Beacon

Beacon

Monothetic LLC · 2021 · Action Roguelike, Procedural Generation, Female Protagonist, Exploration, Lore-Rich

PC
Very Positive84% · 159
This game is free to play. Get it on Steam →

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About Beacon

✦ AI summary

Play as mercenary Freja Akiyama, endlessly cloning yourself on a hostile alien planet, collecting enemy DNA to mutate your stats and abilities before each new life in this roguelike shooter. Scavenge 360+ items across faction territories, hunt 120+ enemies and their champions, and uncover the mystery of why you're trapped in an infinite survival cycle.


In Beacon you play as interstellar mercenary Freja Akiyama, stuck in an endless search for her distress beacon after crash landing onto an unknown planet. With your Clone Bay stuck in an automatic printing cycle, death is only a minor setback. Each life you’ll not only scavenge for weapons and items to help you; you’ll also be collecting DNA from the enemies you defeat. After your inevitable death you’re given the opportunity to alter your genome, allowing you to change your statistics and gain gameplay-altering physical mutations for your next clone's life.

In the search for your Beacon, new questions arise; just how many clones of Freja are there? How long has she been stuck in an infinite cycle of survival? How much of her humanity will be sacrificed before escaping?
  • 6 Randomly Generated Levels -- Enter at the outer forest, fight your way through the tropical swamps, and push through the pollution to the cryptic Omega Vault where your Beacon is being held!
  • A Rich Multi-Faction World to Scavenge -- Enter at the Kovus Outlands, fight your way through the Overgrown Spires, and push through the pollution to the cryptic Omega Vault where your Beacon is being held. Collect mementos to discover the mysteries behind the 5 Factions on Kovus-18, find Tinkered Weapon Variants left behind by previous clones, and track your secrets discovered at the end of each level.
  • 100+ Mutations and 5 DNA Types -- Collect DNA from deceased enemies and alter your statistics after death. Gain new abilities with each new clone and alter your character into something not quite human.
  • 360+ Items Spread Across 5 Item Types -- Find your favorite arsenal from unique technologies spread across the various factions. Regain an advantage with one time use Pickups, activate your reusable Auxiliary, swap your Grenade Mod, stock up on Passive Mods, and choose your 2 favorite Weapons.
  • 120+ Enemies with Champion Variants -- The varied factions that inhabit Kovus-18 will fight each other as well as you, including hybrid Minibosses that mix together the abilities of multiple factions.
  • 17+ Boss Fights -- Face off against the ultimate lifeforms of each faction including the Solus Hivemind, Prism Mainframe, and Tritoraptor Matriarch.

DNA is the core of Beacon’s gameplay loop. Through the use of Freja’s state-of-the-art Clone Bay and DNA dropped by deceased enemies, after death you’re given the opportunity to alter your genetic makeup and change your statistics before your fresh clone is ‘printed’ back at the crash site. Each faction has their own set of unique DNA and Mutations, allowing you to become a battle-hardened mass of metal, a luminous abomination of insect flesh, or anything in between!

The planet you've crashed on is unfamiliar. The only information available is its name – Kovus-18. The rest of the record is blank. It seems that either nothing is known about it, or whatever was known has been scrubbed from the database. Multiple factions populate its surface, each seemingly at war with the others, and all of them hostile to the planet's newest inhabitant… you.

In Beacon, you play as Freja Akiyama. Having grown up in the backwaters of civilised space, Freja always dreamed of adventure. Enrolling in the military at a young age, she quickly discovered both her natural abilities for combat and piloting spacecraft, and her inability to work within the strict regimen of the armed forces. Freja lives and works aboard her ship, the Ouroboros – a single-berth, heavily-modified light spacecraft that boasts state-of-the-art weaponry and facilities.

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

Recommended May 23, 2025
Beacon is a stylish roguelike that definitely deserved way more than being delisted. It's not perfect, it has quite a few bugs and feels unpolished at times, but it's undeniable that this is fun and has a lot of variety. Just by looking at the achievements, it seems there are quite a lot of bosses and endings too. I won the game on my third run a run that lasted more than 2 hours, luckily I got a pretty powerful sniper that killed almost everything with less than 5 shots. The world feels alive because there are factions, and they fight amongst themselves, really making you feel like you are in an uncharted, chaotic planet, and frankly? Feels great. I like Beacon, and I don't regret paying for it considering it is now free, would pay again. Good stuff. Give it a spin, you won't be disappointed.
2 found this helpful
Recommended Jun 15, 2026
Shame this is no longer available, as it's a fun pick up and play Steam Deck game.
1 found this helpful
Recommended Jun 25, 2026
doggy
Recommended May 31, 2026
Stranded among stars Alien genes rewrite fate Death breeds something new
Recommended May 31, 2026
♥♥♥♥ this game was so good dude, it was so promising. It was genuinely one of the greatest hidden gems I have ever had the privilege to play and I only wish more people had found it. Maybe in another life.
Recommended May 13, 2025
Why was this game no longer on the steam store? i assume they went out of business :isaac: Sorta cool. Great vibes with cool polygon graphics. Its a action roguelike. I will say this, it's just okay.i love electronic music and dig the vibes. But most may find a better time in other rogue-likes.

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