes to finish Beacon Pines, labeling the results of your choices “consequences” is a stretch. The canonical tale for Luka is probably none of the timelines you encounter, but for you as a player, it’s the one where you attempt every option and always ends up at the same place.
About three hours into Beacon Pines, I had the epiphany that I was really playing a visual novel, and it really threw me for a loop. You have nothing to worry about; I am not angry. Beacon Pines’ structure and the ways in which its linearity shocked me have taken up a good chunk of this review, but let me assure you that everything I wrote at the outset is still true.
Beacon Pines may be a trope-filled choose-your-own-adventure that gets your fingers locked between the pages, but the fact that I adored every minute of it and miss its characters when it was finished is a credit to how well it delivers on its plot, art, and music.
Final Words
Beacon Pines: Novel video game plots intrigue me, and Beacon Pines’ player autonomy did. The down-and-out community has appeal. Each charm may affect the story’s tone. Switch between these primary turning points to test new terminology. This article concludes with the information Beacon Pines Is A Character-Driven Horror Adventure Game. If you need more latest information then stay tuned with us here.