Until this week a run in Lantern Hollow had no date on it. It was 1999 because the tape players and the phonecards said so, and one night was the same as the next. Now every world starts on Wednesday 1 December 1999, and the year is running out.
Thirty-one nights
The clock in the corner shows the date and how many nights are left until 2000. Hold out to New Year's Eve and the Millennium Bug comes for the camp at midnight: every torch you built goes dark at once. If the fire is still lit at dawn there are fireworks over the camp and a results card for the run, and you can carry on into January if you want to.
Some nights are not like the others. A railway telephone near camp rings on the 3rd. The power fails across the moor on the 10th. Your pager points you to a cache on the 17th. A huge moon brings out the Hollow on the 22nd. Christmas Eve is quiet, and there is a present left by the tent.
The Hollow Beck line
The old station has been scenery since v0.0.14. It has a story now. The line was withdrawn on 6 March 1965, and a torn platform ticket near camp is the start of a trail up it: the pieces of the signalman's card, the stationmaster's keys, and eight levers in the signal box at Hollow Beck that have to be pulled in the right order. Get the signals off and see what calls at platform one after dark. The lost property office has things worth the walk.
Something to show for a run
A run still ends when the fire does, but it no longer ends with nothing.
- Arcade tokens. Dawns, friends brought home, finds and stickers all pay out tokens, and you keep them between runs. Nothing sells them for money.
- Starting kits. Spend tokens when you open a new world on a packed lunch, a scout's rucksack, a first aid tin, a BMX and more.
- The sticker album. Seven pages to fill: places, wildlife, friends, finds, mixtapes, December nights and the old railway. A sticker you haven't earned says how to get it, and a full page pays extra tokens.
- Mixtapes. There's a cassette hidden on the moor for every song, and a boombox by the tent plays whichever tapes you've found.
All of it follows your account when you're signed in, and all of it works offline when you're not. At a shared fire everyone earns their own.
New music, made as you play
The music is made by the game while it runs: 90s synths with a lofi feel, changing with the time of day, the fire and whatever is nearby.
In your hands
- Felling trees. A tree leans back from each blow, then goes over when you cut through it and leaves its logs where it lands.
- A new axe. It's the same axe in first person, in your hand in the other views and in the bar, and it goes from rusty to iron to steel as you upgrade it.
- Sky and clouds. In the third-person view the sky lightens above the mist, and on modern graphics you can see the clouds that cast the shadows on the ground.
- On a keyboard, hold Shift to run and let go to walk.
Since then
Two smaller builds have followed. v0.0.28 added nothing to find, on purpose: it is about the game staying up. One error can no longer freeze it for good, a graphics card dropping out for a moment no longer takes the third-person view with it, long sessions use a lot less memory, and several things that went wrong for guests at a shared fire were put right. If nobody is signed in the game now asks once when it starts, and a new version shows itself on the title with its notes and one button.
v0.0.29 is one download for every Mac. There used to be one for Apple Silicon and one for Intel, and you had to know which you had. A copy that is already installed updates itself across.
The home page has new footage, including the same fight seen in isometric, from behind the shoulder and in first person. The full list for each build is in the changelog, and the build is waiting on your download page.
Everyone at the same fire should be on v0.0.28 or later.
The free alpha closes on Monday 21 September. £4.99 keeps every build coming after that, and locks that price for good.