Beacon Pines: an unfinished book hands you the word

The promise is to rewrite fate with every word you find; the caveat you'll hear most, even from people who recommend it, is that the path stubbornly stays a single one.

A book that hasn't decided how it ends

On its very first page, a book admits it isn't finished yet — and asks you to help decide where it goes. In Beacon Pines you're two people at once: Luka, a boy who slips out at night and senses something wrong at an old warehouse, and the reader turning the pages of the book Luka lives in.

With every conversation and every corner explored in this hand-drawn world, you collect golden charms, each engraved with a single word. At the turning points, a sentence has a blank in it — and you're the one who picks the word that fills it. Choose wrong and something goes wrong; the chapter rewinds to the start and you try another way, flipping back through the pages.

The tone is cozy and sinister in equal measure: one review sums up the mood as Winnie the Pooh crossed with Twin Peaks, a children's fable that keeps brushing up against grown-up matters. It's short — those who finished put it at around four hours.

The creators have already turned the page — and they're betting on rhythm

If Beacon Pines wins you over, know that the people who made it have already moved on to another story. In June 2026, the studio Hiding Spot announced Wicked Delights, which they describe as a moody visual novel where you fight monsters, serve drinks in a café and play in a metal band — all in time with the music.

It isn't a sequel to Beacon Pines but a cousin: the studio promises to keep what it does here — the art, the melodies, the story that holds you — and add rhythm, a genre it has loved since 2011, when it made a small music game for the iPad. For anyone who likes what they see now, it's less a goodbye than a signpost of where these people are headed.

Those who finish keep coming back to two things: the art and the soundtrack

Among the people who recommend it, the praise barely changes: the hand-drawn art and the soundtrack. A Brazilian player who spent seven hours with the game in June and unlocked every achievement says she was hooked by the mysteries and by the pleasure of fitting the right words into the story. A player who wrapped everything up in eleven hours recounts that he and his boyfriend were left speechless by a revelation near the end. A Russian who put in twenty hours — far more than the game asks for — calls it a spiritual heir to Gravity Falls, that remote little town where something strange prowls.

The reception matches that enthusiasm: of the 4,445 reviews, 98% are positive. But the most revealing criticism doesn't come from those who hated it — it comes from those who recommend it. That same twenty-hour player complains that the game never stops pushing the main plot and feels like it was wrapped up in a hurry; another, who finished in four hours and recommends it all the same, warns that the game works hard to look full of paths that, deep down, lead to the same place. That's the price of the charm: it's short, and the freedom it sells is more promise than practice.

Worth noting: the game is being distributed on Epic, but these reviews and this score come from its page on Steam — an audience from a different store.

Those who quit quit in the first hour — all but one

On the other side, those who drop it drop it early. A Brazilian stopped after one hour in 2024, admitting he couldn't be bothered to read the dialogue and that the book's animation stuttered on his computer; he came away with the impression it was something for kids or teenagers. Another, an Arabic speaker, played two hours and gave up, feeling the story was pushing an agenda he didn't care to follow.

The exception is the player who stuck it out and still didn't like it: a woman who reached nine hours compares the experience to hammering the space bar without pause — she expected puzzles and minigames, found a world that funneled her down an ever-narrowing corridor, and finished only because she hates leaving things half-done. There's the tension running through both sides: the complaint is rarely that the game is bad, but that a game about choosing words to change fate keeps you on rails. Those who hate it say so in anger; those who love it say so under their breath.

For those who read for pleasure and don't demand an open map

Beacon Pines is for anyone who sits down ready to read. If the idea of an illustrated fable, dark beneath the cuteness, with a word puzzle at its heart appeals to you, the four hours pay off. The professional critics point the same way, with an 83 on Metacritic, and outside of sales the game costs $19.99.

But be honest about what you're after. If you open a game like this expecting your choices to tear up the script, or wanting puzzles and minigames around every corner, you'll hit a wall — probably in the first hour, which is exactly where most of those who quit quit. Beacon Pines hands you the words to change everything and, in the end, insists on telling the same story. If that frustrates you, close the book before you open it; if it sounds to you like a good narrator's trick, it was made for you.