The Light Keeps Us Safe
Big Robot goes dark with a scary, stealthy survival adventure
PC
The light might well keep you safe, but after the blue-sky sci-fi of The Signal From Tölva, Big Robot’s latest is a return to much darker territory. And we’re not just talking about the colour palette – while Sir, You Are Being Hunted offered a more playful brand of scare, this is the studio adopting the tone and tenor of serious horror. Set in a desolate, procedurally generated world patrolled by twitchy machines – instructively, the first area you visit (and the game’s original working title) is Bleak Road – it all but demands to be played with the lights down and the volume up. “We do atmospheric stuff pretty well,” creative lead Jim Rossignol says. No kidding.
For all its danger, it’s a weirdly alluring place – certainly more so than the dingy, grotty little bunker you find yourself in at the start. Encouraged to venture outside by a woman’s voice – Burnistoun’s Louise Stewart strikes a fittingly stark, sombre tone – you’ll find yourself exploring a world built around a high-contrast aesthetic that gives you landmarks you can easily pick out from a distance, with bright lights representing both danger and opportunity. A red glow in the distance might mean a building full of supplies; it will also, almost certainly, mean there are machines nearby to distract or disable before you can get inside and grab them.
It’s a survival game of sorts, then, but it’s not one where you constantly need to fret about food and medical supplies – it’s fairly generous on that front. And it’s not a Roguelike either: dying doesn’t mean having to start over. Your job, at least in the early stages, is to gradually upgrade your modular flashlight, which over time becomes a multitool that steadily allows you to venture
further, and tackle enemy threats without quite so much running, hiding or bottlethrowing. It factors into exploration and puzzle-solving in some surprising ways, which shouldn’t be spoiled at this stage – not least since they’re potentially subject to change.
Perhaps it’s not quite the game you were expecting; indeed, Rossignol suggests that the audience response so far has been quite the eye-opener. “The extent to which people’s assumptions define their experience is really fascinating to watch,” he says. “The procgen doesn’t really demand death and replay, as you’ll have already experienced. But there’s a whole bunch of people reporting on the game as if that’s how it is, which is really weird. So we almost feel like maybe we should adapt it to meet expectations if the messaging isn’t there. Having spent months alone in this development environment, all these different understandings come into play and you start having to consider, well, do we need to develop to specifically address some of that stuff?”
Don’t worry – Light isn’t about to become more generic just to meet player expectations. “We don’t really want to make the same game as everybody else,” Rossignol continues. “We can’t really jettison that approach and still be making Big Robot games. It’s partly genre expectations, but it’s partly structural on our part – if you want someone to play a game in a certain way you have to teach them to do it. So yeah, that’s definitely our job.” He suggests that the game has been built in such a way that it could potentially be bent into entirely new shapes. Indeed, it began as something more akin to a road trip before the hub structure was incorporated, while the light element only came into play late on; Rossignol had scribbled ‘the light keeps you safe’ on a Post-It note, originally conceiving of “a procedural Lordran” where the player would carry a blazing torch and light lanterns to make their way through the world.
If there’s plenty that will likely change between now and the final release, that stiflingly potent atmosphere needs no adjustment. Through headphones, the insectoid clicks and whirrs produced by the robotic enemies prove even more unsettling. And the low-level ambience is punctuated by startlingly loud diegetic sounds when you are spotted, making for a more palatable brand of jump-scare than the hackneyed use of orchestral bursts. It’s a technique Rossignol clearly loves. “When stuff does happen – BANG!” he shouts, clapping for emphasis. “It’s suddenly very loud and that can be very intimidating. I think that kind of contrast is really exciting. If you’re able to marry visual contrast with audio contrast when you’re doing something like that, then the effect is even greater.” Our shattered nerves are testament to that.
“If you want someone to play a game in a certain way you have to teach them to do it”