Beacon Pines Demo: Choose Your Own Adventure

Shock news: the Beacon Pines demo is as good as anticipated, if not better. If you’ve seen the Twitter feeds, you’ll know this game from Hiding Spot appear more than perhaps any other title during The Big Adventure Event. Why is that?

Well, the pitch is excellent: Winnie-the-Pooh meets Stranger Things, and the screenshots are equally worth the attention, too. But… can the game hold one’s attention long enough? Is the game cashing in on Stranger Things’ popularity? Why can’t I find Beacon Pines on Google Maps?

It all begins with our hero Luka. His father, sadly, has passed away, and his mother has disappeared. His strict grandma moves in and promptly reshapes his life, slightly impacting on his misadventures with BFF Rolo, but her curfews and rules don’t completely stop him from venturing out.

Beacon Pines is initially told from the narrator’s perspective of the story. That viewpoint almost immediately disappears as you take command of Luka in these stunning dioramas as if taken from a best-selling picture book. There’s your Winnie-the-Pooh comparison.

It’s all relatively small, and I was a little apprehensive about whether I liked the sprites on screen but was too distracted by the artwork. It’s simply divine, and the score is beautiful too. It’s building this wonderful atmosphere as if revisiting a childhood favourite. But the shit’s going to hit the fan soon, right?

Moving Luka around Beacon Pines is easy enough. All you need to do is trot from screen to screen and interact with the odd NPC and object. There’s no combat or that much interactivity in the demo (aside from getting past an electric fence), so you’re able to relish in the storytelling. But you do play a role as a raconteur here using charms.

Charms are achieved through interacting with the world around you. It will often be a verb with an associated image that you can draw upon when accessing The Chronicle. It’s not a complicated concept until you start questioning cause and effect. You must select from your available charm and associated symbol during a turning point, and this will decide upon the path Luka should take.

The first charm I unlocked was ‘ponder’, later ‘chill’ and ‘hide’. Maybe that order was different, but regardless of your selection, it will alter how the story is told. The further back you go in The Chronicle, represented by a tree, the more impact it has in the narrative. As you progress, you’ll unlock new charms, access The Chronicle at any point, then change the narrative path for a completely different experience.

These changes are significant, too. Towards the end of the first playthrough, the outcome became quite harrowing – yes, it does get dark – and borderline melancholy. Some text advised that the demo was over, but I could revisit Beacon Pines Chronicle to change the outcome. I did precisely that, and a character who disappeared was now available in this arc, and Luka no longer had a curfew imposed by his grandmother.

This mechanic is superb and opens up the possibilities for stories that differ from the last. A game that comes to mind would be The Fate of Kai, but in Beacon Pines, one would assume that there are multiple endings, and it’s less rigid than the comparison. That’s not a bad thing, but the latter is a bona fide ‘choose your own adventure’.

You may have already read some superlatives about the game, and without even referring to them, they’re all just. Beacon Pines is an absolute delight, and you’d be a fool not to add this to your wishlist. It’s undoubtedly one of the games I’m looking forward to most this year, alongside the likes of Bomb Rush Cyberpunk. I’m not on Fellow Traveler’s VIP list, but I’ll be purchasing on day one regardless. Seek it out.