If walking simulator is a genre, Static Dread: The Lighthouse is a hearing about things simulator. In the wake of a worldwide cataclysm that disabled GPS and other forms of fancy navigation, you have left your wife and daughter to man a decrepit old lighthouse and ensure ships get to port safely. Your main means of communication with the world is by radio, which provides your daily instructions…but as you talk to the various ships, townsfolk, your boss, an ominous voice that might be Cthulhu, and various others, you hear about the unfolding horrors of these times. Sometimes you see a g-g-g-g-ghost.
Static Dread: The Lighthouse
Developer: solarsuit.games
Price: $12.99 ($9.74 until 8/20)
Platform: PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
Described as Papers, Please by way of Cthulhu, the gameplay loop is fairly simple: Every night, your boss gives you orders over the radio. These start pretty simply: steer ships to the correct port. It escalates from there: make sure ships that have seen The Horrors go to The Scientists or make sure that The Drugrunners go to the Coast Guard or, hey, that ominous voice demands BLOOD AND SOULS, you could do what he says or not…Guide them incorrectly, and you might lose your daily pay or get yelled at. In between calls from ships, you try to keep the light on, the radio and generator running, the creepy locals drop by for conversations, the lighthouse itself is always sprouting ominous writing on the wall and cobwebs that won’t go away, and there is the mystery of what happened to the previous keeper, and you can always try to talk to your wife and kid when you have a moment from all that.
You’re also always sleepy and losing brainpower, possibly seeing things. The Horrors are encroaching, maybe you should have a snack, maybe you should hide from those tentacles, maybe you should answer the radio, or maybe you should just go to bed and give up…
Atmospherically, it is excellent, but the problem is simply this: Its hand is so simply and obviously played that I didn’t care about any of it. It’s like renting an abandoned cabin in the woods. If the murderous ghost doesn’t show up, I’m going to be upset. Instead, most of the time, you’re hearing about strange things going on over the radio. Or you run into the problem where it’s so obvious that everything is creepy that it’s not scary anymore: when the weird little boy that keeps showing up sprouts tentacles, it’s not even surprising. Of course, the weird little kid sprouts tentacles. I’d be disappointed if he didn’t. So much of the game telegraphs that things are going to Get Weird that it’s not really a surprise when things Get Weird. Like, tentacles are sprouting from the floor, but of course, there are. The walls have been covered with ominous writing that won’t go away for several nights. Par for the course.
There are ways of fending off sleepiness and weird brains, like drinking coffee and eating fish, but weirdness is so inevitable, I went with it. There are some interesting ideas here, like there is a great gonzo horror game waiting to be made about a crazy lighthouse keeper feeding boats to Cthulhu and trying not to get caught, but then why bother with the trappings of sanity and wakefulness? I’ll admit part of the problem may be me: Cthulhu is overplayed as a source of cosmic horror. It’s always Cthulhu. Unless it’s zombies.
Sometimes, Static Dread feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure game where you know you’re going to lose, so you just decide to go along with it to see what happens because why not. At one point, the evil voice on the radio told me to just give up and go to bed, so I…did to see what happened, which gave me a small story outcome and a game over. It was kind of nice that the choice existed, but it was also hilarious that “I am no longer indulging in this game’s bullshit, I’m out” is an option.
It runs fine, and it’s plenty atmospheric, but it’s not especially scary since most of the time, you’re just hearing about scary things happening elsewhere. When you do see a ghost or tentacles or weird things, it feels like a jumpscare made for the age of a dude on Twitch shrieking at the top of his lungs that it’s the scariest thing he’s ever seen and he’s going to die of fright.
Static Dread: The Lighthouse Is Moody but Misses the Mark on Fear
As I was trying to figure out why it wasn’t landing with me, Stephen King made a post on BlueSky that said, “For horror to work, you have to care about the characters,” and that was it exactly. Giving you a wife and kid to shriek “Daddy, when are you coming home?” is a transparent play on par with a wrestling heel insulting the local sports team. The villagers being weirdos means it’s not exactly surprising when they act like weirdos, and why would I care about them? That I, the player character, signed up for a job at a janky old lighthouse that is pretty obviously a shitty job at a haunted lighthouse doesn’t testify to the quality of my judgment, so sure, I’ll let the creepy fisherman come in when I’ve been told “don’t let ANYONE in!” and I’ll tell Cthulhu how to eat my asshole boss. Maybe the real monster is me. Whatever, man! This job sucks anyway.
The Final Word
Atmospheric but not scary or interesting.
MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
