Lovecraftian Papers, Please? Let Me At It!
Keep the lighthouse, and yourself, functioning in a not too positive place.
For the video version, be sure to click right below:
Static Dread
Developer: solarsuit.games
Publisher: Polden Publishing
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Become the new lighthouse keeper in an odd Lovecraftian tale, where you have to guide sailors to a port, while also making sure the lighthouse stays running, and the horrors don’t get you. But first,
The Steam Next Fest
is at full swing, and I’ve been diving into a variety of horror games first. As a horror writer myself, I just gravitate naturally towards them.
From becoming a girl being held hostage by her mother
A horror themed football game to a hunted retro game,
a spooky park rangers’ story,
not making it out before the base locked down,
And many more, there’s certainly a variety of horror cooking up in the indie scene. (Post Trauma, Into The Dead, Bad Cheese, Nightmare Shift, Moonbase Lambda, REPOSE, Maintenance Required, FACEMINER, Phantom Asylum VR, Cold Abyss, Total Chaos).
There’s a ton that caught my eye, and I will be talking about those sooner or later, but I wanted to talk about Static Dread right now. With a description that reads Lovecraft meets Papers, Please, how can someone not be interested? Assuming you know what both those things are.
There’s Something In The Air.
An aurora has enveloped the whole world with its colorful colors and damaging magnetic waves that have been making electrical devices not function. As systems have malfunctioned, someone has to help the sailors reach the nearby ports, and that’s when you come in. Much like my favorite Robert Pattinson movie, The Lighthouse, which is also a weird tale, you’re the new wickie in town. Or island, actually. The island of Outsmouth.
Ha… Funny…
After looking around your stylistically grim and curvy inside of your lighthouse, you’re greeted by the courier, who, besides giving you your allowance, also tells you that no one has lived in the lighthouse, and by that extent worked, on the lighthouse for a long time, and also tells you,
“Time are tough now, we need reliability more than ever. In lighthouses and people. Hope you’re one of those we can trust.”
But because the demo’s short, I’ll just go over my impressions. The feel of the game is just immaculate. How the structure looks, how imperfect it is,
The gloom of the characters accentuated by a green tint,
The views you get from the windows that shows you the town,
When you flip the switch outside and it switches the perspective to from the bottom to the top,
And your room?
Look at that. It’s unsettling, in a homey way if that makes sense. And it’s a good thing that the game is so appealing to look at to, as you’ll be walking around the whole place.
Lights are out? Restart the generator. Lighthouse stops working? Go up the stairs and restart the rotation mechanism. You’re getting tired? Go to the living room and get yourself a drink or two. Radio isn’t working? Go mess with the antenna. And don’t forget you need to help these sailors make it to port, so regularly check. Throughout the demo, I had to walk around the place to make sure everything was running, especially when the lights went out.
As much as pleasant experience Static Dread was, it’s not with its fault. When it compared itself with Papers, Please, it instantly placed some high hopes, at least for me, in its gameplay. Papers, Please is an intense game, even if the gameplay is kind of mundane, because everything has so much weight to it. It was politically charged after all, and it did a great job conveying that oppressive authoritarian world the protagonist lived in.
In Static Dread, at least in the demo, we aren’t shown that part that much. I kind of got a feel for it when you’re shown your allowance, but besides that, I didn’t see much else. Plotting the route was way too easy. I couldn’t feel the weight of guiding people. But it’s just the demo, and it took me around 20 minutes to finish. With the survey at the end popping up asking for honest feedback, and the devs still adding stuff to the game, I’m sure the full release will patch things up.
As far as I can tell, besides helping sailors’ part, it can get pretty hairy. And a mysterious aurora messing with communications, and a weird drug glowing drug appearing from sea pirate, and you’re told that something awful happened to the first keeper, who left journals lying around? I mean, it seems like some cosmic spooks are among the world, and I’m all for it.
What do you think of Static Dread? Have you tried other horror games during this fest? Let me know below!
I'll definitely give this a go. I like Lovecraftian horror. Have you played The Shore?