Beacon

Beacon is a short exploration platformer written for the Ludum Dare 48 competition on the theme of discovery, where it was voted second best out of 242 entries. The player controls an astronaut who has crashed his rocket on an uninhabited planet with radioactive air. The shuttle is broken, a fellow astronaut Sandy is dead, and there is no one to help him. Players move the astronaut around to explore the environment and find a solution. Along the way, some unknown secrets about the planet are revealed.

The controls are very simple. A single key is used to examine objects in the environments or activate consoles. Most of the gameplay is centered around jumping. Aside from a regular jump, the jump key can be tapped again mid-air to activate a very brief jet pack boost, similar to a double jump. As the astronaut goes exploring, very precise timing is needed to perform double jumps to reach platforms. The jet pack boost can also be used to slow down slightly while falling, as the astronaut cannot drop down from great heights. When dead, the game returns to an automatically saved checkpoint. Later on other types of hazards are introduced, but there is no shooting. The game can be completed in fifteen minutes.