A promising game, but...sigh. Avoid. Big time, avoid.
I was one of the people who got this game in early access, back in the beginning. I figured it had a lot of promise, even though it had all the early access problems (bad optimization, lots of bugs, etc). The devs kept saying they knew what was wrong, and were going to fix it. So, okay, right?
And now it's been released.
Graphically the game is great, with tons of atmosphere.
Performance and bug-wise, though, it's still got every single bug and problem I encountered back from day one of early access, and more.
Look in one direction and get glassy-smooth frame rates. Look in another direction with no difference in complexity? Framerate plummets. Try to climb a ladder? Enjoy your trip through the air for the next several minutes, then suffering a bug where you can only look in one direction, forcing you to restart. Trying to walk up stairs? It can be like going up the wrong way on an escalator.
Walking along with no problems? Enjoy getting stuck on a step and being forced to restart. Trying to hop over a small obstacle? Enjoy clipping through and getting trapped in a world of flickering black polygons, until you restart. Trying to find light motes? Here's hoping they don't spawn inside a rock or building wall.
I ran into all of these bugs at least once in less than 45 minutes of playing.
Oh, by the way, forget graphics settings, except for gamma, v-sync, and resolution, there are none. That's it.
TLDR: A bugged wreck. Avoid.

An Early Access campaign can be a long road with lots of twists and turns - this is my day one opinion of what is in front of me.

The dev livestream sold me on the game. We already know the devs deliver quality, interesting products that think outside-of-the-box. So far, The Light Keeps Us Safe is a first-person puzzle game with a stealth skin. What I mean by 'puzzle game' here is that you learn how to 'solve' various obstacles, and difficulty is increased by essentially adding in more obstacles. Things get tight. The whole thing just oozes an interesting universe and atmosphere. The artwork is fantastic. And it really gives you an edge-of-your-seat experience.

Essentially, you have to come out of your bunker complex to gather resources. While they say there isn't crafting, you do collect bits to upgrade your main tool - a super flashlight. The flashlight upgrades add in a Metroidvania component to the game where it allows you to access previously unaccessable areas (new 'outside' levels). When you exit to the outside world, you are 'solving' robots by turning them off and simultaneously gathering resources. You scavenge for bottles to distract robots, bandages for health, food to increase stamina, and then resources to upgrade both your light and bunker.

The use of light in this game is oh-so-fresh and really makes the whole thing shine brilliantly (pun intended). You are safe in the light. This is so counter-intuitive when being chased by robots, but man, it works. You can also stun robots chasing you with your flashlight.

Pros:
+The whole thing is really polished even now
+The idea is super fresh
+I don't like stealth, but this is really well done
+Awesome atmosphere and universe
+Definitely an edge-of-your-seat experience

Cons:
-Needs optimization (hopefully we'll get this throughout the EA campaign)
-I'm the last person to suggest this - but I think it could use a permadeath/ironman mode
-There are frequent game-breaking bugs (the ladder bug, first and foremost)
-Not all that much content right now (10/2018)

Yeah, this is a really neat experience. Worth full price.

As a developer, it’s got to be hard deciding when to bring your game out of Early Access. Once the public sees your unfinished game, they’re going to get all manner of ideas in their head about what constitutes finished to them, personally. The best you can hope for is satisfying a majority of players, but there’s still something of a floor that we can all probably agree on reaching before pushing that 1.0 button. The Light Keeps Us Safe is a moody, atmospheric, and at times terrifying game that honestly seems to have hit that button a little too soon, and it’s a bit of a toss-up whether or not you can overlook the bugs and rough edges for the unique experience it offers.

The world ended again, can ya believe it? This time it was the machines, great, terrible constructs that wander the barren land in search of any humans left un-purged. There’s no Matrix to escape into here, there’s just you, in your bunker, alone with a strange lady’s voice in your head. Apparently there’s still a way to reach the refuge that the other survivors nipped off to, but you’ve got some work ahead of you to get there. Armed with the baddest-assed flashlight since Alan Wake’s chunky Maglite, you must forge out into the ruins of civilization in search of salvage to make your turbo torch even badder-assed. It’s got some neat modes that will help open new paths and options in the wasteland, eventually leading you to the salvation you’ve been looking for.

