Keep the Lights On

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The hardened, resigned detective who lost his wife trope meets The Nun (2018), and I’m here for it! I’m still surprised that this was free because, for what it was, it was really fun. Sweet, short, straight-to-the-point, it had some fun mechanics, and I really enjoyed the puzzles. Coupled with the creepy atmosphere and the cosy vibes of the pixel art, it makes for a perfect little game to kick off fall! (My only gripe is the font, which was really difficult to read at times.)

Keep the Lights On is a side scroller atmospheric horror game developed by Light the Lantern Studios, not to apparently be confused with Lantern Light Studios of “The King’s Feast” fame apparently. Like many small indie horror game studios, the origins of how this game came to be and fascinating studio history isn’t around yet. Like many of the short horror games that I’ve been playing for free recently, I believe I originally found this title via AlphaBetaGamer and I saw the low-res pixelated look mixed with the horror themes and figured I’d eventually give it a shot. That shot didn’t come around until this month, where I was streaming some games for a friend of mine in a build up of sorts to Halloween (along with The Complex: Found Footage, He Needs His Medicine and Unsorted Horror). The plot is as follows: you are Edmund Rosenthal, an alcoholic private detective whose wife Helen recently passed away from a disease. You’re in shambles emotionally and financially, and for Edmund the future is looking bleak. However, a letter arrives from Vivan Newport, a woman whose estate holds an old convent with a history of disappearances. She wants you to investigate this so she can move on from the past history and renovate it into a home after 200 years of it just sitting there. Without any work, Edmund goes out to the estate to investigate only to find supernatural forces and proceeds to find out what happened here. [spoiler]One moment that made me really feel something was the part where you encounter the ghost of your dead wife Helen on the Bell Tower, who urges you to move on from the past and heal instead of hanging onto her. Of course, you can refuse and there’s a bad ending/achievement for this, but in order to progress the game you have to help Eddie move on.[/spoiler] While I don’t remember all the lines much, and as tropey as it kinda was I’m weak for emotional themes and that was really nice. As for the conflict in the story, the background plot [spoiler]follows a nun named Beatrice, whose child had recently died of unknown complications. In her grief, she made contact with Salvinus, a snake demon who promised her that she would see her child again if she were to worship him. Now of course, one never trusts a snake demon with all the “Garden of Eden” bulls h i t but it’s because of this that the convent has been haunted. There’s a bit of a parallel about how both Edmund and Beatrice deal with their grief, with the themes that hanging onto it will only lead you into desperation and misery and that it’s okay to move on; along with themes of forgiveness.[/spoiler] I won’t reveal more because it’s short, but you’ll find incidental pieces of lore surrounding the events from spots in the convent you’ll come across, mostly old letters/dialogue with ghosts. The ending of course results in [spoiler]Edmund fighting off the possessed ghost of Beatrice with holy water and Beatrice being reunited in heaven with her child.[/spoiler] Overall while the story has been done before and in some cases probably better, the execution of it was nice and I enjoyed my time with it. The gameplay aspects could be a tad bit better; it’s a side scroller where you choose to go into different rooms and solve puzzles while also engaging in combat with evil spirits. The combat isn’t great, and revolves around picking up holy water to throw at ghosts. Problem is, the holy water takes a bit to get rid of and these ghosts charge fast, so you’ll most likely accrue damage anyways. Luckily you can just get an infinite amount of this water by entering and exiting locations where they’ll be at, but it’s still kind of a pain in the ass to even deal with this system and it’s better to just leave any ammo for the final boss. The best recommendation is to jump, and as long as you time it right you can jump over most of these ghosts just fine though I did have trouble with their hitboxes every now and then. Most of the game's puzzles are for the most part fine, though trying to get one of the solutions for the secret developer room involved me opening a locked desk by, get this, climbing to the attic and jumping repeatedly in a spot until I crashed through the floor. They did give a blurb about this when you first came up but it took me ages as well as a Youtube walkthrough before I did it, and the only thing that popped in my head was “what the hell is this s h i t?”. Sometimes you can figure it out like that, sometimes it feels like a bit of a mixed bag though what I can say is that I suck at puzzles anyways so maybe it’s just me? Also unless you want to get stuck, if you go to the bell tower area, don’t pick up the ladder and drop it on the ledge before jumping into the hole. I did that once, and while it’s not smart and I did just reload to a previous save it’s kind of a pain to have something that could make you reset your entire game if you decided to jump into the hole without any way to get out. My solution would be to provide a box or two so one could get out realistically, but yeah don’t jump down without the ladder because the ladder is needed for puzzle stuff later on. The final thing I can share with this is that if you have F12 as your screenshot button then be careful, as pressing it in game will bring out the DevTools Chrome Extension in game, and that was confusing to see pop up. The atmosphere/sound design is pretty solid too, the rain and water sounds when you’re outside towards the bridge sound amazing. Creaky doors and the pattering of footsteps add to the atmospheric part of the horror, as does the instrumental music in the background which is very lowkey but conveys the mood well. There isn’t any voice acting so most of the sounds you’ll hear with dialogue are the sounds of what seems to be typewriters going off as the text appears on screen. As for the atmosphere and graphics, graphically this is definitely more in the line of those 8-16 bit titles of old but with that distinct indie flair that feels like an adaptation that one can tell the difference but not describe it well. It’s dark and moody, and screams gothic horror with barely any light sources that could come straight out of an old eighties horror flick and it fits the game perfectly. My thoughts on this game are as follows: for a free title the game’s pretty good! It’s not mind blowing persay, and there are some things that I would consider to be issues but as a first stepping stone for the developers I’d say they did a pretty good job here. The game has a creepy atmosphere and an interesting concept with some heartfelt themes that I can plainly say works out. I don’t really know what the next move for these guys are, but considering that the game came out around June 30th of this year I’d say that they’re still doing work and are probably working on their next project hopefully. There’s potential, and hopefully whatever they have going will help Keep the Lights On at home (look please don’t shoot me, I know it’s a bad dad joke). Overall, it’s worth your time and again it’s free; with Halloween coming up if you’re interested in something to help spook up your season then I’d say why not give the game a shot if you’re on a tight budget and/or looking to try out some new stuff from upcoming indie devs. Links: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007028229 (Achievement Guide) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMI1ekdJbG4&ab_channel=AlphaBetaGamer (Playthrough)

