Coming soon

About This Game

Two worlds, one street

Saturday, June 21, 1997: the longest day of the year in Calloway County, Ohio. Thirteen-year-old Wes Harlan finds his grandfather's old steel flashlight in the garage, and at dusk, shining it into the porch light opens a door. On the other side is Calloway again, only it's Callowmere: a storybook kingdom of stone keeps, thatched hamlets, knights and dragons, laid out exactly like the county. Wes's cul-de-sac is a village green. Downtown is a castle town. The county fair is a tourney field, and the quarry is a mine with a sick dragon at the bottom of it.

Relight the lamps

Every place's oldest light is a door between the worlds, and someone is putting the lamps out. When one goes dark, the Grey spreads on both sides at once: lawns turn the color of slate, music goes flat, and people stop caring. Cross back and forth, solve puzzles that need both worlds, and relight the lamps one town at a time, from the village green to the dark between the worlds.

Four friends, two sets of gear

• Wes (13), the Lightbearer: Grandpa's flashlight becomes the Beacon, a sword whose blade is light.
  
• Della (16), the Windcaller: her walkie-talkie becomes the Calling Horn, for wind and song.
  
• Book (19), the Guardian: the hammer from his uncle's hardware store becomes a stone warhammer.
  
• Junie (14), the Skystriker: her softball and glove become a sling of glowing star-stones.

On the road they meet Sir Tamsin, a squire who has never left the kingdom (in Ohio his armor turns into hockey pads, and he thinks the vending machine is a shrine). And Grandpa Hal talks them through it over the CB radio in his garage, though he won't say why he stopped crossing in 1957.

A small-town summer, and a long way from home

Eight chapters, each a real place and its twin: the cul-de-sac and the hamlet, Main Street and the castle, the fairgrounds and the tourney, the lake port and the harbor of sea-knights, and on to the observatory, the power plant and the place where the two worlds overlap. Big-hearted, funny, and clean enough for the whole family.

Key features

• Two mirrored worlds: every chapter pairs a 1997 Ohio place with its twin in Callowmere, same layout, different world, and what you do on one side changes the other.
  
• Everyday gear turned heroic: a flashlight, a walkie-talkie, a hammer and a softball become a sword of light, a brass horn-staff, a stone warhammer and a sling of star-stones each time the party crosses; 173 pieces of gear in all, each with its everyday and its storybook form.
  
• Turn-based battles you can see coming: monsters walk the map (no random battles), weak ones run from a stronger party, and a hero knocked to 0 HP gets one last move, the Afterglow. 118 kinds of monster and 40 boss and mini-boss fights.
  
• Puzzles that need both worlds: move something in Callowmere to open a way in Ohio, carry an ordinary thing from 1997 to fix a fantastic problem; workbenches and forges on both sides; diner food and tavern food that heal.
  
• Bring the color back: relight a town's lamp and watch the color sweep back over both sides of the door.
  
• Music in two styles: each town has a 90s small-town band sound on the Ohio side and a storybook orchestra in Callowmere.
  
• 150 Lamp Sparks to find, growth boards for every hero, and 49 side jobs for the neighbors on both sides.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Porchlight was made by one developer working with AI tools. The character art, portraits and monster art were generated with AI image tools and then edited and assembled into sprites; the music, sound effects and character voice barks were generated with AI audio tools; the story, dialogue and levels were written and built with AI assistants, directed, reviewed and played through by the developer. Nothing is generated while you play.