In many horror games, being afraid of the dark is usually encouraged. However, aside from forcibly losing your flashlight, there isn't much that I've ever seen done in a game to make the player feel powerless in the dark. House of Kernaghan takes this problem and turns it into a solution.
The Candle
The candle is the basis for the majority of lighting in House of Kernaghan. In some more refurbished rooms, incandescent lighting takes its place, but incandescent bulbs seem to have a nice tendency of going out at all the wrong moments in this game.
Inside of the candle's radius is, aside from comfortable brightness, a safe zone of sorts. Whenever the candle is lit, monsters etherial and solid alike will not crawl out from the dark spaces inside of the glow. Basically, spawner entities have a spawnflag that, if checked, will not cause monsters to come crawling out if a candle is lit within a certain radius. However, you can't fight while holding a candle, and an unarmed player with a single lightsource in the middle of a huge room isn't much good. That's where holders come in.
The Candle Holder
Candle holders function basically the same as candles. Whenever the player is holding a lit candle, it can be placed in any nearby holder, where it will stay lit indefinitely. There are only so many candles and torches just lying around in the place, though, and you only have so many matches. Keeping the areas you navigate lit is a balancing act as you move through the mansion.
Why is an ordinary, dusty old mansion worth combing through in the first place? The next article will deal with the story behind the game in the first place, and the unique method through which it is told.
Interesting.