Lighthouse: The Dark Being

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• Lighthouse: The Dark Being
• Sierra On-Line, Inc.
• DOS/Windows CD-ROM
• 8-12MB RAM, 20MB HD
• MSRP $54.95

ighthouse is an eerie adventure game in which players take the role of an author, recently moved to the Oregon coast, whose nearest neighbor is a professor living with his infant daughter in a lighthouse. Responding to an urgent summons from the professor, players see the child snatched by a sinister, semi-human being and carried through a portal to another world. It's then up to players to find their way through weird landscapes, repair peculiar machines, outwit mechanical birdman guards and solve other puzzles as they follow the trail of the lost child and discover the nature of the strange world she's been taken to.

In Lighthouse players have a first-person point-of-view, seeing the world(s) at eye level. Every room or area is an intricately detailed, almost photo-realistic work of computer art (70K .GIF). The game is controlled exclusively with the mouse. When the pointer passes onto an area where players can go, it becomes an arrow, and a click brings up the next scene. In a similar fashion objects can be moved, picked up and carried off to be used elsewhere in the game.

Lighthouse is a very beautiful game to look at, with fascinating other-worldly designs that combine biology with retro machinery -- lots of polished brass and rivets. The game is spread across a variety of exotic locations and employs unusual vehicles to travel among them, such as submarines and bat-winged gliders. The music is also quite well done, moody but never intrusive, and after a while the story evolves beyond rescue into a much more intricate and compelling plot.

On the down side, Lighthouse is a click-fest. Anything that can be picked up is bound to be useful at some point, but the pointer doesn't give any feedback as to what can and can't be picked up. So a player faced, for example, with a bookcase, is forced to click on dozens of narrow book spines just in case one of them is a game piece. Players must also spend quite a while dilly-dallying in the mundane world before travelling to the Dark Being's dimension. People play these games to have the pleasure of visiting the exotic, and spending hours mucking about in the kitchen and living room getting ready, while the story doesn't advance, is frustrating.

Nevertheless, puzzle lovers will find many hours of fun gameplay in Lighthouse, which is a treat for the eye, ear and mind.

Face it, Myst spawned a whole genre of knock-offs, but this game is pretty worthy of its inspiration. -- Brooks

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