Rynling R&D

Beacon Pines is an isometric narrative adventure game that takes about four hours to finish. You play as a 12yo boy named Luka who decides to explore a mysterious abandoned factory over summer break and accidentally uncovers the dark secret of his quiet mountain town in the process.

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If it feels like I’m being overwhelmingly positive about Beacon Pines, that’s because this game is genuinely very good. The writing and art are perfect, and the gameplay is exactly what it needs to be.

Beacon Pines is short, inexpensive, and accessible. If you’re a fan of Night in the Woods, or if you’d like to play a game like Night in the Woods in a more compact form, I’d definitely recommend giving Beacon Pines a shot. Since it comes off a bit like a generic cozy game on its Steam page, I had no idea Beacon Pines would be this interesting, but it’s an amazing treasure of a game.

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a supernatural thriller set in the Honjo neighborhood of Sumida Ward in central Tokyo during the 1980s. This visual novel’s story is told via the intersecting perspectives of three main protagonists through a series of short episodes laid out along a story grid. Although you have some choice regarding the order in which you play the episodes, the story is linear, with minor branching paths leading to premature endings. Paranormasight has strong elements of horror, as well as a few jumpscares, but it’s sensitive about its use of mature themes and graphic visual imagery. Depending on how quickly you read, it should take about ten to twelve hours to unlock all of the endings.

Let me cut to the chase: I really enjoyed Paranormasight and would happily recommend it even to people who aren’t horror fans. The game only has a moderate level of interactivity, so I’m not sure it would appeal to people who dislike visual novels. That being said, Paranormasight is at the height of its genre, and it’s as well-written, well-illustrated, and intriguingly presented as a visual novel can get.

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