Black Beacon is an action RPG brandishing mythological lore as its core setting. Read on to learn about its global beta test, what to expect, and how to pre-register.
What is Black Beacon?
Black Beacon is an upcoming mobile action RPG set in an alternate version of Earth, where you play as the Head Librarian of the Library of Babel, the Seer, with the directive to preserve the library and all of the knowledge contained within. Black Beacon features many of the familiar bells and whistles of the genre, such as character switching, skills, and ultimates. However, the game distinguishes itself by utilizing an isometric view along with the more traditional third-person perspective.
It also features a very combo-focused combat system that focuses on sustaining offensive pressure through ranged attacks, displacement skills, grapples, and more. To encourage using combos, the game has mechanics that allow you to completely bypass certain requirements for skills, such as energy or cooldown.
The game is divided into several distinct sections: the story modes, the resource modes, EX modes, and Explore mode. Each of these modes serves very specific functions and can be accessed through the main menu instead of having to navigate to their locations like in open world games. The story modes provide the main and character side stories, the resource modes for strengthening your characters, and the EX modes for familiarizing yourself with the game up to the advanced mechanics.
Obtaining characters in Black Beacon requires using its gacha system, which is divided between standard, event, limited, and weapon banners.
Black Beacon’s release date is still unknown at this time.
Black Beacon Global Beta Test Review
Wondrous Journeys Through Infinite Possibilities
With today’s mobile market being saturated with action RPGs that ride on the coattails of the many success stories that came before them, it can be extremely difficult for these games to find a niche that sets themselves apart from the rest. Some games may use novelty mechanics, some have jaw-droppingly good visuals, while others try to balance focus on both mechanics and visuals to create a truly spectacular experience.
Black Beacon… belongs to none of these categories. And that’s great.
In fact, Black Beacon opens up 2025 with a blast, immediately setting my expectations for gaming for the year sky-high.
Its charm lies not only in its mechanics, which in itself is a cool set of features that blur the line between action and fighting games. But its true selling point is its careful consideration for storytelling, and character dynamics. It’s the perspective in which you play the game that amplifies the experience of its massive world-spanning lore.
The Global Beta Test, which ran from the 8th of January for 10 days, had enough content for 30. It easily maintained the kind of curiosity, awe, and respect that only games focusing on historical myths can spark through its efficient storytelling and engaging gameplay. Time simply flew by as I hungrily consumed every available chapter of its story, reading about mythologies and concepts that are as fascinating as they are striking.
It starts with your character meeting a mysterious, but quite dapper, gentleman in the middle of a wasteland. Alongside the revelation that you’re unable to recall your past, you are given the key to a massive construct without much context other than a few cryptic words about your fate as a key player for the future. With nothing else to go on, you accept the responsibility and head toward the giant construct.
That is where the story really begins. You arrive at the construct, which turns out to be a massive library. There, you meet the caretakers, or, to be more practical, the librarians, and learn about where you are and what your responsibilities are as its new owner. At the same time, you also bear witness to the conflicts that the walls of shelves and books seemingly keep out… or contain within.
After all, that facility is not just a mere library with an excess budget in its construction. It is the legendary Library of Babel, imagined in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story with the same title, which contains an infinite number of books within an infinitely expansive space; where every possible permutation of letters, spaces, commas, and periods is recorded, and thus, every word, every book, every event across all of the past, present, and future.
Legends. These are the focus of Black Beacon’s stories. It’s where your home is and where you’ll find your conflicts lie. You’ll have to deal with several legendary artifacts or any locations of interest that may threaten the library’s continued existence, such as the “God of the Sun,” an unassuming copper sphere dredged up from the bottom of the Philistine Sea that can destroy the world.
If Black Beacon were an anime, it could easily be a contender for one of this year’s best. But, this is a game. A game requires gameplay.
Action-Packed and Technical, Just Like Fighters
Black Beacon, at its core as a mobile action RPG, is similar to many of its peers. You have a basic attack, a couple of active skills, and an ultimate. There are also the usual dodge and parry mechanics, and the ability to swap between characters on the fly. These are key to your ability to survive the Library of Babel’s many unwanted occupants that you encounter in predetermined areas.
Black Beacon also places emphasis on combat fluidity. But while other games rely purely on the maneuverability of their characters, Black Beacon has implemented more than just a couple of mechanics and design considerations for the players’ benefit.
For one, there are a lot of displacement skills in the game; these are skills that either pull enemies toward you, or bring you to the enemy. Ereshan, one of the 5-star characters in the game, has practically half her kit designed for this kind of high-mobility playstyle.
