Review | Static Dread - Ghosts on the Wire

The trope of the maniacal lighthouse keeper is humanity’s fear of isolation made manifest. It is a job critically responsible for the safety of surrounding seafarers, yet the secluded nature of the work violates that pack-animal instinct located somewhere in our limbic system that tells us to gather for safety. A man made into an island, cut off from the world except for an occasional delivery of supplies. The remote location, grueling schedule, and dangerous work attract a certain outsider’s psyche, one that might not fit cleanly into society at large. And yet, lighthouse keepers are dedicated to protecting those very communities and have saved untold lives over the centuries, sometimes at great personal cost. Both of these conceptions of keepers — mad recluse and public servant — collide in Static Dread’s compelling story of cosmic horror.

Almost all lighthouses are fully automated today; the on-site keeper unceasingly dedicated to tending the light is a romantic vision of a bygone era. In Static Dread, a powerful aurora on par with the Carrington Event has knocked out all modern navigational systems, requiring the lighthouses to be staffed again. You play as one such keeper, stationed near the village of Outsmouth — an on-the-nose reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s horror story “The Shadow over Innsmouth”. As you perform the increasingly complex duty of guiding ships safely through the harbour, you also have to manage your sanity and your relationships with an odd cast of characters. The lighthouse itself is at once a bastion of safety and also your nemesis. It requires constant attention and upkeep to continue operating, as it is haunted by the previous keeper who went mad and disappeared over a century ago. The recurring appearance of occult symbols scrawled on the walls is a mere nuisance compared to keeping the lights on. That’s because in the darkness, you go mad. Then you die.

A very normal fax.

Your radio is your main conduit to the outside world, and you’re not alone on the airwaves. As you cruise frequencies to locate ships that need your help, the game winkingly indicates its influences in fleeting, haunting snippets. These fragmentary references include cultural signposts such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as games like Papers, Please. The entire vibe of Static Dread, meanwhile, is suffused with the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

When you are not fixing something on the lighthouse that was working fine a moment ago or burning away eldritch ichor with your flashlight, the job you were sent to Outsmouth to do is to help ships navigate safely to their destinations. The aurora has disrupted navigational systems as well as communications, so first you need to find the ship on the airwaves. Then they’ll fax you some information to help you determine where you send them. You draw a line on a map and fax it back to them. There’s something here about the trustworthiness of older, analog technologies that still function when modern ones don’t. Ships will wait an indefinite amount of time for you to get around to contacting them, leaving plenty of time to address any other challenges, like the generator failing. The lack of a time limit makes the game very approachable, which is fine because this game puts its narrative first. Half of the ships in a given night will tie into one of the many characters you meet, so they mustn’t time out by design.

Drawing on faxes to get ships safely to harbor is the crux of your responsibility.

Static Dread is a distinctly post-COVID game. Your character has left their family behind in the port city of Blackfort, and only gets to speak with them once per day (there’s sadly no Jackbox Games in this universe). Confined to the lighthouse, sustained on fish alone, looking forward to the barest connection from a visitor or seafarer, took me right back to shelter-in-place where my neighbors would play bagpipes or bang pots and pans at a predetermined time to let each other know from afar “we are still here.” 

As the situation back home in Blackfort deteriorates throughout the game, it even mirrors the fraying of the social fabric that occurred during COVID, as everyone has conflicting ideas on how to address the increasingly dire situation. But, in a cathartic contrast to its real-world parallel, Static Dread gives you the power to decide your community’s fate. Though your character is tied to the lighthouse, connected to civilization only through a staticky radio, they ultimately decide the fate of Blackfort, the island of Outsmouth, and the people who live there. You are the guardian of your community, as generations of keepers have been for theirs.

A friendly Outsmouth local.

The responsibility that Static Dread imbues you with has deep roots in the role that lighthouse keepers played in their communities. The madness it threatens you with arises from the history of keepers in the British Isles, source of numerous ghost stories fuelled by the lethality of its surrounding waters. A gruesome incident at the Smalls Lighthouse, on a tiny basalt outcropping 20 miles from the shore of Wales, inspired a radio play and two movies, all titled The Lighthouse (including Robert Eggers’ 2019 film). The unexplained disappearance of all three keepers from the Flannan Isles Lighthouse in 1900 has fuelled a century of ghost stories. 

I recently visited Hook Lighthouse in Ireland, which is claimed to be the oldest operational lighthouse in the world (Spain’s Tower of Hercules is also alleged to hold the title, depending on how one interprets the history of the two landmarks). The danger posed by its desolate peninsula, where the Celtic and Irish Seas meet, was evident to the early medieval monks that started lighting bonfires to warn sailors hundreds of years ago. No ghosts haunt Hook Lighthouse, but learning about the blistering cadence of normal duties was enough to imagine the strain of their post. The nocturnal schedule, coupled with exposure to the elements and mercury fumes from the rotating mechanism in the lighthouse tower, with nothing but a crumbling monastery nearby for company, would be enough to test anyone’s mettle.

Hook Lighthouse. Photo by the author.

Yet, generations of keepers chose this life because it meant protecting their communities. The people they were guiding to safety were not just anonymous sailors, but often neighbours or family, who relied on the sea for their livelihoods, and relied on the lighthouses to get home safely. Static Dread captures both the frenetic energy of running a lighthouse, and the sense of community as you protect (or betray) the characters you get to know.

You will enjoy Static Dread if you want to be immersed in a Lovecraftian take on the image of the embattled yet heroic lighthouse keeper. Fans of the procedural puzzles laid out by games like Papers, Please will appreciate its loyalty to the form — just don’t come looking for a challenge. You will probably even enjoy it if you, like me, get too spooked to play this game after the sun goes down. The multiple endings explore the tension between the keeper's sanity and their sworn duty to their community, and invite the player to consider what sacrifices are worthwhile. The experience of living through COVID made me empathetic to the keeper's plight of remaining isolated to serve their fellow humans, feelings that Static Dread resurrected. I plan to revisit this game, perfect for the upcoming haunting season, to explore its alternate realities.