If you’ve played Big Robot’s older title Sir, You Are Being Hunted, there are some elements here that will feel familiar. The Light Keeps Us Safe is primarily a stealth game, with you striking out from your bunker home into different randomly-generated regions to find the scraps to upgrade your light gun. Your world is pretty much eternally cloaked in night now, leaving you plenty of shadows to skulk through and avoid the glaring gaze of your robot oppressors. Loot for upgrading your flashlight can be found in particularly well-guarded ruins and structures, but the landscape is dotted with interesting locations like old houses, dilapidated gas stations, ruptured chemical tanks, and murky swamps. These places hide lesser loot stashes that can provide you food for surviving, bandages for also surviving, and bottles for making distractions.

What keeps this from becoming a banal light-survival joint is the incredible atmosphere and aesthetic. The first time you step out of your bunker into the still fields, cold moonlight peeking through the clouds to touch the cracked earth, it’s liable to give you chills. Few games have captured that sick, uneasy feeling of being alone and exposed in the dead of night, but The Light Keeps Us Safe does it masterfully. It’s not just window dressing either, because the machines hunting you are all kinds of threatening. Beyond the basic stationary observers that buzz menacingly and the crab-like monstrosities stamping around, there are utterly alien designs like floaters, invisible sentries, and projected spheres of energy that will track you down. There’s one that gets introduced in the third level that is absolutely terrifying in scope, partly because I thought it was part of the environment at first. So much of what you see here is bizarre and counter to your expectations that it can’t help but unnerve.

Your flashlight upgrades can help you deal with some of these threats, because they’re not just there to make the beam brighter. Every time you improve your weapon it gains a new light mode, which includes familiar features like a concentrated beam and less familiar ones like a light that brings non-existent things into being. You’ll have to experiment to see how each new mode interacts with the enigmatic features of the world, and there are some really great moments that come about with these discoveries. It’s actually a fine example of game mechanics contributing to the storytelling, because there’s some serious world-building that happens once you realize how some of your modes work.

If The Light Keeps Us Safe was just a tight, creepy adventure it would be an easy recommendation. But I mentioned Early Access before, because unfortunately this title bears some ugly marks from the process. It won’t be long into your journey that you start noticing the muddy controls, how your character tends to stick on certain corners or get caught by invisible walls. This can happen to the enemies as well, ruining some of that all-important tension. Ladders are a particular killer, with a bug that can literally send you flying off into space and force a restart from your last checkpoint. There’s a conspicuous lack of polish everywhere you look, too, from the clunky menus and UI to the lack of video options to the weird brightness screen that pops up after every single loading screen. It hurts to say it, but the game really does feel unfinished in how rough so many of the all-important gamefeel edges are.

Even the story suffers from being undercooked, building plenty of atmosphere but not much substance, and it ends in just as unsatisfying a place. So that’s the real question when faced with picking this one up, are you looking for a complete experience, or just an impressive one? The first few hours here will be intense and creepy, but beyond that the bugs are going to eat into your fun and it’s going to end without really going anywhere. If you want to experience a strange, alien world full of fear and wonder, by all means pick this one up. But if you’re expecting anything more than that, sadly I can’t really say your time will be worth it.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them on my curation page!

★ — 3/10 Ladders are more dangerous than any enemy.

I really wanted to like this game but after having the game bug out on me three times on three different ladders leading my character to aimlessly slide through the world, passing through walls, and then getting killed by enemies because I couldn't turn the camera anymore just ruined it for me.

The game does have nice visuals as well as sound design and I also like the idea and setting of it but after running into the same bug and having to restart the game three times in a matter of not even an hour of playtime, I simply didn’t feel like trying to continue anymore and quit, deleting the game.

(Writing this review because I nominated this game for 2019's "Outstanding Visual Style" award)

If you've played Sir You Are Being Hunted, this is basically that without as much humor or inventory management. That might be a con for some people, so let's just get that out of the way right now.

Where this game shines is its visual style. Everything about the atmosphere and the robot design and the sound direction combines to create a sense of dread that never lets up. A big problem with most horror games is that one can eventually get used to all the creepy stuff that its throwing around; to be honest, that didn't happen to me with this one. I always dreaded having to go back out into the environments.

On that basis alone, I'd give it a solid A+. On the whole "it's a simplified version of Sir You Are Being Hunted" front, it's probably more of a B-. Still, good passing grade.

I would like to recommend this game but right now I can't.

I really like the developer, I thoroughly enjoyed Signal from Tolva but couldn't get into Sir, you are being hunted, TLKUS falls somewhere in the middle.