tiny bit buggy but its free and the game is short enough it wont really bother you, neat story and puzzles

Keep the Lights On, eski bir manastırı ve onu çevreleyen gizemi araştırmakla görevlendirilen özel dedektif Edmund Rosental'ın yerine geçeceğiniz atmosferik bir korku oyunudur. Işıkları açık tutabilecek mi yoksa karanlığa yenik mi düşecek?

The run button doesn't work? Terrible controls. Also, the font is mostly unreadable.

Had fun with it while it lasted, some puzzles are a bit out there

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Nice little detective/horror experience. Reminded me a lot of the 2010-ish era which had a lot of pixelated horror games of this kind. I missed those. One or two issues with the game, but they are not gamebreaking and save point are plenty, so don't worry. Mechanics are fine, puzzles are fine, story is fine. Spoiler Gameplay & bugs : [spoiler] You can get softlocked by putting up the ladder in the chimney, going back to the bell tower and falling through the floor. Thankfully saves are plenty and it's not like i lost a ton of progress, just noticing. The ladder also disappears if you go through enough doors ? or there is something about the door in the library that removes it ? You could ask what i was doing with a ladder there, that's a solid question, and my answer is : because i could. Again, not really a big issue, just noticing I don't know how i feel about death by fall damage in this type of games. especially when one of the puzzles requires you to fall from a height that should kill you. It adds some sense of realism i guess ? [/spoiler] Spoiler game/story : [spoiler] Enjoyed the start, enjoyed piecing together what happened, puzzles were fine, the paintings puzzle of the nun story took me more time than i care to admit but it was satisfying to solve. Warning from the ritual book didn't disappoint. The devs room was kind of immersion breaking. Feels like it could have been put at the start or the end and not behind the "biggest" puzzle of the game. Last part I don't think the nun explaining the plot was necessary, you definitely did a good enough job spreading out the information through notes, to allow the player to infer the rest. I don't have anything against dialogues, but this genre heavily benefits from leaving it to the imagination of the player. Just as an example, if the nun was almost ignoring the character and responding to herself "No... no... you said you would give her back to me, i did what you asked !" "I had to take them... i had to...". Maybe it's cliche, i don't know, i'm not a writer, it's 5 am and i have things to say apparently My point is players aren't thaaaat stupid... most of the time :D Also the wife story seemed a bit shoehorned in, not that it wasn't good or anything, i just feel it was out of place and didn't add much. What i gather from your intention was to have the MC relate to the nun but then again i find that specific kind of interaction awkward "i know your pain because i also lost someone close to me", i mean true... but also... not true. Queue the last fight and the end, not much to say, good wrap. I didn't get the last 2 secrets, don't think i will [/spoiler] I think i spent more time crafting this review than playing the actual game, oh well, whatever. Anyway, maybe it doesn't look like it, but i very much enjoyed the game. Looking forward to more.