Hollow Lantern

Hollow Lantern is a turn-based role-playing game that leans hard into mood. You play a lamplighter walking through a fog-drowned city, relighting lamps that each unlock a fragment of the place's history. Combat is slow and deliberate, built around managing your lantern's fuel as both a weapon and a light source.

The party system is small, just three characters, but each one changes how you read the battlefield. The writing surprised me. It's quiet, a little sad, and never over-explains itself, which is rare on mobile. Save points double as campfires where the characters actually talk.

It's not a fast game, and if you want constant action you'll get bored. But for a RPG you can play twenty minutes at a time on a commute, it's one of the best-paced things I've touched this year.

What we liked

• Lantern fuel as a clever combat resource
• Restrained, genuinely moving writing
• Perfect for short commute sessions