Confession: Whenever Beacon Pines came up in my recommendations, the key art gave me a "furry Precious Moments" vibe, I saw that "visual novel" tag, and I thought "not really my thing" and kept scrolling.

That is until a friend gave me a spare key (thanks, @BMO!). And it didn't take long for the game to defy those knee-jerk first impressions.

Right off the bat, the artwork is great! The chibi proportions only apply to the child characters: Ilse Harting renders a cast of all shapes and sizes with polish and panache, on par with masters like Juanjo Guarnido. I loved the contrast between the painterly portraits and line-art sprites, and the presentation of each room or setting as a disconnected swatch of land felt unique and original.

I also really enjoyed this approach to a visual novel. Unlocking new story paths is a fun and elegant solution to the dead ends inherent in a Choose Your Own Adventure, transforming those moments of frustration into moments of reward and discovery.

When it comes to interactive narrative, I still prefer point-and-click adventures like Grim Fandango or light platformers like Night in the Woods or Mutazione. Although I controlled Luka VanHorn, I mostly felt like an observer of the game's events rather than an active participant. But it's a credit to Beacon Pines' characters and story that I was compelled to see those events through to so many different ends.

Played this on the Switch not really knowing what to expect, but this turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I really like the aspect of the branching narratives and being able to go back and see how things are done.

This is definitely a very reading heavy game, so be ready to be in the mood for that. There is SOME voice acting, but it's only the narrator. The characters don't have voice acting which is a strange choice. The game can be a little mysterious at times, but it's never too scary. Trust me, I'm a wimp.

The art is REALLY good and I love seeing all the cute renditions of the animal characters. Also, the text is VERY BIG, which as someone with limited vision I appreciate. The game is structured in a way that you will see all the "bad endings" before you see all the good endings.

The game is pretty good, but I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because of some missteps. I liked the fishing game with dad, but it didn't seem to serve an overall purpose? Same with the "making food with mom" game. I also didn't like how I couldn't go back and see what the characters said if I missed dialogue, like you can in other VN games.

This is also a narrative game more than an exploration game. There is SOME exploration, but it's mostly gonna be reading. The playtime isn't very long, though. I'd recommend this to gamers and non-gamers alike.

It almost seems as if there is a hyper specific subgenre forming about animal people in a sleepy rural town, who are coming to terms with their past and future, which happens to be experienced through light gameplay elements but is mostly narrative driven. Night in the Woods certainly comes to mind, and Fall of Porcupine seems to fit this as well. I suppose 3 games isn't enough for a subgenre, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more popping up.

Despite sharing some basic similarities to its peers, Beacon Pines does have plenty of its own unique merits. Its gameplay loop feels like perhaps the most idealized way to implement gameplay in what is otherwise essentially a visual novel. By talking to NPCs and interacting with objects in your surroundings, you'll discover Charms or key words, which can then be used at critical turning points in the story to alter the path of events. At anytime you can always select one of these past turning points to try a new key word that would fit to see a new outcome and branching story path. Each path allowing for alternate events to play out over the course of the game's setting of a couple days.

I enjoyed this system right from the jump because it encourages exploration and rewarded me for being thorough with new key words and worldbuilding for this town and all the characters in it. There are some very light puzzles or gameplay moments that do have you do more than walk around and talk to people, but they very few and also very easy to quickly pick up on. They don't expect the player to master the quirks of a specific mini-game to proceed or see side content.

I still felt like I was exploring, discovering, and seeing this world through my choices as the player, and not just hitting the proceed button for the next piece of dialogue or page of text all of the time. Yes, it is very light on its gameplay elements, but it is just enough to give the player agency over the main character and feel involved in the events and world while staying primarily focused on progressing the narrative.

Your movement around town is relatively slow but the spaces you explore are relatively small and concise enough that you rarely would feel like it's tedious to wander around. The game is also short and well paced enough that you can get a complete and concise experience over the weekend with time to spare. It would have been nice to quickly rewind or look at recent dialogue without going all the way back to a previous turning point, and not every joke landed for me, but my greatest critique is that the game left me wanting more, which in this case, is definitely a good thing.

