The Beacon

Introduction

The Beacon sets you off in a far away land dispatched by the city of Altaris. A world under threat by the weakening protection of The Beacon sets out its civilians on missions. You will settle down in this far away land and venture out on adventures to find out what is causing the weakening and stumble upon a variety of umbra infused monsters along your journey.

The sheer detail the development team managed to put into the pixel art is amazing, enjoyable for both older and younger gamers alike. The characters are detailed enough to have a lot of variations in the traits while maintaining its very lean pixel aesthetic. Not to mention the details that can be found in and around the Tavern with its NPCs and your own house with all its furniture. The plethora of collaborations leave subtle hints towards other NFT collections and recognizable characters to make you feel at home when decorating your house.

Gameplay

Currently, The Beacon's Settlement Launch is limited to solo PVE mode, where you attempt to complete the daily dungeon and a quiz in the tavern, presented to you by an oddly familiar looking elderly man. The quiz is different every day and presents you with some insight into the lore of the game or the daily mission that you can undertake in the dungeon area. Upon answering the quiz correctly, you will receive a loot chest.

There is nothing to worry about if you don't get it right the first time around, most of the time you have a few chances to guess the correct answer. A very nicely done activity with new dialogue lines for all the NPCs daily to help you along your way to complete the tavern quiz. With these subtle gameplay features and the beauty of the entire world painted by The Beacon's NPCs, you get to expose more of the NPCs characteristics as well as clearly getting to know the “hot shot” adventurers and drunkards.

Considering the procedurally generated nature of roguelite titles, and add to that the beautifully designed world of The Beacon, every dungeon is unique and offers a new challenge to players jumping in. Not just the dungeon lay-out, size, or dungeon dwellers change daily but on some occasions, there will be extra missions tied in as well. Some examples of these; speedrun for additional prizes if you make it onto the scoreboard, but also completing “next” stages within the dungeon might reward you with more or a better loot.

If you are wondering what do you get out of all of this, upon completing the dungeon and/or quiz, you receive a loot chest. Within the chests, you will find 1 to 3 loot items, each with its designated rarity found below:

• Common (non NFT)
• Rare
• Epic
• Legendary
• Mythical (only through recycling legendries)
  

The loot includes anything from character customization options to adorable house decors you can use to prop up your home. The character customization option range from hair styles, facial hair, clothing, beds, tables, plants and a lot more. Use your loot to personalize your house and turn it into a home or sell them on the marketplace to bring home the big bucks and hunt down that one desirable item you just cant seem to get from chests. Recycling your loot within the same rarity will give you the next level of rarity item at random, which is a pleasant mechanism for the less fortunate like myself.

Review

While the current state of The Beacon, considering it only saw the day of light on November 26th with its Settlement Launch, is an enjoyable and pleasing experience. Nonetheless, it does lack the game modes to keep you playing for a long time upon logging in. Once you have completed the daily quiz and dungeon, there is not much more to do than enjoy the scenery as the dungeon is not replayable, at the time of writing at least. Only if you hold multiple characters are you able to complete each undertaking again.

Some collision bugs with the dungeon make it possible to somewhat “cheat” your way past some of the dungeon dwellers. All-in all, a very fun game which we cant wait to play more off post-Settlement Launch and after the newly added features beyond the generation-0 pet mint.