Lights Out is a hypercasual side-scrolling or platformer game with a dungeon-crawler element that features a unique twist. The player directs a character made of flames through 50 pitch-black dungeons. Their primary objective is to safely direct the anthropomorphic fire through all of the levels.
The player can only brighten a space briefly before it plunges back into darkness. If they attempt to burn the flames high for too long, the character dies. They must then restart the level. That said, they can use the Help button in the upper-right area and an ad view to turn on a lasting light in a room.
As with other dungeon crawlers, this game presents the player with deadly obstacles and traps. Common ones include ceiling and ground-level spikes and gaps between floating platforms that open up into a vast void that starts in a room and then drops off the bottom of the screen. If the character touches any part of a spike or falls into a gap, the player loses and must restart from the beginning of the level.
Lights Out requires the player to use common sense. For example, imagine a scene with the fire character starting on a left-side top platform above left-side steps and a bridge-like platform that connects with a right-side doorway. The player might initially believe they must direct the character to slide and jump down the steps past spikes to reach their goal. Instead, they can bypass the steps entirely by making the fire leap right off the top platform and drop down onto the bridge.
