Lantern — The Bowsprit

A walking game about a lighthouse keeper’s work on a northern island.

You keep a light on an island in a northern sea. A cottage, a pier, the lighthouse, an ageing crab boat — and work that never quite ends: stoke the fire, mend what broke, put out to sea, set the traps, lift them, run the catch across the sound to Coldharbour, bring back diesel and ice.

Whether you sail is the sky’s decision, not the game’s. Barometer, wind, swell, the colour of the horizon: you read the weather yourself — there is no go / no-go indicator. There is no map with a “you are here” dot either. You hold the way in your head, by landmarks.

This is a game about labour, and labour costs something. Your strength runs down, diesel burns, fittings wear and fail, the coffee runs out. Nothing stops you from taking the boat out with no errand at all — but you come back on your own strength and your own fuel, and that is a decision too.

Demo: runs in the browser, nothing to install — [link]
Early access: [when and where]
Follow: devlog below · studio news

Devlog

28 September 2026

Why traps, not a fishing rod

Set them by the buoys, leave, come back the next day. A game about waiting, not about casting.

Fishing in games is usually built like a slot machine: cast, strike, reward, cast again. It works — which is exactly why it is hard to put down, and exactly what I did not want.

Crab is caught in traps. You drop a string of them by the buoys, remember the spot, and leave. A day or two later you come back and see what walked in. Between setting and lifting the game gives you nothing, and that is the whole point: the day fills up with everything else. The fire, the repairs, the run across to town.

A side effect I like: you have to remember the place yourself. The buoy is small, the sea is large, and on the second day a similar bay looks like the same one.

20 September 2026

The weather decides whether you sail

Barometer, wind, the colour of the horizon — and no go / no-go indicator anywhere.

There is no button that tells you today is not a day for sailing. There is a barometer on the wall, wind in the rigging, and a view of the horizon.

Weather lives in fronts: one or two across a game day, with smooth transitions between them. Pressure starts falling well before anything arrives — reading it is your job.

The traps will not wait, either: crab spoils in them. Nobody makes the choice between risking it and losing the catch for you.