Static Dread: The Lighthouse – PS5 Review

Static Dread: The Lighthouse comes to us from Solarsuit Games and Games Harbor. You play as the nameless keeper of the previously automated Outsmouth Lighthouse. Quite why it falls to you isn’t entirely clear, but it sets you up for all manner of eldritch goings on as you see out fifteen days in the job.

The bag of a fag packet description is basically Papers Please with a nautical Lovecraftian twist, acknowledged as such by at least two explicit mentions. That’s no bad thing at all though. Though Lucas Pope’s rather excellent game came out in 2013, we’re amazed it that was that long ago. It was one of the early indie darlings which eschewed graphical prowess for a decent core gameplay conceit and that’s no bad thing.

In essence, you are told to look for ships frequencies by rotating the jog wheel on the radio, just like if you were manually entering the track names on a MiniDisc recorder back in the day. Once you’ve made contact with a vessel, you get their manifest faxed to you. It might seem like a bit of a deliberate anachronism, but from a technical perspective it makes some sense, the low bandwidth required to carry the fax image working after a fashion we guess.

There are four systems needed for your lighthouse to function; the antenna, the light, the rotation and generator. In the event one drops out, you’ll get warned by your controller. The antenna is easy enough, with a breaker outside, the power and light are via a breaker in the hall and the biggest chore is the rotation where you have to traipse up to the top of the lighthouse to switch it back on.

At the outset you don’t have to do much else than send the ship to their preferred destination, with the caveat of sending them to the main port if their destination isn’t listed. As you progress, additional wrinkles are added though we didn’t clock them immediately and got clobbered with a $30 fine each time we ballsed it up. For example, you have to make sure that the ID on someone’s shipping licence matches up. Or if their ship serial is listed. In the event of any irregularities, you’re meant to send them to another port.

This is taken from your $400 wages that you’ll need to progress by utilising the vendors that knock on your door. One particularly essential item is the coffee pot to stave off sleep. You see, if you fall asleep you reach what is in effect a game over state. This isn’t so much of a problem if you go with a playthrough where you allow people to come into your lighthouse, but if you are going for the trophy for being a misanthropic sod as we are, you’re in trouble the second  time it happens.

You see, the Old Ones that are attacking the bay and making people go loopy demand a sacrifice, unfortunately it isn’t a nice shrubbery. You get a free pass the first time, but the second time you have to provide a human soul, but in the absence of any other people, you’ll do. Unfortunately, this bounces you back to the main menu and you have to retry from your last save. In our case, we’re having a bit of a Groundhog Day moment with the tenth day as we’ve succumbed a few times despite our best efforts.

In addition to ships, you’re sent messages by the titular Static Dread and others. As the name might suggest, it’s not a good thing to get messages from the former, but the other voices are generally more benign.

As you advance through the storyline, the game does a very good job of portraying the descent into the mouth of madness affecting everyone. We’ll spare you the details lest we give too much away, but it’s all very well done.

If we’ve any complaints, it is that it took us a while to get going purely due to the oppressive atmosphere. This prevails throughout, but after a while we got down to brass tacks and really found ourselves enjoying our time with Static Dread: The Lighthouse. A compelling plot combined with a solid core gameplay conceit is a good package.

In conclusion, Static Dread: The Lighthouse is a solid bureaucracy them up in the fine tradition of Papers, Please and other job simulator type games. We look forward to being an accommodating host to anyone who knocks the door of our lighthouse rather than telling them to sling their hook. Not to mention actually using our fishing rod to be somewhat self sufficient this time. Get to it and remember, the Old Ones are the best.