Once upon a time there was a storybook whose narrator struggled finding the perfect ending and found herself dissatisfied with every option thus far. That is where the player--or reader--comes in. Beacon Pines tells the story of a 12-year old boy named Luka VanHorn, who finds himself in a bit of trouble when he stumbles across a morbid mystery during his summer break. As the story progresses, the player has to decide what to do at the turning points, many of which lead to a premature, and often bad, ending. It is up to you to turn back the pages and make different decisions to keep Luka and friends safe while trying to unravel the secrets within his hometown.

I loved the character artwork and designs. Each of them are so expressive and memorable. They all have distinct personalities and motivations which make the town of Beacon Pines feel very lived in. The only voiced character is the narrator and she deserves an award for her incredible delivery and acting skills. She truly made the game come to life.

This game is narrative-driven. Players are able to walk around town, talk to its inhabitants, and are assigned missions that are always the main objectives. There is very little side content and there are no missable achievements equaling to about 6 hours worth of content. It runs perfectly on Steam Deck so it's a great option to curl up in bed with.

This is hands down one of the best games I have played this year. A mystery choose your own adventure with a considerable dose of suspense.

It has one of the best takes on the choose your own adventure genre, where you cannot simply take a route and go along with it to the very end. Instead, you can only progress through the routes by discovering new keywords ("charms" as the game calls them) in the other routes. Meaning that you need to keep jumping between routes, which you can do at any time, allowing you to see every possibility and discovering the secrets of the game along the different routes. It is a different take on the genre, and it is a very well executed addition.

The art style is gorgeous, the music is amazing, and the story is captivating. Everything in this game kept me wanting to play more. So much so that I finished it in three days. It is not too short, however, as I initially feared. It is longer than I thought and I believe it has the perfect length where the story progress at a nice pace despite it jumping between different routes.

I personally don't have any cons, but it is important to point out this is a story based game. You are guiding the story and controlling the protagonist, sure, but you are not doing a lot more than reading and listening. Your role as a player is more passive than in most games. So, if you are into heavy-action, this is not a game for you. If you are into mystery, though, I highly recommend it.

I recently played through Beacon Pines and it was very fun. It's a very sweet story-driven game about a town dealing with greed and resource exploitation, and while it had a lot of original and ways to tell its story, many of these go underutilized or feel like one-off gimmicks. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, it just doesn't feel like it excels at anything, and ended up feeling a bit forgettable for me.

Set in the town of Beacon Pines, the game follows Luka VanHorn, a young deer with a tragic life trying to make the most out of his summer. His dad died when he was 6 and his mom recently disappeared, so when he comes across an abandoned facility in the middle of the woods, he decides to look deeper into this mystery to finally find out what happed to them. Now it's up to you to help him save his friends and family, and find out what's truly going on in this town.

The story is definitely the best part of Beacon Pines. It's absolutely insane, but still manages to be easy to get. The way the game's structured means you'll be learning way too much about the town and all its residents, so even when the plot takes gigantic twists, you'll still have the knowledge needed to fully understand and even expect the twists before they show up.

But while the story might be good, the writing is absolutely atrocious. The writers try way too hard to be quirky at every chance they get, and it feels very disingenuous. Serious moments are constantly being undercut by one-liners and jokes and it never actually lands. It doesn't stop either, you just have to endure it until the end.

There's not much gameplay to Beacon Pines, as it's entirely story driven. Instead, almost all the player interaction comes from the game's Choose-Your-Own-Adventure structure. As you play, you'll be able to find "Charms", which are special keywords that allow you to react differently any time a branching path comes up. Whenever a character says one of these words, it'll get added to your inventory for you to use in all upcoming, or even past decisions.

