Beacon Pines, something more than the Foul Harvest is foul around here.

The cute characters were what captured my interest when it came to playing this game. Not to mention it’s a choices matter game, and a storybook style to boot. So basically, think of those choose your own adventure books they used to publish–such as if you choose this option, go to this page to continue. I found those books fun.

And this was like that. So many endings to get you to the grand finale.

Who is this game for?

Game length

Around 6 hours

Genres

Explanation to Negative Feedback

Character voices

The voices of the character in Beacon Pines are actually pretty unique to me, but they can become very annoying to listen to after a while. It’s kind of like they’re talking in Morse code. Every time a word shows up in their text box, they emit a little beep, but those little beeps sound different for each characters, giving them their own voice.

Movement is wonky

It’s not bad, per se. The movement is actually really smooth when it comes to where you’re aiming the character. It’s not your typical up, down, left, right. It’s literally however you’re moving, so your character is rather fluid. However…when it comes to crossing a particular bridge, I always end up getting stuck because I don’t move the character just right to get onto the bridge and…Luka kind of looks like an idiot in the process.

Maybe the devs just made the bridge too narrow…but it was worth mentioning.

Explanation to Positive Feedback

Amazing narrator

This is a storybook-telling of events that are going in, and as such we have a narrator telling us some of the story that’s going on at specific moments. Kind of while talking to us, but my god she does an excellent job. Seriously.

Great characters

There are a variety of characters that you come across in Beacon Pines and each one has their own personality you’ll get to know one way or another. Some are a bit shady, but others might take you by surprise. Honestly, I found no flaws in them.

Several chapters, several endings

This is a game where you’ll have to go through several bad ends in order to get to the final proper ending. Which is pretty fun to me. You gotta learn from the things you do wrong and make the proper choices when they come up.

Links Worth Checking Out

Beacon Pines Review

TL;DR Review

This game hit all the right spots for me, and I can’t really pinpoint why. But the fact that you can find all of the different routes for the chapters in other chapters throughout the environments was an interesting way to change the storyline. As such, chapters don’t always have the same title to them, since the story adapts to whatever choice you give a specific line in the book.

While it’s mainly a visual novel, it’s also an adventure game where you can explore and interact with things.

And don’t worry about interacting with the same thing too many times on accident. If you’ve interacted with something once, then that’s it. There’s no accidentally triggering the same dialogue for it, which is nice.

I also don’t think you’re capable of getting lost on what to do in Beacon Pines, because it does a fairly good job of holding your hand without pointedly holding your hand throughout. So if you just talk to townspeople, sometimes you’ll get an “accidental” nudge in the right direction due to something they said that they shouldn’t have–such as the moment when you’re looking for Rolo and he’s sent you on a goose hunt to find him.

You probably don’t know what I’m talking about but, it’s a thing.

The characters are amazing. Some of them had me suspicious while others blind-sided me. Maybe I’m a little naive, but the ending took me by surprise.

In a good way.

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