• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $17.99 until October 6th)
• Developer: Hiding Spot Games
• Publisher: Fellow Traveller
• Release Date: September 22, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by Double Jump on behalf of Hiding Spot Games and Fellow Traveller. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I’ve seen various screenshots of Beacon Pines for a while now, and the art of the anthropomorphized animals (say that 5 times fast) looked so good! The game is described as a “Winnie the Pooh meets Twin Peaks”-inspired adventure game. I was born around the time Twin Peaks first aired so I’m not too familiar with it, but after finishing Beacon Pines I did get slight Stranger Things vibes.

The story of Beacon Pines starts inside of a book, and the text is narrated by a voice actor (Kirsten Mize, who does a fantastic job). The text for character dialogue is technically voiced as well, but through unintelligible voices reminiscent of Animal Crossing characters. Everything outside of the dialogue is fully voiced. The gorgeous visuals, along with the soothing soundtrack and narration, all contrast with the mysterious – and often anxiety-inducing – events in the town of Beacon Pines.

The story stars twelve year old Luka, a ridiculously adorable little deer who is enjoying his summer vacation. Six years ago, Luka’s father passed away, and now his mother has gone missing. His grandmother moved into his parents’ house to take care of him, and he’s not thrilled about her taking up some of his space. Luka often goes out to play with his best friend Rolo, who recently saw the old abandoned Valentine building glow and told him about it.

For context, Beacon Pines was established when a man named Sharper Valentine started a fertilizer company called Valentine Fertilizer. The company eventually failed, and Perennial Harvest Company swooped in to take its place. Given that Perennial Harvest’s CEO appears to be a hyena, one would assume that the company is pretty shady pines. But we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (see what I did there?), and there are several twists in the plot that I didn’t see coming. Anyways, the remaining Valentine heirs and newcomer Perennial Harvest are at odds, but for now Perennial Harvest is doing their best to ingratiate the company to the townspeople by hosting a festival.

Amongst the chaos involved in festival preparations, Luka and Rolo go to investigate the glowing warehouse. Luka is curious to see if this odd occurrence could have anything to do with his mother’s disappearance. There’s some weird science going on in Beacon Pines though, and looking into mysterious circumstances in a small town can result in dangerous consequences for those who look into them.

Things will inevitably go wrong when Luka and his friends dig up some dirt on the people in town. In most storybooks, if something bad happens in the plot, it can’t be changed. However, in Luka’s story, there is a way to make things right. There are many items that you can interact with in Beacon Pines, and some of those items will allow you to get your hands on words – known as Charms – that will have different effects on the story when used.

Charms can be used during “Turning Points,” “when everything [in this tale] hinges on a single word.” During these points in the story, you choose from several Charm/word options that will result in branches in the storyline. There’s really only one “good” Charm option for each decision you have to make, but you may not have the right word yet for that branch.

If you want to see what would have happened if you’d used another Charm, you can access the story’s Chronicle, where you can access the turning points in the story. An alternate branch may contain the Charm you need to get to the next point in the branch you got stuck on. Sometimes a decision will lead to an abrupt ending, but you’re sent back to the Chronicle when that happens so you can get the Charm you need in another branch.

Due to the branching storylines, Beacon Pines made me think of Radiant Historia, although Beacon Pines has battles of words instead of actual battles like in RH. “Time Travel Fix-It” is one of my favorite tropes in fiction. It’s doesn’t seem like it’s really time travel so much in Beacon Pines, but your actions across the branches will fix things and result in a better ending.

I really liked a lot of the design decisions that were made for the branching storylines in BP. For example, when I decided to return to a turning point to see what would happen with another Charm, sometimes I did so without advancing much of the story in the other Charm’s branch. When I returned to the first Charm’s branch, they gave me the option to either replay the story at that point from the beginning or to return to the exact place I’d left off. This means that you don’t have to reread dialogue if you don’t want to. The game will also display a checkmark to let you know if you’ve used a Charm before at a turning point.

Sometimes I did have a hard time keeping track of what I had done in each branch. It may have been nice to have summaries of the events of each storyline (so far) in the notebook containing the to-do list. It was also a little difficult to see some of the details of the scenery and characters because they were a bit too “zoomed out” for me personally. That being said, I still adored the character and background designs.

Just looking at the cute and colorful citizens of Beacon Pines made me happy. Besides Luka, I especially loved Dawn the aspiring reporter pig, Kado the adorable library volunteer penguin, and Beck, a black cat who wanders around town with her unlucky penny. Tish the fashionable rhino may not have much character development, but she definitely has one of my favorite designs. The Charm designs, which generally depict Luka acting out the connected word, were also lovely.

You’ll get to know more and more about these characters as you progress through the game. Some bad things will happen to characters in different branches, but even the negative events will give you more information about what’s going on in this town. The mystery of Beacon Pines is puzzling, but there are stranger things (ha!) happening – such as a flashback related to Luka’s father and some odd dreams. I struggled to make sense of those, and I also did not ever find out what the deal was with a character named Natt, who only showed up once or twice.

Although I was occasionally confused, most of the plot seemed to come together in the end. I liked the writing style; there were some cute puns here and there that lightened the mood. (Such as the turning point involving Luka’s grandmother, aptly called “A Gran Jury.”) One of my favorite lines in the game was “I prefer to think of it as an Incendiary Redecoration.” It made me cackle, which I needed in the midst of the secret plots and conspiracies. There are themes of loneliness, friendship, corruption, and standing up for what is right. And you – as Luka – will serve as the town’s beacon of hope in these troubling times. 😉

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? Beacon Pines is a stunningly beautiful adventure game that uses clever mechanics to reveal its secrets across branching storylines. I felt like some characters and storylines needed additional details to flesh them out, but I was very impressed with the writing and artistic quality overall. I’d love to see even more games like this from Hiding Spot Games, either in this format with the keywords or another format that’s still set in Beacon Pines. Perhaps a prequel? 😍 8.5/10