Beacon Pines review: A short yet mesmerizing adventure game

Developer Hiding Spot's short and sweet indie title Beacon Pines is, without a doubt, a brilliant game. The adventure title has filled a void I never realized I had in my life.

Every player, more often than not, has that one game or gaming genre they never take a shot at because it never appeals to their personal preferences, but they still end up loving the experience after giving it a chance. This is exactly how Beacon Pines resonated with me.

Expand Tweet

The game boasts an engaging story that immersed me right from the get-go, partly due to its cute and mesmerizing art style. The minimalistic and charming presentation of the game is something that I have found to be very engaging. Beacon Pines feels like a perfect blend of book-based adventure games and old point-and-click computer puzzle games.

Looking for Crossword hints & solutions? Check out latest NYT Mini Crossword Answers, LA Times Crossword Answers, and Atlantic Crossword Answers

The charming art style of Beacon Pines (Image via Hiding Spot)

One of the most intriguing aspects of Beacon Pines was its narrative tone. The game starts with a simple story about a town and its cute residents, but as I progressed through it, the narrative became more and more spooky, even sinister at times.

The game even had quite a few scary moments that had me questioning many things throughout my journey in this short but genuinely engaging adventure.

The charming adventure-book narrative of Beacon Pines

The premise of Beacon Pines is simple. It starts as a story set within a mysterious book, where the players are both the readers and the main protagonist of the game, Luka. The charming art style and unpredictable narrative immediately grip players from the start.

The storybook presentation of the story (Image via Hiding Spot)

Although the story of Beacon Pines starts in a fairly peaceful tone, it soon transforms into a scary one as weird and inexplicable things start happening all over the town. Sudden earthquakes, strange lights, townsfolk going missing, strange folks in hazmat suits appearing out of nowhere, and to top it all off, glowing puddles.

To uncover the reason behind these strange and creepy occurrences in the town, Luka and his friends sneak out late into the old abandoned factory, gathering clues that eventually lead them to make some fascinating and shocking discoveries.

The old and abandoned warehouse (Image via Hiding Spot)

The game's story feels like an episode of Netflix's Stranger Things, especially the show's first season, with kids banding together to unravel some really nefarious and scary facts regarding the town they reside in. Every Beacon Pines chapter is crafted and paced so well that it almost felt like I was reading a book instead of playing a video game.

Much like any classic adventure title, the narrative of Beacon Pines is pretty straightforward, which isn't negative per se. However, given how much it immersed me into the experience from the start, I was expecting a bit more from the story.

The story is also pretty brief, clocking in at roughly 3 hours. However, the replayable sections and multiple branching storylines can easily add a couple more hours to the experience.

A subtle yet gratifying gameplay experience awaits

The gameplay of Beacon Pines is seamlessly intertwined into the narrative experience. Players assume the role of the story's protagonist and that of a reader. There are several junctions where players will need to take charge of Luka's story, making key decisions that ripple throughout the length of the game. To do so, players must find words called charms hidden in the game's environment.

Choosing the right word or charm is crucial to move the story forward in a meaningful direction (Image via Hiding Spot)

Collecting the charms throughout the story also allows players to alter the ending. The story's outcome is decided by the words players choose to use for each junction event. However, if players want, they can also go back to the previous section of the story, use a different charm and see how it affects the entire story of Beacon Pines.

I love the idea of having multiple choices for how a story plays out and developers giving players the agency to choose the said outcome. However, I was never a fan of the games that usually did so.

Beacon Pines also includes a few fun mini-games such as fishing (Image via Hiding Spot)

Games like Heavy Rain or other titles developed by Quantic Dreams, even the Life is Strange series, or any such narrative-focused video game that barely has any substantial gameplay element apart from piecing together the story and making choices, never really appealed to me. Thus, it was a genuine surprise for me to have liked the experience developer Hiding Spot offered with Beacon Pines.

There are also a few mini-games, such as fishing and cooking, that players can delve into, but for the most part, these were just distractions from the main story. I liked these little mini-games and found them to be a great addition to the overall package.

Delightful presentation complete with an equally awesome soundtrack

As I previously mentioned, I adore Hiding Spot's art style for their adventure game. Beacon Pines was as joyful to look at as it was to play and experience for myself.

The screenshots of the game I saw on its Steam page already interested me, but believe me, playing it myself, seeing these cute little characters interact with one another, along with the brilliant narration voice-over, takes it to a whole other level.

From character design to the game's overall presentation, the art style of the game is truly incredible and charming (Image via Hiding Spot)

Another thing that caught my attention from the get-go was the brilliant soundtrack developer Hiding Spot chose for their game. It added a lot to the game's overall atmosphere.

Few shortcomings

While the game is very well polished and runs without any issues on my PC, I did run into a few audio-related issues, such as crackling sound during narration and a few instances of missing audio. However, the devs ironed out some of these issues with the updates they rolled out during the game's review period.

Rolo is easily one of the best characters of the story (Image via Hiding Spot)

The system I used for Beacon Pines was equipped with an Nvidia 940MX graphics processor, Intel Core i5 7200U CPU, and 16 gigabytes of DDR4 memory. I also had the game installed on the NVMe drive on the system, which was just overkill, considering the minimalistic requirements of the game.

The game runs flawlessly and looks undeniably great. Apart from the occasional audio issue, I did not find any problems with the game's technical polish. While it wasn't an issue for me, some players might find the short length of the game’s story somewhat discouraging.

In conclusion

Beacon Pines is a phenomenal adventure game with a mesmerizing art style and a gripping narrative. The unpredictable story, stellar presentation, great soundtrack, and excellent voice narration make it one of the most immersive games I have played this year. Although there are a few rough edges, such as occasional audio glitches, I'm sure they can be smoothed out with either a day-one patch or post-launch updates.

Expand Tweet

Hiding Spot games have cemented themselves as one of the most competent indie developers with Beacon Pines, and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for the future.