The Red Lantern Goes Free on Steam for a Limited Time
The giveaway is a promotional push for Timberline Studio's newly released game Beastro, offering a steep bundle discount to players who pick up The Red Lantern for free.
Reporting from 3 sources: Automaton, Denfaminicogamer, Game Spark.
Publisher Kepler Interactive and developer Timberline Studio are giving away the dogsled adventure game The Red Lantern for free on Steam until June 19 at 2:00 AM Japan time. The game normally costs 2,570 yen. Once added to a library during the promotion, it remains playable afterward. The Red Lantern is a story-driven roguelite survival game set in the Alaskan snowfields. Players take the role of a musher, or dog sled driver, who sets out with a team of five sled dogs to find a new home. The player selects four dogs from a pool of up to eight, each with its own personality and backstory that affect random events. Gameplay involves navigating a branching map, managing resources like health and hunger, hunting wildlife, and camping to rest and bond with the dogs. Encounters with bears and other animals can injure or kill the dogs, but the game includes an option to disable depictions of dog deaths. Steam user reviews are 84% positive out of about 900 reviews, earning a Very Positive rating. The game does not support Japanese. The giveaway coincides with the release of Timberline Studio's new title Beastro, a restaurant management deck-building game, and a bundle discount is available for owners of The Red Lantern.
The giveaway began June 12, according to publisher Kepler Interactive. The game originally launched on the Epic Games Store in October 2020 and arrived on Steam in December 2021. The Epic Games Store version holds a 4.6-star rating. The protagonist is a female musher who sets out with her partner dog Chomper and selects four additional dogs from a pool of up to eight to form a team. Each dog has a distinct personality and backstory that influence random events, and some dogs have their own unique events. Encounters with wild animals include deer, eagles, and owls, not just bears. Players can pet and interact with the dogs during rest stops. The game uses a first-person perspective, and the map has many branches with events triggered at chosen destinations.
The bundle discount for owners of The Red Lantern brings the price of Beastro, normally 2,300 yen, down to 1,138 yen for the combined set. Beastro is a restaurant management deck-building game where a fox chef serves food to adventurers. The game does not support Japanese, and one outlet suggested using a screen translation tool such as WindowTranslator for real-time automatic translation.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 3 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.