Beacon Pines

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

.

Review:

Beacon Pines is a Graphic Adventure released on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2022. Set in a small town populated by anthropomorphic animals, this game follows an young boy named Luka as he searches for answers to the mysteries surrounding the town – what happened to his missing mother, what is happening at the abandoned factory at the outskirts of the town, and who is behind the strange events that have been occurring lately?

The presentation in this game is absolutely gorgeous, featuring beautifully detailed hand-painted 2D visuals, with similarly lovingly-designed character portraits. This is joined by some really excellent voice-over narration that gives this game almost a storybook feel, although with more personality than that term implies. This is backed by an absolutely beautiful instrumental soundtrack, with relaxing and at times emotional, including A Cozy House, Welcome to Beacon Pines, and Finding a Friend. However, the one that really caught my attention early on was the absolutely wonderful Memories, a lovely acoustic guitar theme with a vocal accompaniment that really helped to solidify this game’s beautiful storybook world into something truly special.

The writing in this game is impeccable, with wonderful characters that all seem to have a depth and personality of their own. Luka himself seems to be a pretty average kid who is roughly equal parts reasonable and mischievous, his friends all have their own quirks and unique personal traits, and the adults are about as dismissive or patronizing of the kids as one might expect. However, it is the narrator that is perhaps the game’s best character, seeming to metaphorically wink at players on occasion behind the scenes, and reassuring them when the story occasionally takes a turn that’s surprisingly dark that things really will turn out okay in the end.

When it comes to the gameplay, this game’s approach to the Graphic Adventure genre is pretty novel. As you go through the game’s story, you won’t be collecting random objects as you often do in the genre. Instead, players will collect “Charms”, generally a single word that encapsulates an emotion or idea that Luka encounters in his story. These “Charms” can then be used at “Turning Points”, places in the story where the path branches and leads to multiple possible versions of events happening based on which charm you use.

However, this isn’t a branching narrative in a traditional sense – there is one actual good ending, and all other bad endings are the “wrong” ones. The game makes it a point to tell you this early on, and it also empowers you to eventually find your way to the “right” ending by allowing players to keep all the charms they gather throughout the game, even if it’s on a “wrong” path. Upon reaching a bad ending, players can rewind time back to a turning point and explore how things would change if you use a different charm at that point. The game even helpfully notifies you when a branch has been fully explored and doesn’t need to be revisited. Using this, players work their way back and forth through the branching story until they find a timeline that gets them to the game’s true ending.

So much about this game is wonderful, but I do have one monitor complaint and one major complaint. First, while the branching timelines is a great mechanic that works well for the game, it doesn’t really seem to fit the game’s story all that well. There are definitely sci-fi elements at play in the game’s story, but time travel does not appear to be one of them.

However, that’s a minor nitpick. The real complaint I have is that the font this game uses is difficult to read, and there is no option to change it. What’s worse, some characters have a darker background in their speech bubble, and this makes it even more difficult to see what they’re saying. And there are “storybook” sections where the lighting is so poor that it would be a struggle to read anything if it wasn’t for the fact that these sections are fully-narrated.

It’s frustrating that such an easily-addressed flaw mars an otherwise phenomenal game, but I highly recommend you put up with this irritating element because Beacon Pines is well worth playing – the presentation is absolutely gorgeous, the story is well-written and its characters engaging, and its “charm” and “turning point” mechanics are an inventive and accessible twist on the genre. If you enjoy Graphic Adventure games, consider this a must-play title.

tl;dr – Beacon Pines is a Graphic Adventure game set in a rural town filled with anthropomorphized animals where players follow a young boy trying to uncover the town’s mysteries. This game features a well-told story with wonderful characters, a gorgeous art style, a beautiful soundtrack, and a clever but accessible “charm” and “turning point” mechanic that all make this a must-play game for fans of the genre. The only major flaw I can point to is text that’s at times difficult to read, but it’s worth putting up with this issue because the rest of the game is so delightful.

Grade: A-

.

This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel – What really sets Beacon Pines apart among this year’s selection of Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel games is that it pairs a story with really likable characters and a beautiful presentation with a clever mechanic that is both creative and also extremely accessible, making this game’s already charming branching narrative into an exploration of ideas and how those ideas can change a story. The result is a truly wonderful experience overall that I feel any fan of the genre can get behind.

Runner-Up: Best Song (Memories, by Matt Meyer), Best Voice Acting, Best Graphical Style, Best Story

.

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}