If you are in the mood for space adventure, then here is a game that is best described as radioactive. Beacon is a sprawling adventure-platform that is based on “sad things and mystery.” This game was originally a Ludum Dare 48 game developed for ‘Discovery’ theme, in 48 hours, by randomine, an indie developer.
Beacon has a light, straight-forward game play with some great scope for you to have loads of satisfaction at the end of the game. After a long time, here is a game that is so simple but challenging in a sweet, sad way. As the developer claims the plot of the story is ‘sweet’ but ‘mysterious and sometimes sad’.
The best part of this game is not only the once-in-a-while experience but this sweet game is a memorable journey lasting just 15 minutes.
It relates the story of a stranded astronaut, far away on a remote planet in the midst of an isolated star system. The most interesting part is that he does not know why he is stranded and Beacon is the game he plays to discover the reason. The level-designs go from linear to complex as the game progress, but essentially remains simple, the ‘sweet’ part of the game, which endears this game to all.
For Windows, Mac, Linux downloads of Beacon follow the links. For what randmnine has to offer next, follow this link.
Text-style story telling
Begun on the lines of a ‘Metroidvania’ game-type, on a challenging time scale of 48 proved productive as it found itself getting a new platform. Another first was that the story was developed with deliberate clue dropping. Blurbs of rich text relate the story and establish the right mood. A game gets its followers, if it has a story well told and the ingenuity of this text-heavy story telling wins without trouble.
Low-approach Graphics
In Beacon, the main character has a resolution 24 X 24, while the tiles are 16 X 16 over a native resolution of 400 X 225. For the structures where high-resolution is used, they are stylized and simple using banded gradients, limited palette. You will not feel a lack of lighting, shaders, full-screen effects as the simple graphics inundate you admirably.
However, the 24 X 24 images, as in the astronaut, do not adapt easily across all hardware (DevIL) and are likely to be blurred images.
It has great atmosphere, great story build up and the best part in under 15 minutes, you will have the best adventure-based space game ever. The game being discovered by many prefer to describe it as “an awesome little game, very polished.” The level of design is balanced between linear and exploratory mode.
The revised version has greater polish, music and non-linear platformer.
Explore and enjoy the purity of this game, for the developer is right, this is all about ‘sad things’ but has that mystery that makes for fascinating 15 minutes.
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