The holidays are over and the grey, damp weather of a new year is upon us. If you’re anything like me, you’re doubtless standing in the shadows of your dusty and disused attic, illuminated only by the weak flickering of an elderly gas lamp. The harsh whistle of the wind is probably imposing itself under shale and through cracked panes, filling the room with an uncertain and disagreeable atmosphere. Shivering, you might pull your heavy woolen shawl close around your shoulders, and look down upon the truculent heathland that surrounds your once-proud abode. Day after day – week after week – you repeat this ritual, staring out from the wreckage of your past. Standing vigil for the return of video games.

Well, we have good news.

After eight months of First Access release through Itch.io, we’re at a point where we feel Beacon is ready to make the jump to Steam Early Access. We’d like to thank everyone who took a chance on the game so far; it’s thanks to your support and feedback that the game is in a strong enough position to open it up to a wider audience, and we hope you’ll continue to enjoy the game as we progress towards full release.

Beacon will release into Steam Early Access on the 27th February 2019 for $19.99 (as well as an initial 10% launch discount). If you can’t wait that long, you can wishlist the game right now, and of course the game is already available on Itch.io. Everyone who purchases the game through Itch.io will also receive a free Steam key for the game upon Early Access release.

Before that, though, we just released another major patch to Itch.io First Access. Along with a boatload of fixes and a couple of new items, Patch 1.9A also had some long-awaited feature improvements:

• Improvements to the continue system – players will now be able to resume a game on the same level they quit on, with all items and weapons preserved.

•Tutorial screen update – The initial tutorial screen has been redesigned with improved flow and visuals to better help new players quickly get to grips with the game.

Patch 1.9A is available now for everyone who has purchased the game through Itch.io!

Finally, we wanted to give you a glimpse at a major part of the new content arriving with the Steam Early Access build — level 5. Those of you who have been playing Beacon already will probably have noticed that, as you progress further through the game, you find yourselves making your way closer and closer to the mysterious PRISM facility. Level 5 allows you to finally breach the mysterious PRISM vault, and along the way introduces new mechanics and gameplay that players will have to interact with in order to progress further.

We’ve put together a roadmap to chart out the coming months on Steam Early Access, and we’ll be going into each step in greater detail soon. For the moment, though, here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect:

That’s everything for now. We’re so excited – and scared, and anxious, and excited – to finally release Beacon to a wider audience. We hope you all enjoy it, and continue to follow us as we develop and add to the game over the coming months.

- Joe

[This content originally appeared in our Beacon newsletter, sent out on 26th March 2018. You can sign up for future newsletters here.]

Beacon at PAX East

First of all, for those of you who are local to Boston, or are heading out there specially for the show, we’re excited to once again be in attendance at PAX East as part of the Figs & Co booth. We’ll be exhibiting Beacon alongside a host of other great indie games, including Nectar Vector, Spartan Fist and many more! You can find a full list of the games at the booth and more info on the Figs & Co website.

We’ll be at the booth for the whole show, April 5th to 8th, and we can’t wait to see you all there!

Itch.io Refinery

It’s the news that at least a portion of you have been waiting for. At long last, we’re getting ready to open up access to Beacon to the public, through the itch.io Refinery.

What does that mean? Well, in the distressingly near future, we’ll be making an early build of Beacon available to purchase through this service. This will initially be in a limited quantity, and we want to stress that this will be an earlybuild. It’s only a portion of the full game, and things will undoubtedly break, but we feel that enough of the core game is ready for us to let outsiders get their hands on it. So, if you’re eager to play Beacon and to help us make it as good as possible, keep an eye on our Twitter account and website in the coming weeks.

Why not Steam Early Access?
While we considered releasing Beacon through Steam Early Access, ultimately it didn’t provide us with enough control over how we released the game at this early stage. We wanted to make sure that the game goes out to a (relatively) small number of people who understood that they weren’t purchasing a finished product, and who might be interested in helping us shape the game as it comes to completion. Don’t worry, Beacon will still be coming to Steam in the end, and anyone who purchases the game through itch.io will also receive a Steam key once the game is released there.

How much will it cost?
The initial itch.io Refinery release will be priced at $19.99. This will get you the itch.io build and all future updates, as well as a Steam key once the game is released there.

What will be in the itch.io Refinery build?
The first 4 levels of the game will be included, with 20+ enemy types, over 50 potential mutations, and more than 125 different items (including over 50 weapons). Naturally, as we continue to develop and add to the game, the itch.io build will be updated to include new content.

