I’m not sure how horror became one of my niches. Maybe it’s age. My mind has gotten darker over the years and abstract and existential threats depicted in horror are much easier to understand than the real-world rot that seems to spread through a collapse of shared reality in favour of the embrace of entertaining falsehoods, a logical circle derailed only through the ability to ascertain fact from fiction, a skill, it would seem, that most are do not have or are not interested in developing.

Haha! Hey, friend. Let’s talk about a horror game.

Static Dread: The Lighthouse finds itself at an intersection of the sudden explosion of work-a-day horror and isolation horror. Actually, it’s more of a nexus, because a whole lot of other things get crossed over in the mix. Actually, it’s more like a singularity…

HENCEFORTH

Static Dread: The Lighthouse (henceforth referred to as Static Dread), sets the world during a strange aurora, assumedly created by a strong magnetic storm. Such an event would disrupt communications, but Static Dread is pretty loose about what that means. In the framework of gameplay, your radio works, but you have to tune it to random frequencies to pick up signals.

In any case, the magnetic storm has made automatic navigation difficult, so you’re sent to an old lighthouse on an island to help ships reach port. This sort of makes sense, since you work during the night when navigation by landmark would be both dangerous and difficult. Still, I’m not totally sure how having a sheet of paper faxed to you with a few lines drawn on it would help you navigate to port through difficult passages, but I don’t exactly have my sea legs, so maybe this makes perfect sense.

Again, in terms of gameplay framework, it means that you need to chart a course on a map and then fax it back to the ship. Demands change each day, wherein sometimes you’ll be helping a ship get to a specific port, and other days you have to steer them into sea mines.

THE BRIGHTER THE LIGHT

Static Dread supposedly takes place in the present day (references to the COVID pandemic are even made early on), but it’s another point that it’s incredibly loose about. Cell phones probably wouldn’t work in the magnetic storm, sure, but you’re also visited by people who often dress mid-20th century fashion, and they fax you scans of newspaper articles. Newspapers. Also, there’s a fax machine. In any case, it’s not a big deal, and it’s probably not even worth bringing it up, but there you have it. The COVID reference is probably not necessary and would leave the time period ambiguous, is what I’m saying, even if it does help put things into a bit of perspective.

Most importantly, though, the aurora has brought about a lot of unusual things. An island rises from the sea, a dark presence haunts the lighthouse, a strange drug has started circulating, people have been vanishing, and odd creatures have started washing up on the shores. You know, stuff we dealt with during COVID.

And let me tell you, it’s all downhill from there. The world gets progressively and significantly worse throughout the 15 nights you spend at that lighthouse.

However, being master of the seas, you wield a great deal of power in the events of the world. Not just in the fact that you control the harbour, but also because the lighthouse itself seems to have tangible importance. A lot of the weirdness out in the world won’t come near the light, while others are drawn to it. You, as a character, are not all that important, but the fact that you are who controls the lighthouse means that the fate of the world rests on your shoulders.

THE DARKER THE SHADOWS

The gameplay loop itself reminds me of a cross between Papers, Please and the recent demo of (the currently unreleased) No, I’m Not a Human.

From Papers, Please, you have the desktop bureaucracy. From No, I’m Not A Human, you have the small living space where you are isolated from the outside world. Your only contact is radio transmissions, the view outside your windows, and people showing up at your door. Which are exactly how No, I’m Not a Human does it, except that game also provides news updates via a television.

I was struck by how similar the games were, but then a character from No, I’m Not a Human literally showed up on the doorstep, so the similarities are at least recognized, if not intentional by Solarsuit.

Anyway, like No, I’m Not a Human, the real core of the game is making decisions from intentionally vague information, so you won’t quite know whether you made the correct decision, if there’s even a correct decision. But while No, I’m Not a Human, seems to do this more from a philosophical standpoint, it’s central to the narrative in Static Dread.

WHO’S THIS GOOD BOY?!

