Lantern Vale

Lantern Vale is the kind of quiet adventure game that sneaks up on you emotionally. You wander a small village solving environmental puzzles to relight its lanterns, and each one you fix reveals a little more about the people who lived there.

The puzzles are logical rather than obscure — I only reached for a hint once, and the game gently nudged me instead of handing over the answer. Everything is offline, and it autosaves after every solved puzzle, so it slots perfectly into short breaks.

It's short, maybe four hours, but it lingers. This is a game I finished on a single long train ride and thought about for days after.

What we liked

• Fair, logical puzzles
• Warm, atmospheric storytelling
• Perfect bite-sized sessions