The atmosphere is awesome! I really like the idea of the game, the different sort of mechanic, the darkness and soundscape is fantastic. However, so many bugs from the early access days are still present. The movement is still quite clunky, you often get stuck on nothing, picking up objects can get frustrating as your hand drifts away for no reason, weird. It just breaks the immersion when you have to put up with those little annoyances. Oh there are several other bugs but I won't bang on.
I wish there was an adjustment for FOV as well, on a widescreen monitor it can feel like moving around with binoculars stuck to your face.

Please Big Robot, finish off those bugs, I want to up vote you :)

Aw, screw it. At first, I was absolutely fascinated by the ambiance of this game. I never felt so alone and vulnerable. Then I finished the first zone... and the second zone is very much the same. Then my frame rate started to go sub-30 and never got better. Then I began going flying like Superman when touching some ladders.
At that moment, the immersion was totally broken and I asked myself; "Why am I playing this already?"
This game was abandoned years ago, thing won't get better.

As amazing as the atmosphere and idea is, I can't recommend buying this yet.

It did just launch into early access, but functionality and gameplay really is very very bare bones. The core mechanics are too simple (it's way too easy to figure out where you need to go because every objective has near identical light setups), and the enemies are very simple and very dumb. Once you get over the "I have no idea what that is so I am scared of it" and figure out what each thing is, you realize most things aren't much of a threat at all. There doesn't seem to be any reason to even sneak around other than just avoiding line of sight. I'm not sure why I even need to crouch other than to break line of sight or avoid collision.

Another thing is even when you've been spotted, the enemies lose interest in you so quickly, and there is no real downside to being spotted by the spotlights. I was expecting to have creepy little robots or some big scary thing coming to check out the alert, but all that happened was a small zap that does a very small amount of damage, a pause, then the spotlight went back onto its loop. There was no reason for me to even move away from where I was spotted. I literally just needed to break line of sight for a few seconds then I was fine. That's no fun.

There's absolutely no fear in messing up in this game, not yet anyway, and that unfortunately takes away *all* the creepy factor and the feeling of "I need to stay hidden". Nothing is really a threat, and that is unfortunate. It blows my mind these very dumb robots seemingly managed to take over the world. Once you reconcile that, your immersion is broken and you're reminded you're playing an Early Access game.

The "items" you loot just change numbers in icons in the top right of your screen, and the items you need are in such excess they might as well not have a hunger system or similar if that's all it's going to be.
Loot placement and object design is also not very well thought out, because you can't find loot in most of the pitch black without hitting a key that gives you Ubisoft quest markers all over your screen to show you exactly where to go to hold F to extract literal numbers of loot. You want to be able to find loot, but you also want to have to *look* for it. There is not much survival in walking towards UI markers.
For a game that looks like it's going for immersion, extremely barebones systems like that really take away from the moment and break immersion.

Right now for the game to be fun enough to play and test more, it needs far more intelligent and unpredictable enemies or events, an actual loot system where what you do and don't take actually matters, a well-thought out survival system like The Long Dark (that game's mechanics and weather system alone make for natural moments of terror), some wind sound effects here and there, and actual reasons to be scared and hide other than "oops spotted, better hide for less than five seconds before resuming exactly what I was doing before".

And I'm not necessarily saying a game needs to be hard to be fun, but it certainly needs to have a certain amount of complexity and layers to be fun. Games can be both easy and complex with many layers (see Stardew Valley), but with this game I'd expect the option of very difficult with complexity and many layers (see STALKER or The Long Dark).

An example of really basic layers would be if you get spotted in MGSV, you need to move from where you were spotted because your position has been compromised and that spot will be potentially swarmed with threats. That means you have to consider where you decide to move to based on potential exit strategies; risk vs reward (that is also a huge part of The Long Dark's gameplay). In this game however, there is only one layer. You get spotted, you break line of sight. That's it. You don't need an exit strategy. That means moving around becomes significantly less interesting, and this game is 100% moving around. There is just about no risk to your reward because there is no layers to the threats, not right now as of this review, anyway.

If this game had the mechanical depth and anxiety and dread of The Long Dark but with this atmosphere and setting, it could be such an amazing thing. This atmosphere and environment is so good like STALKER or a bit like some creepy parts of War of the Worlds (with Tom Cruise), or that creepy unknown feeling of Half Life 2 situations or similar settings, but it needs so much more work before it can give the same feelings that something like STALKER or The Long Dark can.
Seriously, it took me about 60 minutes to lose the sense of immersion and caution. That's way too fast. Usually with games like this you don't get comfortable with threats until you're well into 50+ hours. The depth isn't there yet, even for an Early Access game on Steam.

