History VideoGame / Beacon

''Beacon'' is an isometric {{roguelike}} by Monothetic, the same developers behind ''VideoGame/BlackSnowHalfLife2''.

Freja Akiyama is not having a good day.

Her corporate ship has crash-landed on a remote planet far from anything resembling home.

The wildlife is out to kill her.

The corporate security robots are out to kill her.

The [[EldritchAbomination things]] those robots were imprisoning are out to kill her.

And worse still, they all have ''already'' killed her. [[TheManyDeathsOfYou Many, many times.]]

The new Freja Akiyama, fresh from the cloning bay and the only functioning part of the crashed ship, is ''not'' having a good day.

But with a host of [[LegoGenetics mutations]] that do everything from simply hardening her skin to turning her arm into a leech to sap the health of enemies, all the way up to transforming her into a demon from another dimension, she might just get off this rock...

Published on itch.io in 2018 and Steam in 2021.
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!![[AC:SEQUENCING TROPES]]

* AceCustom: Most weapons have special variants cooked up by previous versions of Freja, usually doing more damage at the cost of a longer reload and/or smaller magazine. They range from extensive bio-modification of organic weaponry to simply turning off the corporate-mandated power limiter.
* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: Unsurprisingly, taking enough mutations of a certain faction influences your ending, and [[spoiler:they involve becoming something from that faction, like turning into a Tritoraptor.]]
* BallisticBone: Several weapons are crafted from the bones of Native lifeforms, and they range from organic buzzsaw launchers to bone-spear launchers.
* BodyHorror: Every mutation, even the most minor one, involves some kind of transformation that's usually painful. These range from Freja's skull elongating and her face clinging to the new skull by shreds to her jaw sloughing off entirely to be replaced by extradimensional tentacles.
* CloningBlues: While Freja ''normally'' doesn't dwell too much on the fact she's continually killed and brought back to life, the blues don't hit until two of the endings:
** [[spoiler:Freja makes it off planet and manages to contact her parents, but their muted surprise makes it clear that they've greeted multiple iterations of their daughter multiple times. She uses this to her advantage by becoming an {{Unperson}} as a result, giving her the freedom to explore the galaxy without any ties.]]
** [[spoiler:The cloning bay has been on so long that when one of the Frejas makes it off planet, she finds it's been ''centuries''.]]
* DemBones: The Flauros subfaction of the Uncharted are skeletal in nature, ranging from flaming skulls to creepy goatskull-headed ghost-things.
* EarthThatWas: Flavor text suggests that no one in the intergalactic community knows ''anything'' of Earth. Even the arms manufacturers using designs based on pre-spaceflight weaponry say they can only guess how these designs were originally used.
* KillItWithFire:
** PRISM bots trend towards fire-based weapons, and it's justified in keeping the local wildlife at bay or making sure the flora don't grow onto any PRISM structures.
** A variety of weapons, ranging from a flame-spewing revolver to a flare gun, also exist, and just like the PRISM bots, do far more damage against organic enemies.
* LegoGenetics: The game's core feature is that skills and modifiers are represented as genetic modifications; perks and armor are also represented as mutations arising from using enough of one faction's DNA.
* MultipleEndings: Determined by what faction bosses are faced and the general performance/character mutation throughout the game.
* OutsideContextProblem: In a somewhat grounded HardSciFi universe, the Uncharted faction stick out for bringing near-explicit magic and psionics, with enemies ranging from SuccubiAndIncubi using Hellfire to [[EldritchAbomination tentacled psychic horrors]]. One artifact you pick up implies the existence of souls.
* RaptorAttack: Tritoraptors, dromeosaur-styled aliens with a similar bodyplan and a penchant for leaping like ''Jurassic Park'' raptors onto prey and mauling them to death with a pack. They're feathered, too, albeit with razor-sharp quills. Unlike most raptor-styled aliens, they get bigger as they age, and the adults look like an angry cross between a ''Megaraptor'', ''T. rex'', and a ''Triceratops''. Mutations you can get from them include the ability to leap like they can, and the relevant boss mutation allows you to become one.
* TRexpy: The older a Tritoraptor gets, the more Tyrannosaurus-like they become, culminating into a Mother Tritoraptor fight against one specimen the size of a small skyscraper.

[[AC:USER TERMINATED]]

[[AC:SEQUENCING TROPES]]

''Beacon'' is an isometric {{roguelike}} by Monothetic, the same developers behind ''VideoGame/BlackSnow''.

The corporate security's robots are out to kill her.

But with a host of [[LegoGenetics mutations]] that do everything from increase her health, turn her arm into a leech to sap the health of enemies, or turn her into a demon from another dimension, she might just get off this rock...

** [[spoiler:Freja makes it off planet and manages to contact her parents, but their muted surprise makes it clear that they've greeted multiple iterations of their daughter multiple times.]]

* OutsideContextProblem: In a somewhat grounded HardSciFi universe, the Uncharted faction stick out for bringing near-explicit magic and psionics, with enemies ranging from SuccubiAndIncubi using Hellfire to [[EldritchAbomination tentacled psychic horrors]].

* OutsideContextProblem: In a somewhat grounded HardSciFi universe, the Uncharted faction stick out for bringing near-explicit magic and psionics, with enemies ranging from HornyDevils using Hellfire to [[EldritchAbomination tentacled psychic horrors]].

* RaptorAttack: Tritoraptors, dromeosaur-styled aliens with a similar bodyplan and a penchant for leaping like ''Jurassic Park'' raptors onto prey and mauling them to death with a pack. Unlike most raptor-styled aliens, they get bigger as they age, and the adults look like an angry cross between a ''Megaraptor'', ''T. rex'', and a ''Triceratops''.