Static Dread: The Lighthouse has just launched on Steam. It’s a first-person psychological horror game where you play as a lighthouse keeper in the modern world. A phenomenon known as “the Aurora” hit, and humanity has had to revert to more low-tech methods of communication. You start each night by firing up the old lighthouse. Ships contact you and fax in documentation. You inspect the paperwork to determine the best routing for the ships. This starts pretty straightforward, but as the story progresses, you’re faced with decisions like where to route ships with strange cargo, military, and even cultists of the Old Great Ones. You’re just trying to survive all of the madness and get back home to your family.
The Story
Static Dread: The Lighthouse takes place in the current times, and it’d be easy to miss that if it weren’t for a few references to COVID. An Aurora enveloped the world in a sickly green glow, causing modern technology to go haywire. I finished the game, and I don’t recall if your character gets a name beyond the lighthouse keeper, so I’ll just refer to him as that.
Anyway, you take a job at this old fishing port because the village decided they should get their lighthouse back up and running. You’re equipped with a CB radio and a fax machine because they’re probably apocalypse-proof. You start each night by calling and checking in with your family. You also check in with your boss, who’s just called Chief. The last lighthouse keeper up and vanished, so Chief is convinced you’ll probably end up in the same boat or get fired. He’s kind of a jerk.
You receive a set of rules – keep the lights on at all costs and don’t let anyone into the lighthouse. Basically, Chief wants you to be a misanthropic Tom Bodett. This becomes complicated as you meet a cast of characters. There are folks like a courier who gets caught out during a bad storm, a village elder looking for his lost son, that sort of thing. For the first couple of nights, I opted to turn everyone away because, after all, the rules are the rules. The world is fleshed out through radio signals, press clippings, and a set of journals from the previous lighthouse keeper. Throughout fifteen nights, things go from sailors hearing creepy singing while they’re out at sea to a full-blown apocalypse.
The Atmosphere
First-person horror tends to freak me out for the first couple of hours. I was going into Static Dread: The Lighthouse uninitiated, so I wasn’t sure if it would be jumpscare-heavy or more on the eerie side. Lovecraftian stories tap into the fear of the unknown and the pursuit of forbidden knowledge that drives people mad. There’s a locker in the living room that has the option to hide in, so I was anticipating some tense moments that never materialized. You’ve got windows to look out of, so I’d expect an easy jumpscare, and instead it would point out something like you see a bunch of wolves or an ominous cultist staring at you.
At the midpoint of the game, the shipping vessels began to report a variety of strange phenomena. You’d direct them to one of the ports or a science facility, depending on whether they sent proof. This would be a faxed document with either a photo or a drawing. Unfortunately, since I’ve consumed so many Lovecraft-inspired games, movies, and books, this part fell flat. “Oh, the fishermen’s haul was a bunch of dead fish with glowing green eyes? Must be about time for ol Cthulhu to start rising.” “Some people seeking treasure found a creepy old statue, and now they’re having weird nightmares about the deep? Yeah, they’re probably going to become cultists.”
The Gameplay
You start each night by being able to roam around the lighthouse for a bit. Events happen that give you keys to unlock the other rooms in the lighthouse. There’s an entire fishing mini-game available before each shift. I managed to miss it because I was expecting the shopkeeper who sells fish to be a bad guy. This is why I’m not sure if the lack of a guide or tutorial was a good call.
Once you hit the switch to start up the lighthouse, the night begins. The gameplay loop felt a bit formulaic. You would check in with Chief (or some other superior) and receive your instructions for the evening. Someone would knock at the door, and you’d get a few decisions to make. A ship would signal you, so you’d have to scan the radio channels until you connected with the crew. They’d fax over their paperwork, and you’d have to plan the best route to follow. If you make a mistake, you’d also receive a follow-up fax stating that your pay has been docked. Towards the end of the game, I stopped caring since, besides a mention of your decisions at the end of the chapter, it didn’t feel consequential.
While all of that is going on, things are happening inside the lighthouse. You’re interrupted by the lights going out or having to get up and restart the actual lighthouse. All sorts of weird sigils and cobwebs appear, and you get prompted to clean them. Occasionally, some goo with eyes would start forming on the floor, and you’d have to shine your flashlight at it, or some floating brain would rise out of it and come at you. If you didn’t have any guests at the lighthouse, that would prompt a game over. If you had guests, you’d get the option to sacrifice them to appease the dark gods.
Overall
I enjoyed the story, but I wished there were more scary or creepy moments. You can consume food and drinks to help you stay awake during your shift. They also give buffs, so maybe I missed out on some wild stuff by always making sure the lights were kept on and my sanity didn’t plummet. I encountered a few janky interactions, such as trying to climb up to the roof, or when my desk would pile up with documents. If there were cutscenes to present what my choices did, I would’ve felt more compelled to do a better job as a lighthouse keeper. The game dragged a bit after the seventh or eighth night, so I’d rush through all of the navigation segments to get into more story pieces.
Static Dread: The Lighthouse
12.33
Pros
- Interesting cast of characters
- Solid Lovecraftian lore
Cons
- Lack of a tutorial
- No real consequences
