The Red Lantern is an interesting indie roguelike about Dog Sledding. The game makes a great first impression with its graphics and voice acting, and even though the game is relatively short at about 2 hours long, it ends within minutes of overstaying its welcome. Credit to the team who made this for being realistic about the scope and showing some restraint. I beat it in 5 runs, but if I had to do a 6th, I would have started to sour on it. There is a post game and a way to be a completionist for those who want it, but I felt like I had seen everything after 4 runs.

I love the idea of having non-combat roguelites, but the game would have worked better if it was structured like Oregon Trail instead of having permanent upgrades. I found the basic gameplay loop enjoyable, but the meta progression very lacking. The basics are, you pick a direction, an event is set up, you can engage or not, and if you engage you have a second choice. There’s not much beyond that, there’s only 1 minigame (hunting), and it was so easy I never missed my shot. Most of your time is spent doing resource management, but that’s where the larger loop breaks down. Some of the permanent upgrades are incredibly impactful (like the flint and the dog boots) that it removes the sense of danger. Other ones, like fishing pole, axe, and trap I only used once and didn’t need them by the time I got them. Ultimately my final run was my least favorite run, because much of the challenge was taken away and I had seen enough of the content that I skipped through a lot of the dead ends that eat resources.

The roguelike design also makes the story feel incredibly contrived. You can look at the real-life examples of people who leave for Alaska from Into the Wild or Grizzly Man and they’re marginal outsiders who still have survival skills and know the risks. This story is about a San Francisco doctor decided her pet dog was going to lead an expedition to a remote part of Alaska and only packs enough for half a day of food, 2 fires, a band-aid, and 3 bullets. It’s only due to last minute nightmares of getting slaughtered or dying from exposure that she remembers to pack things like an axe. Ashly Birch’s skillful delivery can only suspend so much disbelief, and the fact that the entire game is voice acted at all times, it gets repetitive after about an hour. The game fails to make any kind of statement about the type of people who give everything up, or if doing that is a good idea. The threat of bears, starvation, and lack of resources doesn’t go away for the character once the game is over.

Still, it’s an interesting game and I’m glad I picked it up on a deep discount. I liked it a lot more while playing it then I do while thinking about it in hindsight.

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.

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The red lantern is a cozy game, pretty quick to finish (around 90 minutes for me) and not really deep gameplay wise. The game revolves around running with your dogs to reach a cabin at the end of the map. You get some upgrades each runs depending on what you encountered during your previous runs. I'm honestly underwhelmed by this game, it was ok for the first few runs but becomes boring after that point, the main caracter is also annoying. So beware, the price of the game might a bit steep considering the fun/amount of hours you get out of it.

I am quite a big enjoyer of the genre of media that is "The wild will just fucking kill you". Especially when it comes to the cold stuff - there's a combination of comforting and creepy about tucking in bed with a cup of hot chocolate and something like Jack London's To Build A Fire.

And the Red Lantern is like halfway there. The story of the dumbest person of all time going out into the wilderness comically underprepared and succumbing to the elements and wildlife on the way to a cabin with her dogs. It is, on paper, a great framework for a little game like this as you live out the mistakes and choices that lead to your death.

Combined with minor roguelike elements with resource gathering, hunger meters and semi-random events, it kinda works. It's a very simple game system no doubt, and is mostly ancilliary to the vibes and doggie fun, but it holds up it's end of the bargain.

But the vibes themselves are a bit off. The Red Lantern is remarkably muddled when it comes to it's messaging and what it's trying to make a point out of. Many parts of it are cautionary, with our unamed protagonist getting injured, starving to death, having her dogs die, falling into ice, and all manner of other nasty things - but it's also clearly aspirational, having fun with her dogs, going to the cutest little cabin ever put to screen, and having a tone thats awfully light a lot of the time.

It really doesnt help that this might be, clearly unintentionally, one of the most annoying protagonists i've ever dealt with a game - legitimately Alex YIIK levels of frustrating without even YIIK's level of awareness and introspection. She's a clearly very privedged californian, who has been legitimately given everything she needs to live out in the Alaskan wilderness, who goes with her and her city dog, and 4 other poor dogs she adopts to go on a voyage that will most likely get them killed. She then murder a bunch of wildlife and basically tramples all over this beautiful bit of the pacific northwest. And despite never stopping talking, basically only one or two lines in the entire game will she admit she's a bit out of her depth - let alone that she's put 5 previously content dogs in mortal peril or killed like 5 moose today. And the game's tone never really addresses it.

I get the aspiration to live out in the wild. I dream of it sometimes. Looking out at woods i sometimes think of building myself a hut, living off the land, doing a bit of hunting and disconnecting from society. I imagine a lot of people do. And in many ways I wish i could do what this person could. But the callous disregard for nature and those she puts at risk in doing so makes her throuroughy unsympathetic when the game clearly isnt going for that and she's rewarded with a bunch of extremely cute puppies and the cutest shack, and her violent deaths are contextualised as nightmares.

It's a bit insidious, really. The Devs clearly see her as aspirational and relatable, but she's a horrible person who's in way over their head and worst of all, endangers others. And then gets rewarded for it at the end.

I feel sorry that Ashly Burch continually gets given the most annoying roles that seem to exist in gaming. Tiny Tina, Aloy and now this, fuck me.

There is plenty to like here, it's pretty, the dogs are cute and the minor roguelike/choose your own adventure stuff works well, but the framing is just so off. There's plenty of ways the devs could have put together a similar setup without making the whole thing so muddled. The protagonist being more forced into this situation rather than seeking it out alone would go a long way, or just having some introspection.

Because as it is this tonal weirdness not only ruins the game as the chracter is so integral, but also makes me questions the beliefs and values of the developer who made it. Which is a really bad conclusion for me to be coming out of a game that seems to mostly want me to think "wow, cute dogs".