Ghost Light

In Ghost Light, you work as a janitor, tasked with cleaning up the theatre at the end of the night. You sweep up popcorn and other messes, occasionally rewarded with a handful of pocket change left under someone’s seat. At the end of the night, it’s your duty to turn off the lights and put the theatre’s ghost light out on the stage. But as you absent-mindedly work, accidents can happen, and you might forget a step or two. Surely it’s not that important, right…?

Ghost Light is a short top-down pixel narrative game, telling the story of a janitor who cleans up a theatre at the end of the night. The story is based on the superstition relating to ghost lights, where theatres will often leave a singular light on over night on the empty stage. The practical reason: to keep people safe as they exit the theatre after turning the main lights off, to prevent anyone from tripping on equipment or falling into the orchestra pit. The superstition however states that the light is left on for the theatre’s ghosts to be able to see at night, so that they may conduct their own performances. As long as the ghost light is left out at night, the ghosts remain happy. Leave them in the dark, however, and they may retaliate.

Ghost Light was made using GB Studio, a program dedicated to making games capable of running on a physical Game Boy. The program considers the limitations of the hardware, limiting the use of colors, unique tiles, and complex code; thus, games made with this engine must be tailored to work around these restrictions while still being fun to play, inviting to look at, and easy to understand.

This project was made to explore the limitations of a Game Boy, creating a game that makes use of its limited resources to still provide a rewarding play experience. Made in just a few weeks for a university class, Ghost Light takes advantage of the limited available tiles and colors, representing detail and variation without surpassing the boundary of what a Game Boy can handle.

Another main goal of Ghost Light was to focus on implicitly teaching the player. ||As the player first plays the game, they’ll notice that the theatre is laid out with unusual features such as a queue leading up to the ticket stand or the light control box tucked away in the corner. The player then learns that the theatre is in fact haunted by ghosts, and they’ll need to navigate this layout in the dark. Players do surprisingly well at escaping the theatre despite these challenges, because they became familiar with the layout during the cleaning phase. The queue especially leaves players stressed that they might not make it through in time, but almost always will if they keep running. Players have implicitly learned these skills, without even knowing.||