Lightwatcher

Lightwatcher

Keep the light burning until dawn.

"Welcome to Kaldholm Light. The Board will have told you the work is simple, and it is."

You are the new keeper of Kaldholm Light, a lighthouse on a small rock of an island, lost in fog. The keeper before you left a letter nailed to the cottage door.

Something lives in the sea around the island. It is bigger than the tower, and you never see all of it. You only glimpse a shape caught for a moment in the sweep of the beam, or black against a flash of lightning. The light keeps it out there. If the light stays dark too long, it comes in.

Lightwatcher is a first-person horror game in the style of the PlayStation era: low resolution, wobbling polygons, warping textures, dithered colour and a lot of fog.

The night shift

Survive five nights, from dusk at 22:00 until dawn at 06:00, and keep the lighthouse running:

• Bulbs burn out. Fetch a spare from the cellar and carry it all the way up the tower to the lens. Don't drop it.
• Breakers trip. Bring the power back at the switchboard in the cellar.
• The gears run dry. Oil the gearbox in the lantern room, or the beam slows and stops.
• The generator needs diesel. Fill a jerrycan at the tank and pour it in.
• And the routine: sound the fog siren, write the log, keep the stove fed, wipe the salt off the lantern glass.

Every night the fog gets thicker, things break more often, and the thing in the sea comes closer. Whatever you do, don't stare at it. And if somebody knocks at the cottage door in the middle of the night, think twice before you open it.

Features

• Five nights and an ending, and after that Endless Nights: survive as many as you can under random conditions such as thick fog, a dead radio, low fuel, a flooded cellar, or no flashlight at all.
• Everything is physical: pick things up, carry them, throw them.
• Find the letters left around the island by the keepers before you.
• Storms, rain, thunder, and a dense volumetric fog you can barely see the lantern through.

Controls

• WASD: move
• Mouse: look
• Shift: sprint
• Ctrl / C: crouch
• Space: jump
• E: use / pick up (hold for some tasks)
• Right mouse: grab
• Left mouse: throw
• F: flashlight
• Esc: pause / settings

The settings menu has volume, brightness, mouse sensitivity, invert mouse, head bob and fullscreen.

Warning: contains flashing lights (lightning) and camera shake.