Lantern Line

The birds go quiet first. Then the surf falls silent, and someone on your street opens their front door and walks toward the water. On the nights of the Lunar New Year, the lanterns are not decoration.

Marram Street is a row of eight weatherboard cottages facing the sea across a road and a line of dunes. Only three families still keep the old ritual; the rest of the street has forgotten it. An old conductor stands between the drums and the gong and reads the sea every morning, and the families teach what they remember. You play a neighbour in your own avatar. Whatever lives in the bay is never seen whole: it is only a shape where the teal glow of the water goes out.

Dusk is a race: hang red lanterns on the eaves, one arm's length apart, until the whole line is closed before sundown. From midnight the drums must not stop, so drummers hand off before their arms cramp. On the hour, at one, two and three, three firecracker strings must be lit. Gusts gutter lanterns, gaps open, and every lapse shows you a place and a clock. Close it in time and nothing happens. Miss it, and the Silence falls.

Fear here is absence, not monsters. There is no combat and no weapon, only hanging, drumming, lighting and walking someone home. Four seconds of total silence is the scariest moment in the game. Anyone taken sits calmly in the ankle-deep shallows, and the street brings them back at the next completed hour or by holding until dawn. Nobody is lost, and nobody is blamed.

A run is two nights, the Eve and the Second Night, with a short day between when the households you impressed join the line. The first release is Map 1, Marram Street, with a tutorial night and three harder night conditions. Two more maps are designed: The Wharf, where the sea reaches the slipway in seconds, and The Hall Night, where a storm surge drives everyone into the community hall. Play solo while the families cover the rest of the line, or with up to eight neighbours.

Every run you hold brings the street back to life. One household at a time returns until twelve families keep the line, each lighting its house and unlocking its own lantern pattern. Shells gathered on the beach at dawn buy lantern patterns, drum skins and three earned tools, and eight pages of the street's ritual are written by doing them. Harder nights open as the street grows: Windy Year, King Tide, Sea Fog, Power Cut and The Long Year. Nothing decays while you are away.

Based on Nian by Sarah Lindqvist: the arm's-length spacing, the drums from midnight, the firecrackers on the hour, the two-night window to bring someone home and a creature that returns every year all come from the novel.

Lantern Line is a finished game design for Roblox, and Greenlight Games is looking for a studio partner to build it.