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What makes small-town Americana so scary? Perhaps it's the fear of trouble in paradise – think Laura Palmer's murder in Twin Peaks, or the deep-seated evil lurking beneath Bright Falls in Alan Wake. But both examples are also set against vast natural backdrops, where civilization's foothold feels tenuous at best. Where mother nature casts a long shadow, trees blot out streetlights until you're left in the darkness – and that weight brings its own sort of primal dread.
Radiolight, a thriller from developer Krystof Knesl, understands this feeling well. Set in 1985, you play as Ethan – a police officer for the town of Ashwood Creek, where a teenage boy has gone missing in its national park. When a second person goes missing, Ethan is sent out into Ashwood Creek National Park in the dead of night to look for them – and as someone who loves nature but struggles with horror, I hate that Radiolight's investigative hook was strong enough to keep me tip-toeing beneath the trees.
Under the sycamore trees
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Radiolight doesn't get too heavy immediately. It begins in the safety of civilization, where Ethan's biggest problems are having too few beers in the fridge and a teenage daughter with an overly loud boombox. Though Radiolight isn't advertised as a horror game, there's an immediate sense of standing on the edge. I'm not surprised when the housephone begins to ring in its cradle, nor when answering it cuts to Ethan driving into the darkness of Ashwood Creek National Park an hour later.
What I am surprised by is the tranquility. There's a heaviness, yes – imagine the feeling of walking deep into woods and realizing for the first time that you can no longer hear cars – but Radiolight appreciates the appeal of this silence. It's relaxing being alone in the woods, even on a dark and foggy night such as this, but eventually Radiolight twists your boundaries of safety. You start to feel more comfortable in the darkness of the trail, with only your dim flashlight, than beneath the warm electric bulb glow of the ranger's cabin further along – its light failing to make a dent in the forest's shadows, creating a sense of standing under a spotlight for an audience you can't see.
Radiolight leaves you to stew in its tension, to the point where I found myself inching away from my monitor
The investigative elements to Radiolight are fairly tame. There are lots of clues and objects to interact with, though doing so rarely tells you where to go next. Your main tool is the ability to call in relevant details to your dispatcher via radio, and while the voice on the other side is rarely helpful in a practical sense, I'm often just grateful to have a thread to the outside world to cling to. Still, for a horror coward like myself, it's not always enough. A boombox left upon a picnic table changes frequency by itself, a voice hidden in the static, and upon revisiting an empty boathouse I passed near the trail's car park, its lights are on and muddy footprints streak through to the office.
There are scares – which I won't spoil – that are less subtle as Radiolight goes on, but it never gets unbearable. Instead, imagination is my own worst enemy – Radiolight leaves you to stew in its tension, to the point where I found myself inching away from my monitor, terrified my flashlight would turn up something I wouldn't want to see. Sometimes, it does.
While Radiolight is certainly more horror-leaning than it may initially cop to, it's surprisingly confident in the way it cuts you loose in the woods. You're there to find two missing people, free to read into clues and follow hunches as you see fit. Navigating with a handheld map, you can follow ranger-approved trails or head off the beaten track when necessary, with the game only occasionally blocking you off from certain routes until it's ready for you to go that way.
Even then, player-guiding is subtle, and Ashwood Creek National Park is so dense that you'll often spot something new while combing through the same place twice. It plays with that repetition in interesting ways, too: I've already mentioned the boathouse, but in a separate instance I broke a window to get inside a cabin only for it to fix itself when I turned around – something I originally prescribed to the game's solo dev scope, until Ethan said what I was thinking out loud. Chills!
If you've got the guts to go down to the woods today, I'd recommend swinging by Ashwood Creek. Like the Americana greats before it, Radiolight understands that there are few things as anxiety-inducing as feeling very small beneath the pines. Once again, my mind returns to Twin Peaks. The woods are wondrous here, but strange.
Radiolight is available on Steam. If you enjoyed this, check out our Indie Spotlight for more games that may have flown under your radar
