INDIE GAME SPOTLIGHT: No one lives under the lighthouse

Early Playstation graphics lend themselves so well to horror.  They're typically a bit grimy looking, very blocky and reasonably easy to animate or change in-game.  Games no longer need a huge engine to build them and players don't need a powerful gaming PC to get the best from them.  On the negative side, you're not going to get huge emotional range or depth from the sprites alone, so all of the other elements have to be absolutely en-pointe.

Thankfully, 'No one lives under the lighthouse' has been built by a group who really understand the genre limitations and they know how to lean into them.  The effect?  Something that is akin to the original 'Silent Hill', though it's very much a monster of it's own flesh.

The game starts with your current character being dropped off to work an isolated lighthouse after the previous keeper has disappeared, presumably gone stir-crazy, or done a bunk.  You're given no real information other than that and a warning not to lose your mind, as well as the promise of an assistant in a week.

That's it.  You go to the Keeper's shack to get settled in, then head to the lighthouse to do your job.  It's a near-perfect set-up - isolation, a hint that something untoward has previously occurred and a sense of loneliness from the off.  There isn't really anywhere to run, there's no-one to call and no help to find should things go wrong.

And things start to go very wrong.

Unfortunately, that's as much as I can tell you of the story without risking ruining it.  It'd be like telling people what was about to happen whilst watching a movie in a theatre, you wouldn't thank me for it.  The similarities to other survival horror games of the era it emulates are quite striking, particularly 'Silent Hill', in both look and feel, but as much as it holds similar game elements the story is it's own thing.  If you enjoy old-school horror, you'll likely enjoy this.  Maybe even love it.

Control-wise, it's mostly a darling.  Unfortunately, the semi-tank controls in the third-person scenes are a massive hindrance for those speed-reliant sections.  Partly this helps with the feeling of panic, but mostly it just makes those sections unwieldly and annoying.  Glitch-wise I found none BUT I did find a hard to replicate bit of poor design in regard to tidying up the hut - if you're moving forward while sorting your chairs you get stuck in a corner.  Really quite minor issues, especially considering how polished the rest of the game is.  

It's difficult at times to know who, or when, you are - by design.  This could easily have gone wrong, rather than creating confusion and a sense of dissonance, it could have just come across as a mistake.  Marevo Collective have put genuine thought and consideration into this, changing the surroundings in such a way that the player can follow the narrative BUT still feels discombobulated, players creating theories that allow the mind to twist like a cork in the sea.

Honestly, the forum theories are quite entertaining, but I do recommend playing through the game yourself before going to take a look - it is easily worth your money.  Multiple endings that feed into each other, achievements and an impeding sense of doom absolutely make it worth your while.