Sometimes, dead is better.
If you buy Wayforward’s horror action/puzzle game LIT on Steam right now, you’ll get a 2D game about using light sources to find your way through a series of darkened rooms, with an art style that makes it look like a lost episode of “Danny Phantom.” It’s alright for what it is.
That’s not the original LIT, though. The first LIT is a “dead” game from 2009, which went down with the ship when Nintendo closed the WiiWare shop in 2019, and which was one of the best-kept secrets on the Wii. The currently-available version of LIT is a 2015 “reimagining” for iOS/Android that comes off like a Saturday-morning cartoon version of the 2009 game.
It’s a weird situation for a dead game. LIT has been reincarnated, so to speak, but as an arguably worse version of itself.
You play LIT 2009 as Jake, a stereotypical “emo” kid who, for no reason that’s ever given in-game, is trapped in a version of his high school that’s been overrun by living darkness. Any light instantly gets rid of the shadows, but if any part of Jake touches them, he’s instantly pulled under to his death. It’s a creepy, short action/puzzle game about figuring out a way to safely get Jake from point A to B.
In retrospect, LIT had the deck stacked against it from the start. When it debuted, it was a WiiWare exclusive, at a point in time when it stood out from the crowd like a warthog at a cat show. The Wii at 2009 was pitched at an audience of kids, retirees, and casual newcomers, so the lineup on the WiiWare virtual storefront was mostly shovelware, retro revivals, and ports of 15-year-old games like StarTropics II.
LIT was also an early original IP from WayForward, back in the period when it primarily made licensed tie-ins like Space Chimps. No one was really paying attention to WayForward back then, until it broke out in the 2010s with games like Double Dragon Neon.
That left LIT perfectly positioned from the jump to fly under everyone’s radar. The only reason I ever heard of it was that I had a gig at the time where I covered new releases on the Wii, and LIT quickly became my favorite WiiWare game. Yeah, the competition was a little weak, but LIT has a lot going for it.
In each of the 2009 LIT’s 30 levels, Jake starts at one end of a darkened classroom, in the relative safety of its exit sign. The challenge is to use whatever tools you can find, like slingshot pellets or cherry bombs, to create a path through the shadows for Jake. That can include breaking windows, turning on TVs or lamps, or triggering a motion sensor, although each room can only handle so many running appliances at once. Turn on one light too many and the circuit breaker blows, plunging the entire room into shadow and ending that run on the spot.
There’s an additional element of timing in play, as roughly half the classrooms have an emergency phone on the wall. If you can reach that phone in time, you get a short monologue from Jake’s girlfriend Rachael (voiced by Los Angeles DJ Nicole Alvarez), which plays through the speaker on the Wiimote.
That speaker isn’t great, so the audio comes out as scratchy, but that ends up working in its favor. Early in the game, Rachael has a bad case of Buffy-speak, where she’s able to maintain an ironic distance from the situation that she and Jake are in. The further you go, however, the more audibly spooked she gets.
Towards the end of the game, Rachael starts to suggest, in a small, defeated voice, that she and Jake are trapped in the school because they deserve to be. Maybe they’re both dead, she says at one point, and this is Hell. It’s a quiet moment that’s easy to miss, but it’s got an impact like a brick to the face, and it’s stuck with me for the last 14 years.
Rachael’s monologues are part of a quiet atmosphere of dread that lets LIT punch well above its weight. It’s an indie Wii game from 2009, so the graphics are murky, but here, that’s actually the point. Every time you activate a light source, whether it’s something in the room or Jake’s pocket flashlight, it doesn’t pierce the darkness so much as send it skittering into the corners. You’re always seeing a little extra movement in the shadows, which roil and seethe at the edges of the light.
Admittedly, as a puzzle game, LIT has a few rough spots. Several of the classrooms switch things up in favor of what are basically boss fights, where you need to figure out some way to expose a specific target to several light sources while keeping Jake alive. This is where the “action” part of “action/puzzle” comes in, as LIT runs out of new puzzle mechanics very early and has to resort to testing your timing, reflexes, and patience instead. Still, it’s a game that cost 800 Wii Points, or roughly $8, when new, and it’s well worth that price.
It’s not hard to see why WayForward’s never ported LIT to another system, as most of its controls are built around the Wii’s unique controls. You shake the Wiimote to throw cherry bombs or recharge Jake’s flashlight; you aim his slingshot with the Wiimote’s reticule; and Rachael’s speeches come through the controller. The Switch’s JoyCons could probably handle at least some of this, but otherwise, you’d be looking at effectively rebuilding LIT if it were brought to any other system.
It’s a shame. LIT 2009 still has a place of pride on WayForward’s website, but it’s always deserved more of an audience than it got. 14 years later, it’s aged decently, aside from a few elements like Jake’s emo haircut. An HD remaster, to clean up the graphics and retune some of the rougher puzzles, could make LIT a solid short pick for an all-ages horror game.
