Beacon Pines review: a successful cozy horror adventure game based on the strengths of its characters
I’m an innovator when it comes to story in video games, and Beacon Pines hooked me with what looked like an adventure by choice. As you explore the title’s lucky farming town, you’ll discover ‘charm’. Each charm is a word that can be deployed at set points to branch out the story in serious, new ways. More importantly, you can flip back and forth between these key moments at any time, allowing you to work on new words from previous chapters to see what happens.
Except, Beacon Pines is less selective than I expected. Instead, it’s something rarer and more ambitious in video games: it’s a good, well-written story, with strong characters that you develop to take care of.
You control Luka, a twelve-year-old boy who possesses some of the protagonist’s tragedies. His father passed away six years ago under mysterious circumstances, his mother has recently gone missing, and he is currently living with his inattentive grandmother. You’ll begin the story by taking Luka around town and talking to the other residents of Beacon Pines, most of whom haven’t gotten much better in recent years, since an event had called “Foul Harvest” bankrupted the local fertilizer company that employed half the town. Now, a new company called Perennial Harvest has moved to the city, run by the laughable William Kerr, and way too ingenious.
That sounds like a bunch of familiar tropes, and Beacon Pines is sure to hit the beats you’d expect. There’s a new kid in town named Beck, join your gang and jealousy ensues, there are bullies in town to suffer, and certainly, not all of them are What seems like in the bucolic farmer community. Playing Beacon Pines made me think of Spielberg, ET, The Goonies; you can also think about Stranger Things.
Familiarity like this often annoys me (I dropped Stranger Things in season two), but Beacon Pines delivers in two main ways. First of all – and this sounds like weak compliments – but its text has integrity. Characters make jokes when appropriate, but those jokes are never winked, alluded, or flashed. Even when the game lets you twist the story in novel directions, the character arcs are believable and the emotions and conflicts of Luka, Rolo, and the cast are completely realistic no matter what you throw. What strange scenario they entered. They feel real, and that ultimately makes it easy to invest in them.
Those branches go to stranger places than I expected – and often end in tragedy.
Second, if Beacon Pines surprises, it’s with the extremes that it takes the story to. To be clear, it’s never exactly creepy. This is a game that looks like a Disney XD show and stars anthropomorphized animal children, and although an early scene will have you sharing a trash can with a corpse full of bags , I would describe it as a cozy horror. In many ways, it’s the perfect game to play as night comes and Halloween approaches. (Extra tip: it makes a great Steam Deck game. Otherwise, it’s also available through Game Pass.)
However, the ability to re-execute your selections and switch story directions means those branches are allowed to go to stranger places than I expected – and, without spoiling anything, often end up in tragedy. When you reach these sometimes not-so-literal things, the sentient book telling the story begins and invites you to move on to another branch, which means nothing is really lost, but it makes Your decisions become better knowing that their impact can be far-reaching.
It is you, the player, who is changing between these timelines, not Luka. This means that you know the things your main character doesn’t do. I’d love to see this more intense, forcing you to direct Luka to face dangers in one timeline despite what you’ve learned from the other, but with little opportunity for that kind of interaction. there. Think of the narrative as a tree with branches – that’s how the game visually describes it in the pages of the in-game book – but it’s a tree where all the branches are actually far apart. . This means you’re always on a wild ride and always discovering new, exciting sides to the cast and central mysteries, but what you learn in a movie doesn’t have to Report anything about what you as the player choose to do in the other section.
I’m using words like “choose” because, in these critical times, you actually choose which words to drop into the next story, but there’s still debate about how much sovereignty you really have. motion. There aren’t many charms to find and each can only be used in one place in the story, for starters. Those words also don’t show their impact on the story. In one case, you choose whether the rain will be heavier or stop. On the other hand, you choose whether Beck should tickle his bullies or simply act “weird”. These decisions are a butterfly flap that produces completely unpredictable consequences.
Even calling the results of your actions “consequences” is a strain, provided you can redo every decision and will make every branch to the necessary conclusion in five hours or so. than Beacon Pines need to complete. It’s hard to say which timeline you go through is Luka’s classic story, but as a player, your classic is the one that involves trying every available option and ultimately both come to the same conclusion.
Honestly, there’s a moment about three hours into Beacon Pines when I realize: oh damn, they tricked me into playing a visual novel. I am not crazy. I’ve spent a lot of this review trying to discern the structure of Beacon Pines and the way in which its linearity surprised me, but I mean what I said above. Beacon Pines can also be an impromptu adventure of your own choosing that leaves its fingers stuck between the pages of a book for you, but it is testament to how well it conveys story, art and The music was so good that I enjoyed every minute of it anyway – and I miss the character of it now that it’s over.
