The Beacon Is a Web3 Game Currently In Playable Alpha & It Is Pretty Good
There are a lot of new NFT web3 games coming out right now in early stages that have much higher production value than the previous generation of NFT web3 games.
The playable prototype of The Beacon has been getting a lot of hype recently and for good reason: it is a shining example of what’s to come for web3 gaming and play to earn.
The Beacon describes itself as:
“A F2P action roguelite RPG, in development. Venture into dungeons, defeat evils, explore the world with friends, and expand the Beacon’s light!”
The basics are: you mint a character, you have a house to decorate, you get inventory items on-chain that have a marketplace, and then you crawl your way through dungeons. With rumors of launch swirling in the crypto Twitter aether Lets go crawl our way through their playable alpha and see what The Beacon playable prototype is like.
DISCLAIMER
Nothing on this website is ever financial advice. Particularly this article which is focusing on the product and technical aspects.
This article assumes you are vaguely familiar with concepts and terminology related to web3, gaming, and NFTs.
The space is rife with scammers so be careful.
How To Start: Ethereum to Arbitrum One
Web3 games are currently complicated. It typically is too expensive for gas to run a game on the Ethereum mainnet chain so most games have to run on some sort of Layer 2 (L2). The Beacon is no exception. It runs on the Arbitrum One L2.
You will need to bridge ETH from mainnet to Arbitum. This can be done through the official Arbitrum One bridge or a very a trusted decentralized bridge like Hop.
Once you have some ETH on Artbitrum you go to The Beacon website and connect your wallet. It will make you switch networks if you are mainnet, let it, and then you should be in the website app.
The Beacon – Minting a Character
Before you can play the game you need to mint an NFT of what they call a “Founding Character”. Click the bright orange “Found Character” button top left.
What will you get in this mint package? Well, here’s what it says on their website:
- x1 Character*
- x1 Head cosmetic **
- x1 Eye cosmetic **
- x1 Mouth cosmetic **
- x1 Torso cosmetic **
- x1 Leg cosmetic **
- x3 House items
- If you were referred upon signup, you and your referrer will earn 10 raffle tickets each for a chance to earn a whitelist spot.
- ** ALL COSMETICS IN THIS PACK ARE CHARACTER-BOUND
- * CHARACTER TRANSFER IS UNAVAILABLE DURING THIS PERIOD
If you were referred upon signup, you and your referrer will earn 10 raffle tickets each for a chance to earn a whitelist spot.
The characters are fresh. That is really hard to do with pixel art these days but they look great. Each character has a fun feel to them & comes equipped with a funny name. Here’s my character HAWKTAKER:
The Website
The website for the The Beacon has quite a bit going on. The main navigation is pretty useful though.
Discover & Profile
Pretty straightforward:
- Discover – Go look at other people’s characters, homes, and inventory.
- Profile – Look at your characters, character homes, and inventory.
Recycle
This is a crafting interface outside of the playable alpha that lets you cannibalize any loot you acquire and reroll.
Marketplace
The marketplace itself is actually an external link to a 3rd party marketplace service. That is because every item you own in your inventory is actually on chain and can be traded at any marketplace that supports the chain. For example here is the OpenSea link to the collection.
As you can see some of these items are fetching really high prices. Some of the Legendary loot is going for hundreds of dollars an item currently! Most items are of course common though and are not worth much and don’t have a lot of volume or activity.
Play
Pretty obvious, takes you to the game.
Raffle Tickets
Because this game is not live yet there will be a raffle to get on the whitelist for the actual launch. You get Raffle Tickets for a number of things including minting, playing, and linking your socials.
Characters
You can see a tile view of your characters. You are also able to download the PNG image of them for use as a PFP
Account
This is where you can find your username and information, and also where you can link your social accounts. The Beacon does have referral links so be sure to use yours if you are linking to friends so you can earn more Raffle Tickets.
The Game: A Playable Alpha.
Click Play. Now you are finally playing the game. Yay!
