Entering early entry on Steam at the moment after some Itch exclusivity, Monothetic’s roguelike shooter Beacon has a delightfully grim idea – Freja Akiyama has been smashed into soup by a tough touchdown on an very hostile planet. Fortunately her ship’s escape pod comes outfitted with a cloning bay and gene-splicing lab. Each time she dies, you get to jam a number of rogue strains of collected alien (and even robotic) DNA into her subsequent iteration, visibly mutating her. It’s like a trendy future-tech model of The Binding Of Isaac’s blobby sprite abominations. See the brand new trailer beneath.
From the little bit I’ve performed of Beacon to date, ‘hostile’ appears a little bit of an understatement in describing its planet. For starters, there are frequent hailstorms, solely on this planet, hail comes within the type of exploding, lethal crystals the dimensions of vans. While playable in twin-stick format, I’ve been testing it with mouse and keyboard, and I’m nonetheless getting a really feel for its motion and prolonged dodge-rolls. Primary weapons have limitless ammo, however grenades and different collected devices do have restricted makes use of, and I’m – as at all times – horrible at figuring out when to spend them.
It’s a beautiful game to have a look at although, well-lit flat polygons accompanied by some dense particle results give it a stark retro-future look, although it might probably get a little bit bit cluttered in some messier fights. Still, as with all roguelike (roguelite?) there’s quite a bit to be taught, and I’ve solely simply began. One factor I do discover fairly placing is the flavour textual content – the game leans laborious into its darkish, existential horror components, describing every mutation in lurid prose. The mixture of sharp, polygonal environments and unstintingly meaty lore is intriguing.
As it’s been lurking round on Itch since final April, its time on Steam must be the final stretch of improvement. Right now there’s 5 ranges, three bosses and lots of of things, weapons and mutations. There’s a sixth stage, extra enemies and a mutations system for the bosses on the best way. They additionally hope so as to add issue choices and easy out a number of the efficiency hiccups (it did stutter often whereas I used to be testing it) by launch as nicely. Major updates ought to come each 4-6 weeks, and the game will launch in 6-10 months, relying on how easily issues go.
Beacon is now out there in early entry via Steam for £13.49/14.39/$17.99 after a 10% launch low cost. It’s additionally available on Itch for $20.
