Flashlights are your lifeline in murky robo-avoider The Light Keeps Us Safe
The Light: Does what it says on the tin
Shining lights on problems might not be as effective a solution to social ills as first thought, but it seems key to surviving a nightmare robopocalypse. Announced back in July, Big Robot (Sir, You Are Being Hunted and The Signal From Tölva) are living up to their name again with The Light Keeps Us Safe, a techno-horror survival adventure set in a world where the sky has gone dark and robots prowl the endless night.
The game has been shrouded in mystery and shadow up til now, but in a new video released today (and found below), we get our first brief peek at what survival entails in its gloomy world - narrated by dev lead (and RPS co-founder) Jim Rossignol. The game is due to enter early access in October.
While The Signal From Tolva was more of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R-inspired shooter, The Light Keeps Us Safe feels like a logical successor to Big Robot's debut Sir, You Are Being Hunted. Once again it's set in a procedurally generated apocalypse taken over by robots, although this one is far less whimsical. Menacing drones patrol the landscape, their dark red lighting and mechanical hum telegraphing their appearance, and it seems the player has very little option but to flee and hide.
The new footage gives us a peek at the systems that will be protecting the player from these murderous machines. It turns out that the title is accurate - the light does keep you safe, and the machines can't handle anything other than their own red haze or natural gloom. The player's main tool is a strange upgradeable flashlight. Most interesting is a mode for it that reveals invisible machine structures. We also get a peek at some kind of hovering ball lightning anomaly in an abandoned house, suggesting some high-level weirdness going on in this world.
It's exactly what I've come to expect from Big Robot - moody landscapes, mechanical menace and a vein of cosmic horror adding a bit of spice to the lonely trek. I'm looking forward to getting lost in the dark when the game enters early access next month.
The Light Keeps Us Safe will launch as early access on October 11th. You can find it on Steam here.
Disclosure: Big Robot head Jim Rossignol - the man narrating the very video above - was one of RPS's founders! Beyond that, he left the site long before I arrived, so aside from his name being whispered with hushed reverence (or fear of re-summoning some elder horror) by some, he's just another developer, so far as I'm concerned.