Lanterns of the Hollow

Lanterns of the Hollow is a quiet, gorgeous adventure game that we did not expect to love as much as we did. You guide a young lantern-keeper through a mostly wordless forest, solving gentle environmental puzzles and coaxing strange creatures out of hiding. Everything is hand-drawn and animated with real care.

The puzzles never resort to obtuse moon-logic. Solutions come from paying attention to your surroundings, and the game gives you room to explore without a timer breathing down your neck. When we got stuck, the answer was always something we'd overlooked rather than a leap we couldn't have made.

It's a shorter game, maybe four or five hours, but it's the kind of experience that stays with you. If you want something calm to play before bed, this is it. Play it with headphones; the soundtrack does a lot of the emotional heavy lifting.

What we liked

• Beautiful hand-drawn art and animation
• Fair, atmospheric puzzles with no time pressure
• A calming pace perfect for winding down