Will Beacon be coming to the Xbox Insider Program?
Unfortunately, as a small team we just aren’t able to release the game on both Xbox and PC at the same time. We’re still committed to bringing Beacon to the Xbox One, but this may not be until a full release is ready.

Beacon at GDC 2018

Finally, we’re fresh back from showing Beacon at GDC, where Unity was kind enough to host us alongside a bunch of amazing games at the Unity Art Challenge booth. We had a great time showing off the game, thanks to everyone who came along to check it out! You can find out about our fellow exhibitors at the booth on the GDC website.

Hey, it’s Joe back again for a roundup of everything we’ve been sharing over the past couple of weeks. This time that includes a bit more than just the standard screenshots & gifs.

Keep reading

As promised, here’s our bi-weekly round up of everything we’ve been throwing around on our social media pages. Enjoy!

Keep reading

Hey, would you look at that. This place still exists!

We know it’s been kind of quiet over here on the devblog lately, so we’re taking a bit of a different tack. The previous longer, in-depth blogs will still pop up occasionally, but to keep things updated in between we’re going to start showing off the smaller stuff we already post on Twitter and Facebook.

So, every two weeks or so, we’ll be posting some nice new screenshots like the ones below. Check them out!

Keep reading

Blow the competition away.

Follow us on Twitter

Hey everyone, Kiefen here to talk about one of the most important aspects of a sci-fi game. CRATES. Beacon wouldn’t be a true sci-fi game if we didn’t inadvertently jam piles of crates in every even semi-applicable location. This blog will go through a few of the various applications of crates in Beacon.

There are 3 main purposes for crates in Beacon.

Loot - Crates that contain various treats for the player. Many of these are placed around landmarks and on level generation a low amount of them are chosen to spawn. When opened, they randomly spit out various items for the player including Health, Pickups (One time use items), and rarely Auxillary Items (Re-useable items with cooldowns) or Weapons from larger crates.

Cover - Crates that are placed to provide cover for the player. They are often placed in the middle of combat areas or near entrances to allow the player to maneuver around them to avoid fire from enemies.

Detail - Crates that are placed around as set dressing. Their only purpose in life is to look pretty and add a bit of faction specific interest to the environment.

A collection of the three uses for crates; Loot, Cover, and Set Dressing

As you may have noticed, whether a crate contains loot, is used for cover, or is just there for detail, it uses the same model. When we showed the game for the first time at EGX this caused quite a few issues with players trying the game for the first time, so I’ve started to create and follow a few “crate rules” to help distinguish between the various types of crates.

Loot - Uses white light to signify it’s unlocked and a pulsating icon to signify it contains loot. Can be on its own or nearby a stack of crates, as long as the loot crate itself is not part of the stack.

Cover - Stacked less haphazardly than Detail crates, and positioned in locations where it’s obvious to the player that it will provide cover. Nearly always a simple stack of two wide crates, as it’s obvious that it covers the height of the player and will block projectiles.

Detail - Should usually be in a stack of 3 or more crates,be stacked somewhat messily, and especially should never be a single crate on the ground. Even with the change in color and lack of pulsating icon, many players still attempt to open a crate located on its own. Should mainly be placed against walls or cliff edges to avoid interfering with pathing or gameplay.

A family of Prism crates in their natural habitat

Each faction will have their own style of crates, which will come in various sizes and contain faction-specific loot. The Occult, for example, will have a fine selection of breakable pottery. Here’s a sneak peek at the crates that will be located around the wreckage of Freja’s ship.

In a future blog post we’ll go into more detail about the various items that will be popping out of these crates for the player to make use of. That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! Check back in the next few weeks for a new blog post!

Hey everyone,

It’s been a couple of months since we debuted Beacon publicly at EGX Rezzed in London, and we’re excited to announce that people in Manchester, UK will have another chance to get their hands on an early demo build.

As part of Manchester Day, and in association with Rock Paper Shotgun, Arran will be setting up shop in The Games Room with a new, updated build of Beacon for the public to get their greasy mitts on. He’ll be there on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th June (i.e. this weekend) from roughly 10am to 5pm.

The event is free entry, so if you’re in the Manchester area and fancy stopping by and checking out our game in some crazy opulent surroundings, you can find out more on the Manchester Day website.