Brightfall, an Upcoming Survival-Craft Game, Expands Its Dark 17th-Century Lore

In development for PC via Steam and published by Dark Point Games S.A., Brightfall is an upcoming open-world survival-craft game set in 1666, in the immediate aftermath of the Great Plague of London. With a release date still to be announced, the game places one to four players on a cursed island erased from official records, where light, sanity, and survival are inseparably linked. In a recent developer devlog, the studio expanded on the game’s lore, offering deeper insight into the island’s origins and why it was deliberately forgotten.

Set just after the plague loosened its grip on London, the narrative begins with players in chains, transported across treacherous seas to an island whispered about in half-forgotten manuscripts. Scholars once referred to the place as Brightfall, inspired by medieval texts describing a land where light itself seemed to bend and vanish. Its older Celtic name, Breithval, carries a more ambiguous meaning, translating to either Hidden Valley or Bright Valley depending on interpretation and belief.

Long before it became a destination for the Crown’s unwanted, the island was inhabited by Celtic communities who viewed it as both sacred and deeply dangerous. Their myths spoke of a living darkness that returned in cycles, reshaping the land as a form of divine punishment. At some point, these inhabitants disappeared without explanation, leaving behind ruins, runic stones, and shattered menhirs that still mark the island and suggest that history has repeated itself here before.

Unofficially, Brightfall later became a convenient solution for prisoners, scholars, and dissidents deemed too troublesome to keep and too insignificant to make an example of. Shipped away to what sailors came to call the Place of No Return, they vanished from public concern. Officially, however, the Crown of England insists that the island does not exist at all. Brightfall was deliberately removed from maps and records, and any attempt to acknowledge it is quietly discouraged.

This expanded lore reinforces Brightfall’s central themes, where darkness is not merely the absence of light but a conscious force that warps nature, erodes sanity, and remembers every failure. As players scavenge, build, and push back the gloom, the island’s past looms over every expedition, serving as a reminder that many were sent here before, and few, if any, were ever meant to return.