If you really boil down Static Dread’s narrative flow, it comes to aligning with factions. However, throughout the game, the different factions come and go, and your role in who comes and who goes is never fully clear. I was often left wondering if choices I made led to an early downfall of a particular faction or character. Do I have the ability to choose who makes it to the end credits? In a lot of cases, probably not, but I wasn’t really able to play through multiple times to find out.

Likewise, most factions will promise or threaten you with things, which can make siding with them, at the time, a reasonable choice. Temporarily helping one to get at another is also a tempting strategy. By the end of the game, I was firm in what my intentions were and who I was willing to trust, but at the beginning, I wasn’t so sure. I, personally, progressed through anguished worry to determined confidence along with the game, as though I experienced my own character arc.

The fact that I was left questioning myself the whole way through is the most meaningful impression I got from my time with Static Dread. Characters will outright lie to you, some of their threats are entirely empty, and some rules are made to be broken. I’m not entirely sure how far Static Dread branches in its storyline, but it feels like a lot. Even if everything is going to converge to the same climax, the smoke and mirrors are effective enough to where I’m left to wonder how things would play out if I changed one or two things that I did.

CTHULHU R’LYEH WGAH’NAGL FHTAGN

The unfortunate thing is that Static Dread was pretty buggy in the pre-release state I played it in. Some problems were substantial and required me to replay certain days. A difficult thing when it comes to playing pre-release builds as a critic is that none of these bugs may still exist by the time it gets in your hands. The team has been patching things in the lead up to launch, and the changes have been very noticeable. Even some of my biggest issues were addressed. The last stretch before release is usually a marathon of bug fixes for dev teams. I can only speak of my experience, but I have faith that the team will have everything in ship shape before release. Or, failing that, shortly after.

But some parts just don’t seem that polished. The awareness/sanity/speed system that requires you to eat certain foods to get through the night isn’t as clear as I feel it should have been. There are visual cues that are supposed to indicate when you’re starting to deplete, but I had trouble recognizing what was associated to which stat. Awareness would tell me when I was moments away from passing out, giving me the chance to refill, but the only time I became aware of low sanity was when it fully depleted, and I failed the day.

What food refreshes what stat and by how much is also confusing. Before you start your shift, looking at food will tell you what it fills up, but I think this is indicating how much you need to eat to get special perks for the night. The indicators on food go away when your shift starts, instead replaced by a single stat that it says it increases. However, while a certain snack might tell you that it refills one awareness, two sanity before your shift, at night it seems to just refill sanity. How much each one recovers is also lost to me. I’ve probably wasted a lot of food just trying to figure things out.

DASHED TO SPLINTERS

Despite the rough edges I experienced, I really enjoyed my time with Static Dread. It is, largely, an amalgam of the ideas from other places, but it’s hard to argue with the execution. Gameplay mostly just has you doing busy work and scrubbing graffiti off the walls, which can get rather tiresome in the later stages of the game, but it’s a reasonable foundation for the exceptional dialogue and story choices.

The narrative, as a whole, does a solid job of depicting a world falling apart as communicated through hearsay and the view from a few windows. It is difficult to effectively convey climactic tension when you’re not actively part of the events, but Static Dread does an impressive job of doing so. It’s also rather long for a horror game, (8-10 hours, maybe) which I commonly warn against, but the confidence gained by existing in the world happens to fit the protagonist’s character arc quite well. I still think it hangs in the air a bit too long, but just barely.

It’s not perfect, but it’s well executed. None of my complaints feel entirely substantial, as they’re mainly just loose screws that can be tightened with feedback. But right now, its efforts to obscure certain aspects can unintentionally make things uncomfortable at times. At least the intentional parts feel like the right kind of uncomfortable. The way it sows doubt at every turn and is willing to punch you in the gut for your decisions is deeply absorbing. Definitely don’t skip out on your duties at the lighthouse.

8/10

This review was conducted using a digital, pre-release Steam copy of the game. It was provided by the publisher’s PR.