Monothetic: Collected Artworks 2012-2023

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Towards the end of 2024, we decided that we would close down operations of Monothetic, the video game development team under which name Beacon was created. In order to simplify things on the business/tax front, this meant also taking the game down from sale on various storefronts. To keep the game playable, however, we decided to upload the final build to the Internet Archive along with a dozen or so development builds spanning the course of development.

As a companion to this, we wanted to pull together some old concept art and development shots for anyone interested. After a couple of weeks of digging through our respective archives, it became clear that there was a lot of content that we could include, and so the project expanded into a properly laid out 235-page art book covering the entire span of Monothetic. This was a substantial undertaking not just for myself putting together the layout, but also for the team lead Kiefen, with whom I shared the duties of writing captions for the sometimes decade-old content we’d dug up.

Once completed, I took the opportunity to get 10 physical copies of the book printed in hardback to be shared among the team members. The digital copy of the book was uploaded alongside the builds of the game to the Internet Archive, and can be found at archive.org/details/beacon_collection.