Light is the puzzle.
Each heliostat has to see its light source. The game fires a real ray from the mirror toward the sun, through the terrain and the basalt, so the shadow you see is the shadow that blocks you.
New release · Island V5
Lumen Reach hands you the sun.
The Tidewatch beam swept past a dark island one night, and the island flashed back. Its clock stopped at dawn. You carry the dial now. Wind the day, repair five mirrors, bounce light into singing crystals, and see what the hill does when it has every note.
Your other islands stay put. V5 keeps its own save in this browser. V4 and the V4.1 preview are not touched.
The trailer
One minute on Lumen Reach.
Every shot was recorded inside the game: Seven off the roof ramp, the reef, the Kraken in the Glassmire, Haven Point, and the Sun Organ opening at the end. Turn the sound up.
Narration, music and sound effects were made with ElevenLabs. Captions are burned in, so it works with the sound off too.
What is new
The sun used to be scenery. Now it is a tool.
Every earlier island had a day. Lumen Reach lets you hold it. Hold Q or R, or drag the dial, and the sun, the sky, the shadows, and the light reflected off everything all move together.
Five mirrors, five habits.
One likes any daylight. One only opens at noon. One wants late afternoon through an arch. One waits for a lighthouse after dark. One has no sky at all and needs Mote.
Every crystal sings its length.
Each crystal's note comes from its size: shorter glass, higher voice. The five notes make a D chord, and each charged crystal adds a quiet voice to the island's drone.
Seven and Mote came from FIELDWORK.
The tracked robot Seven and the ducted-fan Mote arrive with all of their animation clips. Seven can sprint and jump, and Mote throws a hex-shaped landing pad where Seven will touch down.
Something lives in the mud.
The Glassmire Kraken sleeps half sunk in a tidal mudflat. It watches with one eye and reaches toward you. Get too close and it slaps the mud beside you. Charge a crystal and one of its bands turns tide-blue.
Seven goes fishing.
Stop at the water's edge and cast. When the bobber dips, hook it fast, then hold to reel and let go before the line snaps. There are minnows, mackerel, a glowing eel that only bites at night, and something very large far out. Also a boot.
Treads out. Hull panels in.
Wade out until the water is deep and Seven folds into a little boat with outriggers. Swells roll in toward the island. Catch one heading in and it carries you. Hit a crest fast and you leave it.
Weather you can see.
Mornings start misty and burn off. A low sun throws shafts of light through the pines. Cumulus clouds drift over and catch the sunset, low banks lie along the horizon, and other islands sit far off in the haze. Wildflowers fill the meadows, and the tide line has driftwood, shells and kelp.
A real coastline.
Belts of black lava boulders run along the rocky shores, glossy where the surf reaches them and dusty grey above. The waves foam between the rocks. Coconut palms lean out over the sand, hau thickets crowd the back of the beach, and a steep green islet shaped like a hat sits offshore in its own turquoise shallows. Leaves and fronds glow when the sun is behind them, and the ground darkens where rocks and trunks meet it.
Birds that notice you.
A flock of gulls rests on the sand. Roll Seven too close and one bird calls, then they all lift off, circle the bay, and settle on a quieter beach. Parrots and toucans sit out on the palm fronds. Pass under their tree and they burst out and cross to a quieter palm down the coast.
Built to run on a phone.
The island only draws what the camera can see. Trees, rocks, grass and reef are grouped into map cells, and cells out of view or out of range are skipped. Props that never move are merged into a few big meshes. On phones the frame rate is held at 60, and the resolution adjusts itself to keep play smooth.
Look down.
The shallows are glass clear over pale sand. Yellow tangs, Moorish idols, butterflyfish and unicornfish school around coral heads and scatter when Seven rolls through. A honu sculls past and rises for a breath. Eagle rays skim the sand, and out past the reef a pod of dolphins leaps.
Somebody lived here.
Haven Point sits on the east shore. A hurricane sent all 212 people to the ferry, and nobody came back. The town still has its store, its billboards, and a shipment of 48 televisions that washed up on the beach.
The ending changes shape.
Play the Sun Organ and the summit opens like a flower. Three bronze rings rise out of the island and turn inside one another, and the island's clock starts running on its own.
Field views
Take the island at four different hours.
These pictures were captured from the game in a browser. They show how much the same basalt and sand change when the light moves.
Shore Mirror, 7:06
The first repair. The beach faces the eastern sea, so almost any daylight hour works, and the beam lands on the crystal right away.
Column Hall, 16:03
A roof, three walls, and one arch facing west. Earlier, the roof blocks the sun. Later, the summit does. The window lasts about forty minutes of island time.
The Glassmire
Mud, puddles that mirror the sky, and a Kraken with very long arms. Seven slows down here, and its treads leave ruts and fling mud.
Tidewatch Mirror, 22:24
This mirror faces north toward the Tidewatch Lighthouse from Island V4.1. After dark, each sweep of the beam adds a little charge.