Right now it's just way too soon to play other than beta test for performance issues. I certainly wouldn't pay for this right now, unless you specifically want to support the dev and hope they develop this more over time. For me though it's even way too soon for Early Access other than to show off a very cool environment.

tldr: It's a great atmosphere, but the game itself needs A LOT of work. It feels like an overly simple puzzle game (not even much of puzzles, more like basic very short obstacle courses) in a cool setting with terrible AI and lack of threat of failure, rather than a dread-filled stealth survival game.

I also hope that if the devs somehow read this review, they don't take it hard. I only decided to elaborate so much because the atmosphere of this game REALLY spoke to me, and I'm really hoping it can become something great over time. The aesthetic is there. You guys actually nailed it. It feels like STALKER in many places, and it's something I wished The Long Dark was, so marrying the two (TLD mechanics and TLKUS atmosphere and setting) would be a dream game.

I'm a sucker for atmospheric games and this has that in spades, so if that's all you want then go for it, but it doesn't feel like it came out of early access. It just plops you in the main menu with zero fanfare, and continues to give off a very "rickety" feel and a sense of missing features as you play (some ambient music would help at the very least, though the robot sounds are great). I didn't refund because I want to support the devs, they are a creative bunch, and there's some enjoyable sneaking to be had for a while, but I have to thumb this down as the 1.0 launch left me underwhelmed.

Big Robot is known for their quirky brand of dystopic first-person stealth experiments, rich in atmosphere and unique in design. The Light Keeps Us Safe keeps in line with this trend of unconventional yet engaging mechanics, as well as a refreshing amount of exploration in a lovingly crafted and gorgeous environment that just like The Signal From Tölva is a genuine joy to traverse and slowly uncover. It features the same tense bits of run-n-hide stealth seen from Sir, You Are Being Hunted but with an overall deeper and more mature atmosphere, and and even more fleshed out and realized overworld.

In short, if you're a fan of this team's games then The Light Keeps Us Safe is a must-play, and if you haven't heard of them before this is an excellent point to jump-in and see what kind of impressive projects these guys are creating.


Initially I wasn't totally compelled to delve into the world of The Light Keeps Us Safe, the general formula of open-world loot and craft sort of games always bored me and on the surface that's what this seemed like. You scavenge the cold and pitch-black fields of the outside world for food and bandages with only your light to protect you, and more importantly the technological Chips that upgrade said trusty Flashlight and eventually allow you to explore deeper.

Its a simple premise and one I would normally write off, but just like Big Robots' other endeavors there was something particularly unique and charming about this that kept me thinking about it more than your usual open-world stealth and exploration title would.

Something about the intricately and lovingly crafted world, the dark and dim natural pathways dotted by the oppressive red lights of a threatening technology and all of the clever little hiding spots for Chips were on my mind when I wasn't playing the game. I couldn't stop thinking about what I had missed, what else there was to find hidden in the nooks and crannies, and more specifically what lied beyond the threatening mechanical oddities that secured important pathways that continue into the mysterious region.

The ominous and unknown depths ahead kept me guessing and wondering, wanting to see how far I could get without being spotted by frightening metal anomalies and see what other secrets were locked away behind the game's many engaging stealth puzzles. There's something absolutely terrifying about being caught crouching for shelter in the ruined remains of an old apartment building while the red infrared lights of a hulking metal security bot scanning surrounds your position. Moments like these had me holding my breath, not making a sound and sweating at the palms as the threat would pass over me narrowly.

Each of these close encounters with robot security is a completely different experience than the last due in-part to how you utilize your flashlight, and each one more hair-raising than before. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of meat to the current variation of enemies and thought the atmosphere and style is there and is absolute gripping, there isn't a whole lot of challenge involved once you've learned the general mechanics. The flashlight makes you feel near invincible and the robots give up all to easily, though that doesn't make them any less fun to trick and avoid.



The Light Keeps Us Safe definitely has something good going on, even if the premise of looting and collecting for upgrades sounds predictable or boring to you this one absolutely deserves your attention for its atmosphere, for its world-building, and for the sheer intensity of the encounters within. It almost feels like an extension of the STALKER universe in some ways, and though the gameplay isn't anywhere near as complex or challenging it hits the same notes of chilling dystopic exploration.

I'm really excited to see where the game expands on its already engaging formula because the world here is already a joy to explore, and the robot encounters are exciting and suspenseful every time.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of IndiePromo and the developer/publisher.

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