Little Lighthouse of Horror review: A hauntingly eerie tale inspired by a real-life mystery

Loneliness isn’t the only enemy of a lighthouse keeper. Nor is the hunger that eats away at you or the cold that chills you to the bone. It’s the mind. The way it plays tricks on you, forever creating an unease that seeps into your everyday routine. This is the environment Lawrence finds himself in, having taken on the role of the new lighthouse keeper after three previous keepers vanished.

The days are long, the nights longer still, leaving Lawrence struggling to make it through the job alive. Little Lighthouse of Horror has you fighting for your life, though not necessarily in the traditional sense we’ve come to expect from horror games. Instead of being stalked by an axe-wielding terror hellbent on revenge, it's the unsettling atmosphere of the island, and the secrets it holds, that steadily gnaw away at you.

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by its pixel art visuals, for Little Lighthouse of Horror is fraught with danger. More often than not, the perils come from the harsh reality of trying to survive on limited supplies as you balance several menial tasks. Resource management is crucial in this indie horror because, quite frankly, that’ll get you before any spectre.

Poor Lawrence died from the cold in my very first run after just six days. His next outing fared much better… right up until he ran out of fuel and left the lighthouse unlit; he was soon fired for his “deplorable” service. Lastly, Lawrence kicked the bucket because he ran out of food and failed to order more supplies in time, having also ignored being able to harvest the island crops right outside the front door. Needless to say, Lawrence suffered immensely before any ghouls started to toy with his sanity.

Arguably, resource management is a monotonous gameplay feature, and would typically annoy the hell out of me after several days of repetition. As much as I adore games that usually feature this mechanic, staying on top of harvesting, replanting seeds, watering, etc all become tedious by the end (unless you have items to assist you). However, in the case of Little Lighthouse of Horror, tedium is an important part of the experience because it emphasises how difficult the role of a lighthouse keeper is. Once you add maintaining one's sanity on top of everything else, Lawrence’s struggles really hit home.

Lawrence might not make it out alive in Little Lighthouse of Horror

Having found the happy medium for managing supplies and duty, you delve into a story heavily inspired by the mysterious Flannan Isles disappearances. Having watched a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode about this case, it's a curious occurrence yet to be solved. Did the keepers simply abandon their posts? If so, why? And if they didn’t, what happened to them?

In Little Lighthouse of Horror, there’s a supernatural element at play, though one that’s undoubtedly further fuelled by Lawrence’s decreasing sanity. The lower it gets, the more he’ll descend into madness as isolation and tricks of the mind weigh heavy on him. I’ll admit, I never got to such a point with Lawrence because some other mishap usually befell him before he was mentally beyond the point of no return. Still, I did note how more spooky happenings took place when his sanity decreased, even slightly, which made for some jarring moments.

Even without the occasional spook, this indie experience, so simple in its design, is thick with tension. Much like the fog banks that roll in, leaving Lawrence frantically running up the lighthouse steps to turn on the light and ring the bells, it has a dense, suffocating atmosphere. Arguably, this is one of the aspects where the title excels. Sadly, however, this experience isn’t without its fair share of issues.

The main problem I encountered, besides my inability to keep Lawrence alive and well, was that the language setting would default to Spanish upon continuing from the last autosave. While mildly annoying, this would normally be solved by toggling the language back to English. However, every time I attempted to do this, as soon as I clicked ‘continue’ to start from the last autosave checkpoint, the language reverted to Spanish. In the end, I had to restart the whole game, which wasn’t ideal.

I also found autosaving itself to be a problem, though primarily because, for some odd reason, it’s automatically turned off. Only after dying and having to completely restart did I discover that I needed to turn the option on. Granted, some players will appreciate the perils of playing without the safety of a previous save file, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them. And even if I was, I still believe that autosave should be on as the default setting.

Despite the hurdles Lawrence and I had to overcome during our time together, I would recommend Little Lighthouse of Horror to anyone, even those who don’t usually play horror. It’s not a hair-raising experience but rather an eerie escapade that erodes at you like waves lashing the shoreline. Similar to a pebble on the beach, it’s imperfect but worthy of admiration all the same.

Pros: Atmospheric visuals, subtle but well-executed scares, compelling story

Cons: Autosave isn’t a default setting, language reverts to Spanish when attempting to load the last autosave

For fans of: Mouthwashing, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, Lily’s Well

Score: 7/10 - Very Good

Little Lighthouse of Horror is available on Steam. Review code provided by the publisher. Find a complete guide to GAMINGbible's review scores here.