You’re also able to immediately use a character’s ultimate as they swap in with your current active character, eliminating the few frames between them exchanging positions and the wind-up of the move. Queuing multiple ultimates is even possible, allowing you to create unique combos utilizing each of your character’s specialties. You’re saving just a few frames and an extra button to press each time, but that’s still one less frame to watch and one less button to press. As you play more, these time savings make a difference.
But the feature that stands out the most in Black Beacon’s combat is the Stage Skills. While they are only usable in specific stages, such as the main story and high-level fights, they are able to quickly turn the tides of battle. For example, being able to stop enemy movement within an area ahead of you is as broken as it sounds. But the most useful of them all is the ability to completely bypass skill requirements like energy and cooldowns once you fulfill certain conditions.
It doesn’t sound like much, but this one mechanic has a significant impact on the game as a whole. Being able to continuously release skills isn’t just a way to pile on the damage faster; the entire experience of an action game arguably hinges on cooldowns and energy requirements for skills. It directly dictates the pace of a battle and reduces any long periods of dead air during combat.
Once you fulfill its conditions for activating this Stage Skill, this one button is enough to supercharge the combat’s speed to an entirely different level, allowing you to deal with groups of enemies with impunity, spam your mobility skills, exploit windows where the boss is vulnerable, etc. Not only does it increase your damage output, but also your mobility, burst capabilities, and overall combat ability, tickling just the right neurons to leave you with a stupid grin on your face.
A Tantalizingly Unique View for a Mobile Action RPG
If you’re familiar with mainstream mobile action RPGs like Aether Gazer, Punishing: Gray Raven, Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, and Wuthering Waves, you might have noticed that the camera angles always use a third-person fixed-free perspective. That is, the camera can rotate independently while the character is stationary, and they will move relative to the camera's direction.
This has somehow become the widely accepted perspective for an engaging experience. However, Black Beacon uses an isometric view instead, similar to games like Diablo. But how does that affect the game?
Mechanically, not much. You can still pull off many of the things you could otherwise do with a standard third-person perspective. But in terms of narrative experience, there’s a very obvious difference.
Disconnecting yourself from the same viewing angles as your own character and instead watching everything from a top-down perspective gives you a feeling of power. It’s as if you’re some narrator dictating the moves of the protagonist on screen. Sure, you might not be able to see that far ahead of yourself, but you have a view that very few in the world, short of mythical deities, have the privilege to see; an apt view for the commander of the powerful Eme-an.
And that is an essential part of the immersion for Black Beacon because of its story.
The Gods’ Language is Binary
Black Beacon’s story is the biggest thing that caught my attention. For mobile games enjoyers, you can compare Black Beacon’s lore to the Fate series in its use of historical details to shape its world. However, it leans less on historical figures and their achievements, and more on the legacies they have left behind, as well as the myths they thrived in.
For instance, the main story so far revolves around the Library of Babel. As mentioned, it contains an infinite number of books within its infinitely large halls, all to record the infinite permutations of letters to create a catalogue of the infinite possibilities of the past, present, and future.
The Eme-an, an organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the library, relies on its all-encompassing knowledge for guidance and prophecies. They also manage other mythical items and curiosities found in the library, referred to as “anomalies.”
The game incorporates concepts such as Eudoxus’ Method of Exhaustion and legends such as the World Turtle to expand its world-building. If I dove into everything about the game’s setting, this review would stretch far longer than intended. However, this amount of information exposited within just a few chapters only remains compelling because it masterfully blends lore dumps with plot progression, ensuring that the details always feel relevant and never overwhelming.
Moreover, the game boasts phenomenal animated cutscenes that make the story even more engaging. It avoids sticking to the typical third-person perspective, too, and instead puts you in the shoes of the protagonist by deliberately limiting what you can see. Combined with the visual disconnect that the isometric view of its combat provides, it creates a more personal and immersive experience for you, the player, as the protagonist; a non-combatant who commands the Eme-an, rather than throwing you in as the active character fighting, as many other games do.
Unrelatable, Yet Stunningly Human Characters
Black Beacon’s narrative shines through its exceptional cast of characters and their extreme designs. That is, despite appearing far removed from humanity, the interactions they have make them feel undeniably human.
For example, during the first arc, you prophesy a future where the “God of the Sun” will destroy the library. To prevent that from happening, you must find the owner of the library from over a decade ago, a person named “Tasny.” But despite that person being missing for so long, the Library of Babel is able to take you back in time, thanks to its records of the past, allowing you to meet them. Yes, them, because Tasny is actually two people.
