In an era where every week an anime-style ARPG game appears on the store, Black Beacon stepped out not with the ambition to revolutionize the genre, but also promised to bring many surprises. And it was indeed a surprise. The game was released globally in April 2025 and in just a few days, it made many gamers turn away from famous gacha games. Without hype, Black Beacon quietly shot a black signal into the mobile game sky, calling out to players who were bored with normal gacha games.
Introduce about Black Beacon
Black Beacon is an action role-playing game (ARPG) with gacha elements, developed by MINGZHOU Technology and published by Glohow. The game puts players in the role of “Seer”, a character with the ability to travel through time, exploring the mysteries surrounding the Tower of Babel and the anomalies caused by “Beacon”. With real-time gameplay, a diverse combat system and a deep storyline, Black Beacon promises to bring a unique experience to those who love challenges and story depth.
The story
You play as the Seer, who can see the “broken flow of reality” and thus travel back in time, patching up the strange rifts that have appeared around the Tower of Babel. On each floor, you encounter an apparition, which could be a duplicate of yourself, a false memory, or a conceptual creature like a grudge. The third floor, where you meet a girl who keeps smiling even as everyone around her turns to ash, is one of the most memorable moments in the game. No jump scares, no gloom, just a quiet sadness that makes you pause for a few seconds.
Each character has a unique profile that can be unlocked through interactions. This can range from choosing the right answer in a conversation to delivering the right gift. This increases the “Bond” stat, which unlocks additional passives or hidden cutscenes. Do you like step-by-step storytelling, piqued curiosity like an anime psychological fantasy? Black Beacon has it all.
Real-time combat mechanics
Black Beacon applies a real-time combat mechanism, with controls similar to ARPGs like Honkai Impact 3rd or Aether Gazer. You can move 360 degrees in the combat space, launch combos, dodge skills, and combine skills between characters. The control feels relatively smooth, input lag is almost negligible, even when playing on mid-range devices (testing on Snapdragon 778G is still fine).
The highlight is the “Perfect Dodge” system, if you dodge the skill at the right time frame (iframe), it will activate the time slowing effect and unlock the “Counter Skill” (a powerful counterattack that only appears under this condition). This is the element that makes the game deeper than just spamming skills.
Skill system
Each character in Black Beacon has 3 to 5 skills: 2 basic skills, 1 special skill (Signature Skill), 1 Switch skill and 1 Ultimate. In particular, the game allows upgrading each skill in its own direction: increasing basic damage, reducing cooldown time, or adding additional effects (stun, heal, etc.).
The skill system is not limited: you can upgrade each branch separately to optimize your gameplay. For example, the character “Ninsar” when upgrading his special skill to full can summon a shadow clone to support him in combat for 10 seconds. A great advantage in horde-type PvE.
In addition, you can also create your own team formation, just need to have enough control, damage, and resistance factors. If you don’t know how to optimize, you can refer to Black Beacon’s fanpages or fandoms on the platforms, there are many pros there!
Diverse character classes
As of May 2025, Black Beacon has a total of 21 playable characters, divided into five main elements: Light, Shadow, Flame, Frost, and Ether. Each element tends to favor a certain fighting style. For example, Flames tend to have skills that deal continuous damage, while Frosts are good at area control.
What makes the character system attractive is the extremely clear role division – there is a tank that is a true “takes punches for the team”, a support that specializes in pumping blood – buffing – removing debuffs, and a main DPS with a skill set that deals damage in combos. A typical character is Bastien (Ether, 5-star), with a Field Art that creates a bulletproof circle for 5 seconds, extremely useful in boss fights that require long-lasting defense like the Abyssal Watcher on the 12th floor of the Tower of Babel.
- Destruction: The main characters specialize in dealing damage, for example “Li Chi” (Thunder element) and “Florece” (Fire element) are 2 S-tier with the most damage in the game.
- Breaker: Has the role of absorbing aggro and taking damage, like “Viola”, a top tanker who can create wide-area effects, supporting the team very well.
- Assist: Buff damage, increase attack speed, heal… For example, “Zero” is a support card that any team should have.
You can upgrade your character through three main systems including Ascension (level up stars), Mastery (open new skills) and Artifact (attach auxiliary runes). These upgrade items drop from daily dungeons, for example the Flame Sanctuary dungeon for Flame-elemental materials, open on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays.
Black Beacon is very good with gacha mechanics
The age-old problem: gacha. But Black Beacon plays it by giving you a sense of “there’s hope.” The limited banner has a soft pity rate of 50 rolls and a hard pity rate of 70, meaning if you’re extremely unlucky, you’ll only need 70 rolls to get a 5-star character, no more. The limited weapons are also easy to deal with, with 100% insurance after 50 rolls. Sound familiar? Because it’s taken from Genshin, but improved where needed.
When you first start the game, you will receive about 20 free rolls thanks to the launch event, and then a few 4-star characters will be given to you if you do the story quest. Some weapons are also unlocked through the event and do not require rolling. For example, the Dawnblade light sword – a weapon suitable for Light Seers, can be farmed from the first week event if you are willing to fight the hidden boss on the 6th floor of the Tower Challenge.
Graphics and sound
Black Beacon doesn’t aim to compete with the graphically heavy UE5 games, but it does go for the smart route: a cell-shaded anime style with cool, high-contrast color schemes and lighting effects to highlight. Each attack has its own elemental effects, like ice cracking the ground, fire spreading across the ground, and light from Light Art reflecting off broken glass, all of which give the combat a cinematic feel while still running smoothly on mid-range devices.
As for the music, all the background music in the game was composed by SoundNeon, a group that has worked on OSTs for several Japanese indie projects. The background music for the 10th floor of the Tower of Babel, “Fractured Hope”, is an electronic ambient piano piece that feels both soothing and unsettling. When fighting bosses, the game switches music seamlessly, without interruption like some other mobile games, helping to maintain the flow of battle.
Download Black Beacon APK for Android
Once you get your hands on Black Beacon, you’ll understand why many people just try it out… then hang up all night to farm for materials. If you’re looking for an ARPG with depth, just the right amount of beauty, fun gacha, and most importantly, a personality, then stop thinking and download it, maybe this is the beacon you’re looking for.
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