Austin, TX - February 21, 2022 Hello - we're reaching out to let you know that our cute and creepy adventure game Beacon Pines is participating in Steam Next Fest this week, and with a newly expanded demo! This update adds new characters, new areas to explore, new music, a fully voice-acted narrator, and more.
Beacon Pines is a cute and creepy adventure game set in a mysterious book. In it you play as both the book's reader and its main character, a young boy named Luka probing strange happenings in his hometown. Along the way you'll find charms inscribed with new words that let you rewrite past events, leading to entire new sequences of events to explore. Check this game out today - It’s like “Winnie-the-Pooh” meets “Stranger Things”.
Coming to PC and Switch in the first half of 2022, from Hiding Spot Games and publisher Fellow Traveller!
Find out more:
● Beacon Pines Discord community
Quick info:
● Demo length - 30-60 minutes, depending on completionist level and amount of discussion
● Keyboard and controller supported
● Demo save will not carry over into full game when released
Content Warnings:
● Discussion of missing/passed away parents
● Bullying
● Frightening situations with children (no jump scares)
● Kids using mild swear words
● A dismembered appendage
● One character’s body morphs in scary / unnatural ways
Screen Elements:
Most of the gameplay has character art on the left and right side of the screen, with text between them along the bottom. Occasionally there are UI elements in the top left corner. The top right corner is generally open:
No combat
- gameplay focuses on exploration, deep character-driven dialogue, and light puzzle-solving
Explore
a hand-illustrated town full of charming characters - and unsettling secrets
Change past
events by turning back the storybook, uncovering new branches
Discover
new words and use them to write (and rewrite) the game’s story
Made by
a small team of three developers
Coming to
PC and Nintendo Switch in 2022
History:
Believe it or not, Beacon Pines started its life as a rhythm-based RPG. Seriously. But as we slowly designed the game over several years, we pivoted when it felt like the game was telling us what it wanted to be. For us, the most compelling aspects of the game wound up being not the combat, but the story and characters. So we followed that instinct.
Features:
● Explore an illustrated mountain town to collect word charms
● Use those words to alter the story
● Use those words to make friends
● Use those words to weave the fabric of fate itself
● Open the magical book at any time to go back and change your decisions
About Hiding Spot Games:
The common thread between all Hiding Spot Games projects is feeling. The music, art, story, and gameplay all serve that common goal. Hiding Spot Games is an indie game developer based in Austin Texas, with team members scattered around the globe. Their previous game, Flipping Legend, is the highest rated iOS game on MetaCritic for all of 2017. Before that, they made Ephemerid, a musical adventure game that won the IGF award for excellence in audio. Their newest game, Beacon Pines, is their most ambitious project yet.
About Fellow Traveller:
An indie games label exploring the possibility space of what narrative games can be. We seek out and partner with pioneering game developers working on unusual games with narrative at their core.
We are passionate about the vast and untapped potential of games as a medium. It is our mission to seek out and support the developers and artists pushing at the boundaries of games and to travel with them on their journey into uncharted territory, helping bring their creations into the world and connecting them with players looking for something different.
Founded in 2011, you may know us from the serene underwater sci-fi adventure (In Other Waters), the murder mystery with a cast of otherworldly suspects (Paradise Killer), the political RPG in which you lead a broken country your first term as President (Suzerain), or the noir adventure set before, during and after Big Bang (Genesis Noir).
Join us on a journey into a world of surprising games and unusual stories.
Article by: Susan N.
