Gen2 Interactive
A lighthouse island at high water in the evening, seen from the flooded causeway. Telephone poles walk out into a pink and violet sea.

Slack Water Episode 1 · The Dark Light

Coming soon

Windows, Steam Deck (macOS later). Release date to be announced.

The teaser

Recorded in the game: the island at night in a storm, the lamp coming on, a fair morning, the causeway coming out of the sea, dusk from the lantern gallery, and the causeway in fog.

The story

“So this is it. Three months on a rock, with a lighthouse for company, and I only just made it.”

Helen Ashby spent eleven years in a windowless room, restoring other people’s photographs. Then she wanted a window. She answers an advertisement for a three-month caretaker at the Point, a light station on a tidal island off the New England coast, and arrives at night in a storm, with the sea closing over the causeway behind her.

The lamp is dead. The last caretaker left in a hurry two winters ago, and his log stops in the middle of a sentence. A neighbour she has never met airs the house, lights the stove and leaves kind, brisk letters that read differently the second time. The only voice she hears is Sam’s, on the phone.

Everyone on this coast knows the legend of the Dark Light. Helen reads edges, tears and handwriting for a living, and the island is full of them.

A first-person mystery, unhurried and a little funny, and uneasy at the edges. There are no jump scares.

How it plays

  • Read the place

    Most of the puzzles come from her trade, like the year on the back of a print, or a torn photograph to piece together. Others come with the job. There is one fuse, and it can power the lamp or the cellar, but not both.

  • Kept by the tide

    The causeway is open only at low water, so the tide decides when she can cross and when she is stuck on the wrong side. The weather turns from storm to fair to sea fog.

  • One voice on the phone

    She never meets anyone face to face. Sam texts and sends voice notes, and letters turn up in the mailbox on the mainland. The rest is her own voice in her head, dry and watchful and funny when it can be.

Screenshots

  • A lighthouse island at high water in the evening, seen from the flooded causeway. Telephone poles walk out into a pink and violet sea.
    High water. The causeway is under there somewhere.
  • The light station on a fair morning: a white keeper's house with a red roof, the lighthouse behind it, a small shed and long summer grass.
    The light station on a fair morning.
  • Walking the causeway at low water on a fair morning: a sandbar with wheel ruts between two stretches of blue sea, telephone poles leading to a wooded shore.
    Low water. The causeway is open, for now.
  • The keeper's house at night under the stars, a table and two chairs outside, lamplight from the windows on the grass.
    The keeper's house on a clear night.
  • The keeper's kitchen at night by lamplight: the caretakers' handbook, a newspaper and a book on the table, the pump over the sink, a storm at the windows.
    The kitchen at night, and the handbook.
  • Holding up an old sepia photograph of a family outside the keeper's house, with a subtitle describing the people in it.
    She reads photographs for a living.
  • The path up to the lighthouse at night, with the phone held up showing texts and a voice message from Sam.
    Sam, the only voice on the phone.
  • The causeway in sea fog at low tide, the island ahead fading into grey, the telephone poles going out into the mist.
    Fog, and the lowest tide of the month.

Episode 1: The Dark Light

Length
Ten chapters, each a day or a night, about five hours in all
Platforms
Windows, Steam Deck (macOS later)
Release
To be announced
Price
To be announced
Controls
Keyboard and mouse, or a controller

Each episode of Slack Water has a new protagonist on the same coast, and the story of one August night is passed from one to the next.

News of the game

To hear when it comes out, write to news@gen2interactive.co.uk and we’ll add you to the list.

If you are writing about the game, the press kit has the text, the screenshots and the logos. For anything else, write to press@gen2interactive.co.uk.