Tag: exploration

The Red Lantern – Dogs and Elk and Bears, Oh My!

Posted on by in Gaming

Have you ever wanted to quit your job, leave your home, journey to the winter tundra and live-in isolation with no-one but your pack of huskies for company? No? Not at all? Well then, you have not played The Red Lantern. Released last year by Timberline Studios, The Red Lantern is a story-driven game focused on you and your team of five sled dogs, as you attempt to navigate the Alaskan wilderness and reach your new home. Your survival is dependent on the resources you obtain during the journey, as well as those you remembered to pack in the first place.

The main selling point of the game, obviously, is your dog team. Every decision that you make will influence your dog’s wellbeing, whether that is rationing out food, using your limited medical supplies to heal a pup’s wounds or avoiding groups of elk in order to not upset one of your team. When you start a run, you have a limited number of resources – food, medicine, ammo and fire kindling. If you only have two bits of meat left, do you feed your pups and take the risk that you might starve before you reach your destination?

What is with all these awesome games and their gorgeous snow?

At the start of the game, you get to choose four dogs to add to your team from a choice of eight, meaning that there is enough variety to warrant a second playthrough, just to see each of their personalities. When you meet each dog, you are told a little about them and what they could bring to your team e.g., Bodega loves his treats, Iggy likes to hide in the snow and Noodle just needs some gosh darn love. Each pup has such a distinct personality and look to them that I want to cuddle them all and conquer the world with my army of huskies.

During my first run through the game, I had the following team:

  1. Chomper – He is the protagonist’s dog from their old life in the city and the leader of your little pack. His nemesis is squirrels.
  2. Barkley – Feisty but loyal, this big boy will fight bears to protect you.
  3. Fin – Can sniff anything and everything out, however, tends to find skunks instead. She is a very shy pup who does not like cuddles at first but comes around eventually.
  4. Slayer – Speedy, reliable and always ready to run. They are afraid of elk though. I do not blame the pup; those horns are scary.
  5. Stilton – A blue eyed angel who is an older pup but is as watchful as Heimdall. He will never steer you wrong.
LOOK AT THIS GOOD BOI.

With the incredible voice talent of Ashly Burch playing the protagonist and five loyal doggies by your side, each run through the game comes alive. The wildlife you encounter, the decisions you make, the beautiful night sky as your team races across a frozen lake, all add to a game that manages to perfectly encapsulate the exhilaration, isolation, fear and wonder that your protagonist feels as they try to make it in the harsh wilderness. Your only companions are your pack of hardworking pups and the various wildlife that litter the landscape, including some dickhead owls who led me into so many charging moose that I think they are just doing it on purpose now. Screw you owls. Screw you.

Similar to roguelike games such as Hades (which I will write about soon), The Red Lantern is a game of trial and error. Each run through the Alaskan wilderness, you come across different scenarios, forcing you to decide how you will spend your limited resources. When you eventually fail, be that from hunger, injury or exhaustion, you wake up in your van – ready to try again. However, what does not kill you makes you stronger. Say you freeze to death out there during a run, well your protagonist will realise that they need to pack more fire kindling. If you find a key item whilst you are exploring, it becomes a permanent part of your inventory for all future runs. Trust me, you will never be more excited to find a bit of flint than when you have run out of kindling for the fourth run in a row.

The dark may contain horrors but I’ll keep them at bay.

The Red Lantern is filled with little moments that stick with you from run to run. Each dog on your team has a miniature story arc that you can pursue, allowing you to dig into their personality and bond with them. Every story has its own merits and memorable interactions, but Fin’s arc was what stuck with me the most over my time with the game.

Fin is a shy pup. Known as a keen tracker by her previous owners, Fin is an independent soul who prefers the wild to her comfortable doghouse and the affection of her musher. To begin with, Fin will only cautiously sniff your hand, preferring to keep her distance from both you and the more boisterous dogs (looking at you Chomper). One night though, you wake up to discover that your beanie is missing. Checking the camp, you see that Fin has it clutched in her paws as she sleeps, using your scent to soothe her. The next time you go to sleep, the game gives you an option to let Fin have your beanie – which although it leaves you cold, brings the pup comfort. Later on, she lets you scratch her, happy for the love. The game makes you work for her affection, builds that relationship of trust and gives you a sense of accomplishment when you see that tail wag.

That notification honestly made my day.

More than anything, The Red Lantern is about having faith in your team and in yourself. Life is filled with the mistakes we have made. I have screwed up more times that I have pairs of socks. It is what you choose to take from those missteps that will make all the difference later down the line. Just because you have screwed up before, does not mean you will never succeed. You need to believe in yourself, because in the end, you are the only one whose opinion really matters. Our friends and family, we love them dearly but, in the end, it is your burden to bear, not theirs. A failure is a setback, not an unbreakable roadblock. That is something that I am still struggling to remind myself of. Especially now, where my mental health is not in a great place. I know that I used to be in a much better place. I know that I can take better care of myself. However, that does not lessen the effort it has taken to build myself back up to this point.

Anyways, that’s enough existential crisis conversation for this week. Thank you all for your kind words on last weeks piece and I hope you will continue to support everything I do. New D&D episode coming Saturday evening as well, which has been a delight to edit since it is essentially Phoenix Wright on drugs. It will make sense when you listen, I promise.