The coast
Black rock, green light, a hat on the horizon.
The shore was built from photographs of Oahu's windward side: belts of lava boulders, palms leaning over the sand, and Mokolii sitting in Kaneohe Bay.
The lava-rock shore, 9:30
The rocks near the water are wet and glossy. Higher up they dry to a dusty grey, and a film of algae marks the tide line. The surf foams wherever a boulder breaks the swell.
Palms against the sun, 17:12
Look toward the sun and the fronds light up from behind. The ground under every trunk and rock is darker too, so nothing looks pasted on.
The islet, 10:00
A steep green cone sits off the south beach in its own ring of turquoise shallows. Cliff bands show near the top, and a low rock shelf runs off one side.
The beach flock, 9:24
Gulls rest in a group on the sand. When Seven rolls close, one calls and they all lift off together, circle the bay for a while, and land on another beach.
Who else lives here
Fish under the boat, parrots over the beach.
Every animal was rebuilt for this island from a model in the lab's asset library: remeshed, recoloured, and set swimming or flying in its own way.
The reef flat, 10:30
Wade or sail over the shallows and the reef shows through. Each school is one kind of fish, and it laps its own patch of coral.
A honu, 11:00
Green sea turtles cruise wide loops over the reef. Their front flippers stroke, then hold for a long glide. Every few minutes one comes up to breathe.
The pod, 11:00
A pod of spinner dolphins works a wide loop in deep water. Now and then one leaps clear and dives back in nose first.
A parrot in the palms, 9:36
Parrots and toucans sit out on the fronds. Roll under their tree and they burst out and cross to a quieter palm.
Haven Point
The town left. The televisions stayed.
A hurricane emptied this island years ago. Everyone left for the ferry with one bag each. Seven can drive through what they left behind, and the island's light is now the only power in town.
The TV spill, 18:27
A Tidelight Freight container burst on the south beach. The crates broke open, and box TVs rolled out. Each set plays a channel cut from a GameLab project: Lodestar, Waymark, JustDig!, FIELDWORK, Island V4, and two GameLab mixes.
Haven Point Mercantile, 20:30
The store still has its display sets. When you first arrive, only one is on. Every crystal you charge wakes two more screens somewhere on the island, and this picture was taken after all five. Play the Sun Organ and every set turns on.
Haven Point, 8:12
Four houses, one store, and a water tower that now leans. One house lost its whole front wall. Another lost its roof. The utility poles still stand, but one wire snapped and hangs to the sand.
Wooden billboards
Six painted signs still stand, or mostly stand. One welcomes you to town. One sells oysters. One points to the ferry. One promised color sets so bright they would outlast the storm. They did.
The people of Haven Point left notes. There are six to find: a store ledger, a warning on the siren pole, a postcard on a fridge, a waterlogged shipping manifest, a carving on the water tower, and a loose page from the keeper's log. Walk up to the paper and tap E to read it. Your journal keeps every note you find.
The first time Seven reaches the town, the beach of TVs, or the Kraken's mudflat, the camera takes over for a short scene. Each crystal you charge also cuts away to the televisions it just woke up. Every scene plays once per save. Press Esc, tap E, or hit Skip to jump back.
How to play
Fix the mirror, then find the hour.
Every heliostat starts broken. Drive up, hold E, and Seven straightens it. Once it is repaired, the mirror tracks its light on its own. Your job is to choose a moment when that light can actually reach it. Stay near a repaired mirror and the prompt tells you whether it is in shadow, waiting for dark, or catching light.
| Mirror | Light source | The trick |
|---|---|---|
| Shore | Sun | Open to the sea. Any daylight hour will do. The crystal sings D (2.25 m of glass). |
| Fin Slit | Sun | Two tall basalt fins. Only a high sun drops between them, roughly 9:45 to 14:15. E (2.00 m). |
| Column Hall | Sun | A roofed hall with a west arch. Late afternoon, about 15:45 to 16:30. F sharp (1.78 m). |
| Tidewatch | Lighthouse | Wait for full dark and let the distant beam sweep across it. A (1.50 m). |
| Grotto | Mote | No sky reaches inside. Press F and Mote flies in and becomes the light. B (1.34 m). |
When all five sing, climb to the summit and press E at the Sun Organ. Between mirrors, take the east path to Haven Point. Nothing there is required. It is just where everyone used to live.
| Move | WASD or arrow keys · left stick · drag on the left side of a phone screen |
| Look and zoom | Drag the mouse and use the wheel · right stick · drag on the right side and pinch |
| Wind the sun | Hold Q or R · shoulder buttons · the dial arrows, or drag the dial |
| Repair and play | Hold E · A button · the E button |
| Jump and sprint | Space and Shift · B button and push the stick hard · the jump button, and push past the stick's rim |
| Fish | At the water's edge, press E to cast and E again to hook a bite. Then hold Space to reel. Press X to reel in early. On a phone, the E button hooks with a tap and reels when you hold it. |
| Boat | Wade into deep water and press E. Steer with the stick, jump to hop, and drive onto a beach to roll back ashore. |
| Ask Mote | F · X button · the F button. Mote flies toward the next job and leaves a trail. |
| Light Studio | P · Select. Scrub the hour, change exposure and clouds, turn off the sun or the sky, and save a photo. |
Where the ideas came from
One island, built from parts of the whole lab.