This is a brilliant choice that completely changes the way the game works. Instead of a linear story, you'll be simultaneously playing all of the branching paths, all with slight changes caused by you reacting differently to your environment. It almost gives the story a kind of time-travel feeling, as you'll be collecting new charms in the later chapters just to use them at the start of the game.

Unfortunately, the game barely uses this mechanic. They treat branching paths as this grandiose mechanic that will inevitably change the outcome of everything, so they show up very rarely in the game. I would've liked to see more dead-ends and meaningless decisions in the game, as it would've at least given the illusion of choice for the player, making the game feel less predetermined and mechanic.

The game presents itself as a story book that the narrator is trying to finish. This essentially allows the player to go to a different page, choosing different options and branching paths in a kind of diegetic way. This makes total sense for a game like this, however, the narrator just won't stop talking and it absolutely ruins the experience. You better get ready for a umm, so that just happened every time you reach an ending.

Overall, the presentation is... ok. I think the locations and backgrounds are all beautiful, but something about the character portraits feels... off. The Charms and branching path images are also very pretty, but look completely different to everything else in the game, so they're weirdly out of place. And while the music is good, I also cannot remember a single song that shows up in the game. Make of that what you will.

In conclusion: Beacon Pines is a good game, and I enjoyed playing through it. It tells a really compelling and sweet story of a town being exploited by capitalism, and trying to get its individuality back. While it doesn't do much gameplay-wise, it gets completely carried by its story and an innovative way of telling it. However, it's also held back by failing to fully commit to this storytelling method, and it leaves you wanting more. While I don't know if I'd call the game mediocre, in the end, it still felt just fine. 7/10

Ok it's rant time. Did anyone else find it weird that the game was essentially setting up a perfect timeline, but never delivered on it? Everything in the story starts going terribly as soon as chapter 1, so making use of the later Charms to go back in time and save everyone in town feels like a very clear objective for the player, you know? It's like you're getting a glimpse of the future and trying to avoid it! But the good ending is in the timeline where your friends get experimented on????? I think a perfect timeline would've given the whole storybook a meaningful objective where you try to fix the story, tying with the whole ohhh my book sucks and I need you to find the ending deal that the narrator has going on. But as it stands, the only motivation you get is yourself going "yeah i wanna see how this ends". And I get that they could also be going for a life isn't perfect kind of message but when you get to the ending it doesn't feel like that?? it feels like this just so happened to be the one timeline where everyone didn't die in the end, in any other timeline you'd be frozen and dead so deal with it and enjoy your life idk it's weirddddddd

Beacon Pines is a cozy little adventure game where a group of kids work to unravel the secrets plaguing their town. It has an adorable presentation with lovingly crafted character art and detailed scenery that feels a lot like something out of a storybook. It also features a sort of "choose your own adventure" mechanic where you can use verbs and adjectives you gather via exploration to fill in empty spaces in key turning points in the story.

While I did like most of the characters and the overall aesthetic, the story never managed to grab me in the way I hoped it would. Early on there's a very good hook that worked but the game never approached that level of excitement for me again, with each subsequent twist and reveal feeling more hollow in comparison. It's not a bad story per say, but it's not one I could get excited about and I also feel it fails to wrap up all the narrative threads it had going on in a satisfying way.

Although the game is (on Steam) tagged as a visual novel, there is actually some exploration here that makes it a bit more mechanically complex than most. You can explore the town to a degree, with certain areas locked off based on ongoing story events. However I found movement to be clunky and slow feeling. This made the latter part of the game where there is little exploration to be had a bit tedious, as the game asks you to walk back and forth across town many times and very rarely adds new things to interact with. I would have loved more ways to play with the environment, maybe in the vein of the classic Humongous Entertainment games I grew up on. In the end, I feel like this may have hit better for me if it were a straight visual novel, because being able to move around only took away from the experience.

This game has very good autumn vibes and totally nails the cozy genre it aims for, so if you're looking for a light adventure mystery game with cute art, this might be for you.