The story is revealed through various notes and books you find throughout the game. Each piece of writing belongs to one of four main characters, and as you collect them, you unlock their stories bit by bit. In short, the plot centers around Charlie, an electrician who had a vision of the apocalypse and ended up starting a cult. Then there’s Jess, a journalist who decided to investigate the cult, Robert, Charlie’s loyal second-in-command, and Leah, the daughter of Jess and Charlie.
And then there’s Rachel, the main character you’re trying to save from the strange situation she’s caught in. Relationships between the characters are not a spoiler because everything is revealed right away. The main challenge ahead is known as the Cleansing, which is meant to guide you along a path of enlightenment by completing a series of puzzles.
Each scene takes place in a single room where you can click on various notes and interact with puzzles. Every room contains several puzzles, and often they can be tackled in any order. However, you don’t need to solve them all, just enough to activate the switch that opens the next floor. But if you do decide to complete every puzzle in a room, you’ll reveal an image at the center.
The puzzles themselves revolve around the use of light and shadows. They’re not too hard to understand once you learn the rules. Each puzzle has a number of movable pieces, and your goal is to manipulate, rotate, and reposition them to direct light toward a yellow target. One key mechanic is that a piece can only be moved once a beam of light shines on its handle for long enough; this “unlocks” it, allowing you to move it even when the light is no longer touching it.
The main challenge lies in the precision required. Obstacles often block the path of the light, and you have to carefully arrange the pieces to create a narrow route through which the light can reach the target, sometimes just barely. Luckily, the yellow target doesn’t need to be completely lit; even a small amount of light will activate it.
Overall, it’s not too difficult to solve enough puzzles to finish the game and reach the ending. But if you decide to go back and complete every puzzle, you’ll uncover a hidden secret. Part of it will already stand out during your first playthrough; those strange red switches hidden in certain puzzles. When you shine light on these switches, they make a sound, but they don’t seem to do anything else.
These switches are often obscured by the camera angle, but once you realize you can rotate the entire puzzle view, you’ll be able to spot them more easily. Of course, that means you’ll need to replay puzzles and arrange the pieces so that the red switches get lit.
It’s not particularly difficult, especially since you can use the yellow target light to help this time. The only problem is that the game doesn’t indicate which puzzles you’ve already triggered switches in. Since you might have activated some by accident earlier, it’s easy to waste time replaying ones you’ve already completed. There’s also a slight bug with puzzles in the last room, because you can’t exit a puzzle when you start it. This can be fixed by returning to the main menu and back.
Once you light up all the red switches on a given floor, you unlock a secret compartment; a keypad on the first floor, and an extra note or book on other floors. All of these hidden elements provide more clues, eventually leading you to four secret codes. But figuring it out can still be tricky, since you’ll need to carefully read the notes and closely observe each scene.
