The Red lantern brings dog sledding to the Rogue-lite genre, but the gameplay is not entirely what you might expect when watching the trailer.
Finding your way in life
You play as a Musher, who sets off to start her new life in the Alaskan wilderness after being told that she wasn’t capable as a person to become a doctor in San Francisco. Set out on a journey to find her goal in life with your dog Chomper and adopt 4 more sled dogs to try and make the perfect team to guide her to her new life and home. The game’s story tackles Musher’s mental struggles, which really hit home to me. Life has its ups and downs, but just sitting on it won’t get you anywhere. You need to make the life you want for yourself.
Can you pet the dog?
Choose 4 sled dogs that you want to adopt. Every dog has their own character traits, so choosing the right dogs can make the difference. When you meet the dog you’ll get an idea of what they will do for you. Every dog has both its up- and downsides. You have 3 save files of different runs. So if you are not happy with the dogs you choose, you can make a new save file and start all from scratch. I for instance took Barkley on my team. He likes to pick a fight. I encountered a wolf and Barkley engaged him. Lucky he is a good fighter so he fought off the wolf that would have hurt me otherwise but not without getting hurt himself. There are many more of these special events occurring along the way but this is a big part of the game. The Red Lantern is largely a passive experience. You can say the game is kind of a mix between a decision, story-based adventure game and a rogue-lite. You sadly don’t control the sled, you only make the decisions that lead to these events.
Interesting take on Rogue-lite
The goal of The Red Lantern is to survive in the Alaskan wilderness, choose the path to get to the log sled while trying to maintain your hunger and the dog’s energy meter. These will deplete as you journey along. Every time you engage in an event you will use up food/energy as well so make sure to choose the events you interact with wisely. There are trail markers along the way. Passing these with a depleted hunger/energy meter will end the run. Once ended it loops back to the beginning of the game with you having a nightmare about what could happen along the way. This new information helps your character be more prepared going forward, by starting future runs with more resources like food, bullets etc. Even special things like items you obtain will carry over. This progression is saved by the Musher checking and changing things in the notebook. This is a really nice way of going about the game progression. It builds on top of the story of you having no experience but still lets you learn along the way, instead of interfering or pulling away from the story. The notebook also works kind of like an achievement system. Here things like the animals and areas you encountered are logged as well.
Good presentation but not without its flaws
One complaint I have with the game is that the events along the map don’t change. This is a good and a bad thing. This makes it so you want to explore new paths to encounter new events and try and find the most suitable path to take. But it also takes away from the exploration because you know what is going to happen. That said there are enough paths that you can take to keep you engaged for hours.
The game has some excellent soundtrack and voice acting with a story as mentioned before that really intrigued me. The game has a nice visual presentation. There are some AI and other minor graphical issues, like clipping occurring but nothing major. I had the game glitch out a couple of times, when starting a new run or after setting up camp but nothing really game-breaking.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed The Red Lantern. The story, the presentation, and the overall feel of the game had me hooked. With many paths and different outcomes still to explore, I’ll for sure be playing all the way through the game. That said it all can get a bit repetitive. If your into an overall relaxing, decision-based story game, this will for sure be a game you’ll enjoy.