The Tasny twins, Ninsar and Enki, were the previous high-level administrators of the Library of Babel and are polar opposites of each other:Ninsar has a profound disinterest in the world around her, and Enki has an overwhelming fascination with it with a near-maniacal drive to invent anything his imagination can come up with. Ironically, Ninsar’s disinterest is a result of her being more intimately connected to the Library of Babel, allowing her to know every answer to every question, while Enki was simply born a creative genius.
On their own, each character seems too otherworldly for a player to relate.. Together, however, these seemingly inhuman qualities fall to the background through their dynamic as polar-opposite siblings, showing that, beyond their talents, they are still siblings who care for each other: Ninsar to a self-sacrificial extent (not a spoiler!) and Enki by making weird gadgets to solve even the smallest of his sister’s problems.
This pattern extends to the rest of the cast. Through its characters, the game crafts paradoxical, yet compelling juxtapositions of extreme human traits that can only converge under specific, and often endearing, circumstances.
You can deepen your connection with these characters through the lobby, where they can serve as assistants. There are the standard gacha game mechanics, which allow you to gift them items and improve your relationship with them. However, unlike lobby assistants in those games, these characters feel much more involved, often commenting on your activities or login status depending on the situation.
And as a sub-not-dub fan, their English voice acting is surprisingly good—a detail I’m usually quick to critique.
Great Gacha Rates on the Beta
Finally, let’s discuss the aspect most casual gacha players care about: the pull rates. After all, isn’t that why we play these games in the long run?
Imagine a drum roll if you will, as I’m pleased to report that Black Beacon’s SSR rates are better than most at 1%. A 1% chance for golden lights on your screen isn’t earthshattering, but it’s definitely competitive.
Even better, Black Beacon’s pity system is forgiving: soft pity starts at 40 pulls, and hard pity is capped at 70. This means you don’t need to spend an exorbitant amount to snag that 5-star character you had your eye on. On top of that, instead of relying on a 50-50 “coin flip” mechanic like many other games, Black Beacon uses a 70-30 chance and guarantees the limited SSR after you fail once. Doing the math, it comes out to a 0.70% base chance for the event character to come out of the gacha.
Farming runes, the game’s premium currency, isn’t very difficult considering every stage provides them on its first clear. Oh, and of course, you can also get them from daily and weekly quests. During the game’s first few days, getting to 40 pulls is easily attainable within 3 or so days, while 70 pulls would take about a week, depending on how fast you can clear the game’s content. We’ll have to see how things will play out in the long run after its full release.
Weapon pulls are even more manageable. Soft pity begins at 25 pulls, hard pity is set at 50, and the system always guarantees the weapon you want.
It's important to keep in mind, though, that this is just the game’s Global Beta Test; it’s entirely possible for these rates to change once the full release launches. Let’s just hope the rates stay the same—or better yet, improve.
Seer’s Trial – Black Beacon Global Beta Test
Black Beacon’s Global Beta Test ran from January 8, 2025, to January 17, 2025. It included five main story chapters, each featuring over a dozen stages and cutscenes, as well as numerous events and freebies.
Black Beacon Pre-Registration Event
Black Beacon has several pre-registration bonuses leading up to its official launch. Rewards include a costume for the free SR character Zero, a free SR character Ninsar, gacha tickets, and more. Increase your rewards by pre-registering and inviting a few friends to do so as well.
As of writing, you can pre-register either via email or through Google Play sign-up.
⚫︎ 100K Registrations: Orelium x30,000
⚫︎ 250K Registrations: Development Material Box x5
⚫︎ 500K Registrations: Lost Time Key x10
⚫︎ 750K Registrations: Ninsar (Special Reward)
⚫︎ 1M Registrations: Time-Seeking Key x10
⚫︎ Store Pre-Registration: Exclusive Zero Costume
⚫︎ Email Pre-Registration: Lost Time Key x10, Development Material Box x10
| Black Beacon Official Website | |||||
 App Store |
 Google Play |
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| Price | Free-to-Play | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Black Beacon Product Information
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| Title | BLACK BEACON |
|---|---|
| Release Date | TBA |
| Developer | MINGZHOU Technology Co., Ltd. |
| Publisher | Glohow Holdings Pte. Ltd. |
| Supported Platforms | Mobile |
| Genre | Action, RPG |
| Number of Players | TBA |
| ESRB Rating | TBA |
| Official Website | Black Beacon Official Website |
