Dear Lighthouse: a free point & click game about isolation

I’ve found it hard to write anything about the pandemic. I think I know anything I write would feel trite and dated merely a day later. So I feel incredibly lucky to have been brought on as the writer for Dear Lighthouse, a free point and click game about protecting others through isolation (but not about a pandemic).

In Dear Lighthouse, you play a lighthouse keeper going through their routine over and over every day - get up, eat, feed your plant, dust your medals, clean your lens, lean over the railing and ponder your existence, check the mail, get some rest. The letters provide a break in routine, and news of the outside world from people you’ve helped, people who want more from you, people who ran from you.

At its heart Dear Lighthouse is about doing the work you can to keep your community safe. For a short game (I’d say you can easily play it in twenty minutes or less), I think it’s got a ton of heart. And the art and eerie soundscape are STUNNING.

Dear Lighthouse is available on itch.io and you can find my other games (which I believe are else prime for isolation) at my page. Half of my games are free, the other half have free community copies if you are unable to budget for them, no judgment, no questions asked.

If you do play any of my games, please consider leaving a review and passing them on to others! Reviews help my work get seen more frequently on itch.io. I’d also greatly appreciate you forwarding this newsletter to anyone you think might enjoy Dear Lighthouse!

Finally, humbly and selfishly, I’d like to mention that I was recently laid off from my most consistent source of income. If you’d like to hire me to write, edit, or design something, please let me know. I’m happy to write you a monologue, fan fiction, design you some marketing materials, make a layout for your game, format Google sheets for anything from work to TTRPGs, and so on. I’m always actively looking for opportunities to work on more games and performance pieces.

Isolation Recommendation

Today’s recommendation is Kanopy. Your local library might have a partnership with Kanopy, a free streaming service with pleeeeenty of excellent films (I suggest starting with Faces Places by Agnès Varda and JR.)