The Green Light Review (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

The Green Light leans into a real, albeit somewhat burdensome fear: the prospect of being stuck in a dead-end job and without a pasture to call home. It illuminates an idea, and it feeds it to you in the form of a metaphor—a green light, of all things, which attributes the essence of wealth, freedom, and peace. It doesn’t force you to abandon your post; it simply offers you an alternative, and it gives you the option to follow a path. But of course, as nobody truly wants to be stuck in a job without an endgame, you choose to accept it. You collect whatever belongings you have, and you follow that glimmer of hope.

There isn’t a lot of construction behind the narrative here. In fact, The Green Light keeps it light and to the point. As Fred—a protagonist who, like countless others, is drawn to a miserable reality—you embrace the concept that there is something far greater on the other side of the horizon. With as little as a voice on the radio and a meager promise to guide you, you take hold of your lantern, and you set out to find peace and harmony in the darkness. But of course, given that you are a subject in a horror game, there is a catch to all of this: you suffer from dark hallucinations, and you harbor more fears than the common hero.

In the hour that you spend with Fred, you find yourself on an ominously familiar path—a trail of dark greens, pungent blacks, and in the midst of an eerie shadow-like abyss. With a lantern and a collection of paths before you, you tiptoe between one landmark to the next, following the guidance of a mysterious voice on the other side of a radio. A light puzzle often pulls you into the dark, but for the most part, you follow a trail of breadcrumbs that all lead toward a lighthouse. With that, you have a simple, albeit gloomy journey to tackle. It isn’t a taxing journey by any means, though it does force you to answer a question: how far are you willing to go to find peace?

The Green Light is, above all else, a walking simulator that primarily focuses on gradual changes in the mood and the occasional hallucinatory jump scare. While it does feature a small handful of puzzles for you to take a stab at, it mostly veers towards something of an on-rails experience. In other words, there isn’t a lot for you to sink your teeth into. More to the point, if you’re not walking around and looking for the next story beat, then you’re searching for items to help usher in the next sequence. A voice pulls you deeper, and you, being at the heart of a disturbing hallucination, simply follow advice and carve through.

As with most indie horror games, The Green Light has a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. On the bright side, you have a good sound design, quality voiceover work, and some solid scares. But on the other hand, you have a disappointingly short campaign, a lack of transparency or closure in the plot, and a half-baked sense that it could benefit from a few additional bits and pieces. In other words, it has some great ideas, but it also fails to elevate them in time for the grand finale. It finds its footing, and it establishes a firm backbone. The problem is, it ends just as it locates its body.

Don’t get me wrong, The Green Light is a great indie horror game, as is it one that brings a lot more to the table than most hour-long indies. With some tender moments, thought-provoking hallucinatory segments, and a good selection of puzzles to keep you on your toes, it bundles together quite the compelling story. It might not boast the best story, or even the greatest puzzles, for that matter. Yet, it feels like a complete game with a good amount of polish. Granted, several of its sound effects are a little iffy—the unnecessarily loud sounds of grass crunching beneath your feet, for example—but for the most part, The Green Light stands its ground as a well-rounded piece of art.

While I wouldn’t say that The Green Light excels in any area in particular, I do believe that there’s a good game with a lot to offer here. The story might fall on an anticlimax, and the scares might not always hit the nail on the head. Though, for what it’s worth, it works well with the tools it has at its fingertips. And, to be honest, for the asking price, I’d say that’s enough to warrant a journey out to the far reaches of its lighthouse.

Verdict

The Green Light might not overachieve in the eyes of a superiorly gifted modern-day horror game, but it does manage to get a lot of things right with the tools it has at its disposal. With some clean voice acting, a sizable collection of puzzles, and a digestible plot that, while still rather weightless and lacking in innovation, feels palpable enough to hook your attention, it comes clean as a perfectly serviceable indie horror that can and probably will appeal to the target demographic.

Of course, you could get your hands on a lot of horror games in the indie space for the same price as The Green Light, and frankly, you probably wouldn’t struggle all that much to find a chapter that does more than what this developer has done here, either. That being said, I’ve certainly seen a lot of questionable indie horror games in the past, and this isn’t one of them. Is it the be all, end of all a creepy walking sims? Not at all, no. For argument’s sake, though, I will say that, if you are a horror fan and don’t want too much of a challenge, then you should definitely consider taking a chance on this one.