Take care, stay safe and wash those hands.

Caitlin RC

Betrayal at The House on The Hill – Build-A-Bear but Less Terrifying:

Posted on by in Gaming, tabletop

When you finish secondary school, one of the main fears you have is that you won’t be able to cope with the drastic changes it forces upon you. In the UK, you are required by law to remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18. After that, you are deemed an adult by society and mostly left to your own devices, except when bill payments and the tax man come around. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a young person, especially considering you’ve been asking them to make decisions that could impact the rest of their lives, with little to no life experience to back up those choices.

The other big fear is that you will lose all the friends that you made. For many, they were what kept you going in tough times, provided a shoulder to lean on and a place of safety when everyone else seemed out to get you. They want you to succeed and you want only the best for them. Which often means, you must let them chase their dreams, even if you don’t get to see them for a long time. In the case of my friends from school, I only really see them about twice a year. So, the little time I do spend with them, is very important to us all. How do we spend that time? Simple. We spend an afternoon at a board game café, messing around, catching up and claiming to be the princess when in fact we are an evil cat (it makes sense in context, I swear).

Board game cafes are my life blood when it comes to socialising.

It was at our usual place that I came across what is one of my favourite board games now, Betrayal at The House on The Hill. To start, the players choose a character from the selection – such as a demonic little girl, a headstrong jock or a mad scientist. As a team, you explore the house – building it from a pile of tiles and discovering the secrets that lie within. From sinister whispers to a literal madman, each room you uncover leads you closer and closer to the main event. Some tiles have an omen symbol on them. Whenever an omen is triggered, you must roll to see if the “Haunt” begins.

Up until the Haunt, you are all on the same side. Exploring the house, helping one another, discovering the truth as chaos unfolds around you. However, when the Haunt begins, there’s no real way to tell what is going to happen next. With 50 scenarios in the standard game and dozens more in the expansions, no one playthrough of the game is the same. The type of Haunt you experience depends on what room you are in and what omen last occurred, so there are a ridiculous number of combinations to choose from.

Because who doesn’t want to play as a girl that would be better suited to a horror movie?

The Haunt is where the “betrayal” part of the game’s title comes into play. Depending on the scenario, one of you has turned to the dark side. That player must take the traitor’s tome and read the scenario’s instructions, in private, such that the remaining players are kept in the dark. The rest of the group reads their copy of the scenario, which explains what they need to do in order to survive and escape the house alive. This ranges from performing a séance to put a spirit’s weary soul to rest, to taking down a seemingly immortal axe murderer that is trying to axe them a few too many questions.

It’s a fascinating dynamic, as the game actively encourages you to work together. So, when the traitor reveals themselves and the ghouls of the house start to wreak havoc, it’s jarring and unnerving. I’ve known my group of friends from secondary school for nearly a decade now, so to say we know one another quite well is a bit of an understatement. Yet, when we play Betrayal, we often see a darker side of our normally kind-hearted friends.

It is great fun to just pick up the traitor tome and walk away, leaving your friends to wonder what you’re going to do in order to win.

I’ll give you an example. In one round, we played in teams of two, pairing the experienced players with the newcomers. As there were only three new players and five experienced ones, it meant that my close friend and I ended up on the same team – such that the two gamers weren’t given any advantages! However, when the Haunt was triggered, we became the traitor. Our character had discovered an ancient sarcophagus in the house and had to reunite him with his loved one – reincarnated in the body of a little girl we had rescued from another room in the house. When reunited with one another, they’d become so powerful that the leaders of the world would bow before them instantly. The world would burn and be remade in their image. The others wanted to stop it.

However, the problem with one of your own team turning on you, is that you are intimately aware of one another’s strengths and weaknesses. There’s a sense of familiarity and trust that is shattered when the players who protected you earlier in the game, are now the one’s holding the knife at the end of an unlit hallway. One of the other pairs had the most intelligent character and had the highest chance of thwarting our plan. So, we chased them down and killed them. It was a ruthless act, but it ended up winning us the game (that and the fact the others kept failing the elevator roll and taking damage from it).

No-one is safe. Not in this house.

More than anything, I think the reason that betrayal appeals to me so strongly, is that it hints at the darkness in humanity. Sure, zombies and vampires can be terrifying but, in our minds, we know that they aren’t real. The true horror of psychopaths and traitors is that they could be us. For all we know, they could have been stood where we are standing only a few months ago. Human psychology is as fascinating as it is terrifying. We often surprise ourselves with what we are truly capable of, and not always in a good way. So many crime dramas have the least suspicious person turn out to be the killer.

As a core principle, I believe that everyone is inherently good. I do not see the point in anger or cruelty or hate. To me, it feels like needless aggression that takes a toll on all involved parties – be they active participants or merely observers. The sad thing is that these good people can be swayed, manipulated and led astray – to believe in twisted causes and harmful world views, to betray those they care about. Which is why games that have you think from the villain’s mindset, are always intriguing.

Anyways, that’s my two cents on a very fun board game. There are expansion packs and a D&D inspired version of the game so if you’re interested, go find it! I highly recommend it, especially as a late-night bonding experience for a small group.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC (Happy new year 😊)