V5 borrows on purpose. Each piece below was already working somewhere else on this site. Lumen Reach gives it a new job.
IslandLab V3 to V4.1
The repair loop, the idea that play should change the world, the field ship, glowing guardians, and the Tidewatch Lighthouse, which now shines in from the horizon. See V4.1
FIELDWORK
Seven, Mote, and the rigged Kraken. Also the camp props, the farm bots that now patrol the paths with lamps, the detail textures for sand grain, dry-mud cracks, wet sheen, and puddles, the tread spray, the cloud shadows, and a set of real sound effects. See FIELDWORK
Apostate Engine III
The ending. In Heretic World, a crown of armoured petals opens and planet-sized gimbal rings rise. Lumen Reach does the same at island scale. See Apostate Engine III
Breathglass, Wild Choir, and Lodestar
Breathglass taught the lab that a vessel can sing a note measured from its shape. Wild Choir added voices that stay in key. Lodestar brought navigation by night sky, and Lumen Reach has its own small asterism for the patient. See Breathglass
For curious builders
What is underneath the light?
Island V5 is plain JavaScript and Three.js r185 with no build step. The new architecture was modelled in Blender from a Python script, so the whole kit can be rebuilt in one command.
- Blender kit: heliostats with yaw and pitch pivots, crystal pylons, the Sun Organ, basalt column clusters and fins, a stone arch, a dock, a field ship, an observatory, glassblooms, crown petals, and gimbal rings. Bevelled edges and baked vertex color give the lighting something to catch.
- Sky and environment light: a physical sky model is rendered into a prefiltered environment map and rebuilt as the hour changes. The sun or moon is the single shadow-casting light. Fog, exposure, and bloom follow the time of day.
- Surfaces: the terrain shader blends sand, moss, rock, and mud, adds tide-line wetness, strata in exposed rock, sky-mirroring puddles, and a live trail map that turns Seven's tracks into ruts.
- Light puzzle: heliostats aim their mirror normal halfway between the source and the crystal. A ray test against the heightfield and the basalt meshes decides whether the light really arrives.
- Soft light: leaves, fronds and grass let sunlight through when it is behind them. Coral scatters light past its shadow line. Occlusion is baked into every tree crown and boulder, and the ground darkens where things stand on it. Desktop adds screen-space ambient occlusion on High graphics.
- Relay mirrors: a charged crystal's light climbs to the Sun Organ by bouncing off small mirrors on posts. Their spots are planned against the terrain when the island loads, so no beam passes through the hill.
- Sea life: seven kinds of reef fish, barracuda, green sea turtles, spotted eagle rays and spinner dolphins were rebuilt from the lab's asset library and share one colour atlas. Each kind is a single draw call. The vertex shader swims every animal: a fish beats its tail, a turtle sculls, a ray ripples its wings, and a dolphin leaps. The corals, plant patches and seabed rocks were rebuilt the same way, and each coral colony is tinted its own colour.
- Water: the sea is glassy when you look straight down and turns to a mirror toward the horizon. Small facets glitter in the sun. Sand under the water stays pale, so the shallows read turquoise instead of grey.
- Birds: the gull, parrot, and toucan were rebuilt for this island. Each body was remeshed, its colours baked into the surface, and a new skeleton made with several bones in each wing. Flight, rest, takeoff, and landing are baked clips, and each bird plays them on its own clock so a flock never flaps in step. A resting gull is its own small model, with its wings folded along its flanks.
- Sound: crystal notes, the organ chord, and the growing drone are synthesized live. Treads, mud, waves, birds, crickets, and wind are recorded effects brought over from FIELDWORK.
The sun that broke the sky
Early builds went completely black whenever the dial left dawn. The cause was the sun itself. Its disc is so bright that, when the sky was rendered into the environment map, the value overflowed the texture format and turned into "not a number." One bad value spread through every reflective surface on the island. The fix was to leave the sun disc out of the reflected sky, since the direct sun already comes from the key light, and to borrow FIELDWORK's habit of scrubbing bad pixels before bloom.
Known limits
V5 runs on WebGL2 and is happiest on a desktop browser or a recent phone. Phones get a lighter graphics tier with fewer shadows and less grass. The save lives in your browser only.
Read the original V5 build diary, published October 18, 2026, for the Oahu photos, trailer, and island views that introduced Lumen Reach.