First Light: Henter of the Glew

An hour before dawn, a heather hill on a Northern moor is thick with glew — motes of night-light that gather on the dark side, slide downhill, and cannot survive the sun. You are the Henter. You have a lantern and one verb.

Hent what you can before first light.

The night

The sun comes up over the summit and burns the hill clean from the top down. A line of light walks toward you at a steady pace, and everything above it is already gone. That is the whole clock: 150 seconds, one hill, one sunrise.

Working high is worth more and costs more, because you have to come back down through the light.

The hoggies

You are not the only one out here. The hoggies are round, greedy, hedgehog-like night-grazers who want exactly what you want. They eat glew, they carry it in a belly that glows brighter the fuller it gets, and a full one is the best thing on the hill.

Hent a full hoggy and it spills its whole hoard at your feet — five motes at once. Then it puts its head down and comes at you, and a hoggy that connects knocks glew straight back out of your lantern.

That is the game: the jackpot is also the risk, and you decide, over and over, whether this one is worth standing next to.

How to play

One verb. Move, and hent.

Move	WASD or arrow keys · left stick · the on-screen stick, left of the screen
Hent	Space, E or left mouse · A or right trigger · the big button, right of the screen
Pause	Esc or P · Start · the pause button
Menus	Arrows or the stick move the focus; Enter, A or a tap chooses

Keyboard and mouse, a controller and a touchscreen all play the whole game, menus included. It runs on a phone held either way, on a laptop, on a wide monitor and on a television — the hill and the HUD lay themselves out from the screen you are actually on.

What the lantern is worth

Your lantern is counted at first light.

• Bronze — 30
• Silver — 50
• Gold — 75

Your best night is kept for as long as you stay on the hill, and a round is two and a half minutes, so a better one is always one more night away.

Worth seeing

• The moment the light-line crosses a drift you were saving for last.
• A full hoggy from about two metres away, deciding.
• The cairn on the summit when the sun finally reaches it.
• The last twenty seconds, when the glew has all slid to the bottom of the hill and so have you.