“Hey zombies, over here!” I yell, perched on a rooftop above them. The zombies run toward me but they don’t know how to climb. I jump over them and sprint away. As I run I see a single zombie walking toward me. There is no way around him, so I knock him down with an axe and continue running.
I keep coming across pages from my diary. I can’t be bothered to read them, I just keep running. I am a park ranger from British Columbia, searching for my wife and daughter in zombie-infested post apocalyptic 1986 Seattle.
Deadlight is a 2D side-scrolling survival horror game. The protagonist is Randall Wayne, a park ranger from BC looking for his wife and daughter in 1986 zombie infested Seattle, WA. Randall keeps having these dreams and hallucinations, recounting moments with his wife and daughter. I am not entirely sure how Randall and his family ended up in Seattle. Certainly it had something to do with the zombie apocalypse. Whatever the case, I cannot be bothered to figure out the details–there are zombies to run from after all. Technically these creatures are “Shadows,” but they eat flesh and turn other people into like creatures, so let’s just call them zombies.
Randall has a stamina meter that goes down slightly when he swings his ax or sprints for too long, forcing you to focus on survival. You do find guns but their limited ammo and efficacy encourage utilizing the environment to run past zombies rather than attacking them head on. Most of the game’s puzzles are pretty straightforward but not when you’ve wasted all your ammo and are warding off four zombies with nothing but an ax. I found myself having to start over from the same check point again and again after the zombies tear into Randall’s flesh–perhaps Randall is more undead than the shadows.
Deadlight shines when you are running from, jumping over, and outwitting the undead–it is Prince of Persia with a zombie-horror twist. It lags, however, when it tries to get you to care about its narrative in bizarre ways. As I traverse Seattle, I keep finding pieces from Randall’s diary in places where Randall has never been before. The game keeps telling me to observe the ID badges of dead people I come across. It turns out that each of the names on the badges represent real-life serial killers. Is that supposed to tell me something? Humanity is its own worst enemy? Or perhaps I can take comfort in the fact that these dead people got their just desserts and just keep running.
In the end, Deadlight wants to be about the redemption of Randall Wayne. Unfortunately we aren’t really given many reasons to care about Randall. Randall’s greatest enemy is “The New Law”–a totalitarian regime that lures survivors into their fold with promises of security only to exploit them and kill them. Randall refers to them as communist–either Randall does not understand communism or he is a deeply bitter man. Randall hates the The New Law with impunity. And yet Randall agrees to help Virgil (“The Rat”), find his son after The Rat forces him to traverse a sewer filled with deadly traps. These traps often kill Randall, but he just keeps coming back and spouting the same self righteous garbage: “Like The Rat said, we all make choices … some call it survival. Others … denial.”
“Virgil will be your guide” is scrawled on the wall of the sewer in spray paint. Virgil is nuts, and so is Randall.
The New Law kills Randall’s friends and chases Randall in a helicopter with machine guns–I am not really sure why, I just know I am supposed to run. That’s fine by me. Running is the best part.
5/10
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