
I've been trying to go through some of my backlog of games on both the PC and PS5, and recently played through a retro, lo-fi indie horror game called No One Lives Under the Lighthouse. I'm not quire sure what to make of it, and have very mixed feelings. In essence, the first half of the game is excellent. It perfectly evokes the loneliness and sense of isolation of being a lighthouse keeper, and both the lighthouse and the island it sits on are incredibly atmospheric. The back half of the game, however, kind of went off the rails for me. It jumps around a lot, the imagery becomes exceedingly abstract and difficult to parse, and it was just overall confusing. Honestly, I kind of wasn't even sure if I was playing as the new lighthouse keeper, or if the game had flashed me back to the past to play as the previous lighthouse keeper who had gone missing. That's right, the game was so confusing that I wasn't even sure which character I was playing as!
It doesn't help that the dialogue and narration is completely text-based, and that text is too small, and the font is too elaborately-decorated in an Old English style. So I may have mis-read some of the text that might have explained what is going on. There's no options to change the size of the text or use a more plain type-face either.
The premise is to maintain a lighthouse after the former keeper disappeared.
The basic premise is that a lighthouse keeper goes missing under mysterious circumstances, with no body being found. A new keeper comes to the island to take over that missing keeper's duties, and the nature of the previous keeper's disappearance is gradually revealed. Or at least, it's supposed to be revealed, but I honestly couldn't follow along with what was happening.
After the prologue, it is assumed that I'm playing as the replacement keeper. But later in the game, it starts to be implied that either I've switched to playing as the previous keeper in the past, or that I was playing as the previous keeper all along. There might also be a third lighthouse keeper, who was the original keeper before the one who disappears in the prologue? I don't know.
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644218e2-fa8a-402a-9ba9-16376e7f89d9|2|3.0
Tags:No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, Marevo Collective, Sowoke Entertainment, indie gaming, retro, lo-fi, horror, lighthouse, island, Scotland, lepidopterophobia