The Red Lantern

The Red Lantern

released on Oct 22, 2020

The Red Lantern

released on Oct 22, 2020

The Red Lantern is a narrative, survival game where you and your team of 5 sled dogs, lost in the wilderness, must navigate the ever-changing events of the Alaskan bush to find your way home. Choose how you want to interact with the world, do you tackle it head on hunting everything that moves, or do you take a more cautious approach?


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Gorgeous artwork, adorable doggos with cute stories, good roguelike loop that gets easier once you find things to help in future runs.

This review contains spoilers

Me encantó, se volvió tedioso una vez conseguí todos los perros y simplemente repetía para descubrir diferentes encuentros, pero lo mismo estaba dedicado a platinarlo y disfrutarlo... Hasta que descubrí que es recontra difícil completar el diario y tampoco quiero estar TODO el día TODOS los días haciendo esto así que chau. Siempre te amaré Bodega.

its a little cringe dialogue-wise but its really a beautiful game with some cute parts to it!

I personally can't recommend this game right now because there is a blackscreen bug that wipes your save so until that gets fixed don't buy it.

However, I like this game. There's not enough to keep me interested to actually win but it's very cute. Ashly Burch, as usual, does an absolutely stellar job at playing a quirky weirdo. It's adorable but there's not quite enough game.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for January 2024, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before February 6th, 2024, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

Exploring Alaska with doggos.

If you like dogs, The Red Lantern may be the game for you. The beginning of the game has players meet your character’s dog, Chomper. From there you have to choose four more dogs to fill out your sled team from 9 or so stops that the player will make on the way to a sled. Then the game officially begins with your character trying to get to the cabin with the red lantern. This is a rogue-lite, with the main resources being your dog's hunger and your own. The dog's hunger goes down as you ride on, and your hunger decreases when you explore.

The problem is the game is more frustrating than interesting. You’ll go through various scenarios, but eventually, you or your dogs will starve. The game is quite hard at first, but there are special actions that will be recorded in a journal, and that gives you more supplies at the beginning. But with the initial supplies, it may be impossible to finish the game.

That sounds like a normal rogue-lite but the biggest problem is that on my second playthrough about half of the events were repeats from the original playthrough, and while this gave me a chance to try to fill in more of my journal, playing a third time would mean I’ve already found the optimal choices, and now was just repeating them because there’s not a lot of depth in most of these situations.

Pick this up if you just want a game with dogs and sleds in Alaska, but I will caution people that the dogs in this game can get injured, though there is a big option in the menu to make it so dogs will always live. Other than that, this is a really short game from what I hear, and on my second attempt, I was so close to finishing it. Interesting concept but this needed a lot more content.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/6IY4Gl2JdaQ