How to play:
Don't play
Review
Game starts with a bizarre unskippable intro with a dreadful repeating background music loop, each loop is just seven seconds long (can be heard in the video clip on the image viewer above). Imagine this seven second loop repeating for five to ten minutes while you read a poorly written script; which has several coding errors within.
In this script your long-suffering girlfriend insists you take a job on a haunted lighthouse for a TV show, and have to stay for ten days. Apparently the only winner to date was so traumatised that they committed suicide (and yet this TV show is still on the air). Anyway, you don't have any options, you take the job, and here's the good news.... the music loop ends.
You are now in the simulation. You can change the settings (sound/video/environmental) by accessing the menu using the ESC key. There isn't a master volume, so you have to amend the three individual sliders separately. The good news is this takes a few moments, and whilst doing so it distracts you from the rest of the game.
In the environmental controls you can make the waves bigger, the wind stronger, or choose one of several preset weathers (cloudy1, cloudy2, snow etc). This doesn't affect the gameplay in any way.
Finally you can change the simulation speed. The fastest setting is ten minutes, meaning one day/night cycle is ten minutes. As your challenge is to survive for ten days you need to let the game run for one hour and forty minutes (10 x 10 minutes).
What challenges do you need to perform during this time period? Well your only control is the right mouse button, which when clicked and dragged can rotate the lighthouse island. If you are feeling daring you can right click, and drag forward, which will give you a view inside the lighthouse model; spoiler alert - it is mostly hollow.
And that is it.
Leave the game running in the background for 100 minutes and your girlfriend will appear on the island in her skimpies.
But what if you are clever, and decide to save the game, and come back later? Naturally there is no save function. As soon as you hit the Quit button, there's no warning, the game just closes. No "Are you sure?" Nothing. It's gone like foam on the beach, and you have to start over again, including the mind-numbing intro sequence.
The good news is it is possible to "complete" the game in under two hours, and thus apply for a full refund via Steam, so there is that. Honestly I would cut out the middle man. Everything you can see in the promo video above is all there is to see.
You got more entertainment from this review than you will from Lighthouse Simulator. Send me your £1.69 istead!
