Static Dread: The Lighthouse PS5 Review 9/10 “Shining a light on Lovecraftian Horror” 🗼🐙 @StaticDreadGame #IndieGame #GameDev

I don’t think a game has ever come along at the right time for me more than this one. Last year I got hips deep into Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which - like Static Dread - draws from the works of one Mr H. P. Lovecraft. I got really into both his works and the lore of the world he created which meant whilst playing this title I not only got the references, but that I had a better understanding of what Static Dread: The Lighthouse was going for, that fear and dread play a larger role than outright scares. Some scares do crop up in the game, but it is the complete, unsettling dread creeping over you that is the real horror.

You arrive at a lighthouse, tasked with guiding ships to their destination. You are to be alone for this task and remain away from your wife and child, very quickly you start getting hints that the previous lighthouse keeper shall we say ‘lost his marbles’, and as you progress you find parts of his diary, seeing his thoughts twist and darken. 

Whilst that's unsettling, you still have a job to do - guiding ships to the places they need to go. You do this by drawing a destination on the map you are given and then faxing that over to the ship, I must admit when I first saw how you guided ships, it felt pretty much what you would do on the back of a cereal box and thought ‘will this be enjoyable for 10 hours’? but I was wrong, it never got old and as the game starts piling on more and more little quirks and rules you have to follow it gets both harder and more engaging, you feel the pressure ramp up and I was both failing out of my own stupidity and the little tricks the game pulls. The easiest comparison is ‘Papers, Please’ and it really is an apt one as they do share a lot of similarities - the gameplay loops are similar.

The thing I loved most about this experience is the dread; you have to manage not making various mistakes with your guidance of the ships whilst also maintaining the lighthouse. Symbols appear, cobwebs, lights break, and you have to manage your sanity - every night always felt like a struggle. 

For the first few days you ‘think this will be a breeze’ but as the nights go by everything becomes so much tougher to deal with. Whilst you are alone, that doesn't mean you won’t get visitors, every so often you hear a few knocks and a guest is at your door, sometimes it is a helpful caretaker that gives you care packages to help you survive or it could be someone lost in the woods asking if they can stay the night to keep out of the cold and the rain, the moral part of you thinks ‘sure, why not?’ but you are told by the company not to let anyone in, they have a strict policy, so do you follow company policy or help a stranger? And if you do help them, are they just someone lost in the woods… or maybe something more dangerous? 

I loved these dilemmas, whenever I get caught in a moral quandary, it always makes me love the experience more, and here you are debating both company policy and your own suspicions which worsens as you spend more time cooped up away in the big, lonely lighthouse where more and more things are going wrong. These are not the only dilemmas that you face, as with your ship guidance you get pulled into a battle between the military and a cult trying to summon an ancient entity from deep in the sea.

SUMMARY
For me, everything about Static Dread: The Lighthouse works and it is exactly what I want out of this type of experience. It won’t be the scariest title you play this year, but the atmosphere and dread that washes over you is much more of a thrill than a lot of horror games give you. 

The gameplay loop - which I doubted at first - soon grew to be a highlight, I simply can’t recommend Static Dread: The Lighthouse enough, and it is now my favourite game that uses the theme of Lovecraftian horror.

9/10

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