Opening Scene – Fair
There really isn’t much of one because the whole thing is a playable alpha so they just dump in to the game. Nice loading screen though. There is a bit of opening dialog about the world.
Graphics Review: Excellent
Visually speaking the game looks NICE. You are dumped in to a pretty good looking world right from the jump. The characters all look great. The world looks great. The scenery looks great. The game blows out to fullscreen and takes advantage of it. Scenes like the tavern and the dungeon are incredibly rich. All of the placeable items in the house look. You can see why this got popular, it looks amazing. The aesthetic is 2022 pixel web game meets the best old Sierra Software software game on a CD from 1999 that you never played.
Sound Review: Good
Web based games have a tough time with sound. You’re often listening to other streaming services or a YouTube already and they not always as immersive as other games on other gaming platforms so they just straight up get muted a lot. The sound in The Beacon’s playable prototype are good so far. The effects are little peaky. The overall background loops and scores so far are non-offensive when accidentally left open. That’s high praise for a browser based game, but I am not humming the loops to myself after closing the game.
Controls & Gameplay – Aggressive
This is one part of the playable alpha that may turn some people off. The gameplay is exceptionally tight for a web game. I mean, really tight. It excellent. Like the collision and hit detection is pretty much perfect and they keep the FPS super high even with a metric tonne of animated sprites on screen. You are not lagging all over the place in combat at all which is essential to a dungeon crawler.
It is not forgiving. You absolutely must be a whiz with the WASD + Space + Mouse style gameplay that is popular on PC gaming. That’s not really something that a lot of gamers are used to and it can make the dungeon runs quite difficult if you aren’t familiar with it.
With gameplay controls so aggressive I found it difficult to initially gauge how far my weapon could strike. There is no visual indicator if you are in range and there is no targeting so there was a definitely learning curve.
World and Worldbuilding Review: Good
I’ll say it now: the dialog text is too damn small!
Other than that it’s done well. Nothing too crazy, only a few weird fantasy words thrown in. The Tavern has some excellent dialog, all-in-all the world is getting built nicely.
The world itself is that of a playable demo: there is only your house, the tavern, and the dungeon.
Your House Review: Good.
Has a nice decorating tool for placing things like furniture which you acquire as loot on chain. You can buy someone’s used Luxury Bed on OpenSea. If you didn’t open your crate for minting a Found Character do so now… that will give you some lovely junk to start hoarding in your new home. This is what people see in the Discover & Profile sections of the website.
Decorators are a key player archetype so catering to them shows a high level of professionalism from the team.
The Tavern & Town Review: Very Good
Head East from your home and you’ll find The Tavern, This is where the local characters gather. The dialog changes every day. Also every day there is a new mini-quest to talk to all the characters in the tavern then answer a question from the one-eyed man by the fire. That will win you some more Raffle Tickets and occasionally even some new items.
The characters in the tavern have a lot of life, look great, and have good dialog.
The Dungeon Review: Fun!
Head North from your home, talk to the soldier, and then enter the cave to run the dungeon.
This is where you get in the mix and start scrapping. The goal is to fight your way through the dungeon to an exit and get new items. Pretty straightforward. Depending on how far you get in the dungeon you can take a better exit with better and more loot. There is a 3 minute timer on the dungeon.
The easiest exit to get to is called the “Coward’s Exit” which is pretty funny. The dungeon changes once a day and you can run it once a day.
Spacebar will make you dash, left click is attack, right click is charge attack. Good luck.
The dungeons are challenging. The combo of gameplay, enemies, your health, and the mobs make it very difficult. Once you have passed a certain number of rooms there is even a survival room. Each day’s dungeon is unique. Just remember, there’s no shame in the coward’s way out thes dungeons are very hard particularly if you are not a heavy PC gamer as the WASD input style can be confusing.
Overall Review – Very Good
Once you get in the game it’s easy to see why it got so popular. The graphics are great, the gameplay is tight, the worldbuilding is very good, and the game mechanics are all good with good core loops. This is a proper game, unlike a lot of games in the web3 space so far. I think the actual launch is going to be solid and I’m stoked to see what the final product looks like.