LANTERNWAKE

The third of November, 1888. The fen village of Lanternwake, Norfolk.

You are Dr. Aurelia Vane, sent out on the night coach to certify a death. The coach will not go past the bridge. The village you walk into is empty — every door standing open, every lamp out, one hundred and nine souls unaccounted for.

Something walks the lanes. The villagers called it the Hollow Vicar.

The one dial

You carry a lantern, and it is the whole of the matter.

Raised, you can see the step in front of you, read a ledger, find a keyhole, and work a mechanism. You are also the only bright thing in a fen full of fog — and the Vicar steers by light.

Hooded, nothing in the village can find you. Neither can you. You are blind, and you cannot solve anything at all.

Every decision in the game is when to open the hood, for how long, and how far you are willing to be from something to hide behind when you do.

A night in the fen

1. Walk a lane hooded — safe, and near-blind in the fog.
2. Raise the lantern to read the place: the clue, the mechanism, the way through.
3. Solve it. Puzzles need light, so you are always exposed while you work.
4. The Vicar comes. Hood the lantern and stand still, or break for a hiding place — a pew, a cellar hatch, the reeds — and wait for the trail to go cold.
5. Move on. The Mill, the Well and the Manor each keep a sigil. Three seals open the crypt beneath St. Brannoc's, and the crypt holds what the village did.

If it reaches you, you wake at the last site you solved. What you have claimed, you keep. Only the ground is lost.

The hand

Walk	W A S D
Run — loud	Shift
Creep	Ctrl
Lantern — raise / hood	F
Use / read	E
Hold the night	Esc

Mouse to look. The game is played in a tall 3:4 frame, close over Vane's shoulder, so the fog closes on both sides and the spire finds the top of the picture.

What is worth seeing

• The lane at full lantern. Raise the hood on the coach road and watch the amber cone open a hole in the murk with St. Brannoc's spire standing at the end of it. It is also the most dangerous thing you can do.
• The Vicar's face. It carries a cold blue-green light of its own — the only colour in the village that is not lantern-warm. If you see it clearly, you have already made a mistake.
• The paperwork. The title card, the coroner's instruction form and the night's tally are printed matter from 1888, not menus.
• Listening. The fen has a bed under it — wind over water, dripping, rooks — and Vane says what she finds aloud, because that is a physician's habit.

Turn the sound on and the lights off.