Opening:
The Red Lantern is a survival adventure game that incorporates a rogue-light style. The game has you playing as a woman who has decided to change up her life, build a dog-sledding team, and move to the Alaskan wilderness.
Phases:
The first phase of the game has you selecting your dogs on the way to your destination. Each dog has a distinct personality and skills, but if you pass one up you cannot come back and choose it again later. Once your team is ready to go, the game proper begins.
You aim to reach the Red Lantern cabin, hunting enough food along the way to feed your dogs and yourself, while not getting into too much trouble from the more aggressive wildlife. The rogue-light game mechanic comes into play pretty quickly.
Storyline:
You start grossly under-prepared and run out of supplies very quickly. When the run is over, you wake up back in your van. The previous run was just a nightmare, and because you ran out of food you pack a little extra to be careful. Similarly, you can find equipment along the way such as an axe and fishing pole. If you find one of these, you’ll pack one the next time before leaving.
It is an interesting explanation for the gameplay style, however, it doesn’t completely work for me. In an attempt to explain the logic of restarting the run, it just opens up more plot contrivances and makes your character seem even more unprepared.
Main Body of Red Lantern:
The random encounters that are the main body of the game are also rather frustrating. There is not enough variety in them to prevent the game from feeling repetitive. Obviously you will need to have some events be more frequent for gaining food and tinder, but there needs to be a little more variation in a rogue-style game built on repetition.
I liked the visual style, it’s very reminiscent of The Long Dark and the way the landscape changes with the lighting throughout the day is beautiful. I also always got a kick out of the dogs’ running animations not quite starting in time and they just float over the snow for a moment. Please never patch this. The voice acting really elevated the game experience for me.
Clouser:
The game is entirely first person so we never get to see the protagonist, but through the voice actor’s performance, I got a really solid picture of her. The excitement and thrill of starting on this journey, her wonder and awe when witnessing a herd of caribou, and the absolute terror when a bear attacks her and her dogs. The Red Lantern has an interesting concept but ultimately doesn’t deliver on the thought-provoking experience it promised from the trailers.
It was a fun experience for the first few runs but quickly became repetitive and overly reliant on luck. If you can find it on sale I’d recommend giving it a go but it doesn’t offer enough to justify its £20 price tag so I can’t give it the Chill Out Seal of Approval.
