The Light Keeps Us Safe: Procedurally Generated Nightmare World, Coming Soon

The Light Keeps us Safe is the next upcoming title by developer Big Robot Games, who is better known for its previous titles “Sir, You Are Being Hunted” and “The Signal From Tölva”. If you know anything about these titles, you’ll know that Big Robot Games is an expert at crafting interesting and creative world filled with depth, history, and emotion. If not, you’ll just have to take our word for it, because it looks like this game is no exception.

The game’s steam page houses a few details of the upcoming product. Most initially apparent are the game’s unique aesthetics: The world is shrouded in dusk, and red and blue lights dominate the environment’s sparse colors. And, true to the studio’s name, there are a lot of big robots to be seen, or, in the most likely event, avoided at all cost: The machines come in many shapes and sizes, with some smaller and sphere shaped machines floating alongside much larger multi-legged spider bots. All robots share a darkened clockwork aesthetic, and many have bright red lights flooding from what seems to be their eyes, probably to clearly illuminate their cones of vision so they can be avoided.

The steam page also includes a single trailer, which hints at some kind of narrative behind the madness, and even a possible ending. In the trailer, a female voiceover laments the player for “staying behind” and not coming with “them” when they “left”. She says that if the player can make it all the way to them, and into the bunker, they will be “safe”.

Now we don’t know about you, but we’re sensing a twist ending lurking in the mist just from this short trailer. First, although the light the voice refers to is likely the daylight (since the rest of the game seems to take place at night), it’s still important to note that the player may spend much of the game avoiding the red lights of the robots, so this could be something to thematically cue the player into a reality that this safe zone isn’t as great and free as its been made to seem.

However, it could also be hinting at further gameplay mechanics that have yet to be revealed. For example, some screenshots show streetlights and other points of illumination among the red lights shone by the machines. It is possible that these lights actually do serve as points of rest and safety, and perhaps the game even includes some kind of environment manipulation mechanics to allow players to find safe fortresses of good light in order to make a living space among the apocalypse. Of course, any safety gained by such shelters would be temporary, as the trailer makes it clear that the player’s final goal is to traverse this robot-infested landscape (Probably through a number of unique zones of increasing difficulty) and reach the “bunker”.

And if there is any way to find safety, you certainly won’t be able to fine-tune that safety to your liking, as the steam page confirms that the game will not feature any kind of crafting system, because the people at Big Robot games find that kind of thing “boring”. After all, they want to emphasize how bleak, disturbing and stressful the environment is, and we can’t have that if you can just build a perfect and safe little hole in the ground, now can we? So get out there and be terrorized by some creepy light robots.

The game is set to release on October 11th, and Big Robot Games has not been known to delay their titles, so you can feel safe clearing out that day to play this game when it drops.

That is, you can feel safe in making the commitment to feel very un-safe as you’re hunted across a bleak open-world landscape by sinister mechanical terrors! Have fun!

Featured image via The Light Keeps Us Safe Steam page.