Factsheet

Title
FIRST LIGHT
Developer / Publisher
Ephphatha Games — solo, Jonathan Mellette
Release date
November 10, 2026
Demo
Available now, free — the complete first act
Price
$12.99 USD
Platforms
Windows 10+ · macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon) · Steam Deck
Genre
Story-rich arcade brick-breaker
Players
Single-player
Length
6–8 hours story campaign, plus endless mode
Languages
English, fully voiced
Steam App ID
4985080
Website
playfirstlight.com
Press contact
press@playfirstlight.com

Description

One line

A story-rich arcade brick-breaker where every wall you break gives back a memory the Fog took.

Fifty words

FIRST LIGHT is a story-rich arcade brick-breaker built around one family’s century. Each of its 132 levels opens with a memory, told by one of five narrators, sealed inside an old cabinet against the Fog that takes unwitnessed things. Classic paddle-and-ball play; six to eight hours of story underneath it.

Full

Classic paddle-and-ball play, rebuilt around a family’s whole century: one memory per level, told by five narrators, sealed against the Fog that takes unwitnessed things. Every wall you break is the Fog’s work undone.

The telling

  • 132 memories across four acts — a grandmother’s river town, a father’s long yard, a boy’s 1986 arcade summer, and the fourth act the machine was built to keep
  • Fully voiced by five narrators, one memory before every level. Listen, or skip straight to the bricks
  • Choose your teller. Taylor speaks in the voice you pick, male or female
  • Four paintings hidden behind the four bosses, revealed brick by brick
  • An original 64-song soundtrack, nearly three hours, scored so each memory plays the song that agrees with it

The game

  • Honest arcade brick-breaking: reflexes, angles, and nerve. Easy to start, hard to put down
  • A capsule economy that pays for risk — stack multipliers, bank speed, grow the light cannon, or catch the black pill on purpose
  • Four difficulties, from a gentle telling to one-life INSANE
  • Boss walls where the Fog itself fights back. Play calm; walls come down for patient hands
  • 33 achievements, three save campaigns, and a high-score board with one name already on it: M-E-G

Afterglow

Beat it for the telling. Come back for AFTERGLOW: just the music, no dying, endless.

Screenshots

FIRST LIGHT screenshot 1
FIRST LIGHT screenshot 2
FIRST LIGHT screenshot 3
FIRST LIGHT screenshot 4
FIRST LIGHT screenshot 5
FIRST LIGHT screenshot 6

Every image on this page is free to use in coverage of FIRST LIGHT.

Logos, studio mark & capsule art

FIRST LIGHT logo, light
logo-light.png · for dark backgrounds
FIRST LIGHT logo, dark
logo-dark.png · for light backgrounds
FIRST LIGHT Steam header capsule
capsule-header.png · 920×430
FIRST LIGHT icon
icon.png · square
Ephphatha Games studio mark, light
studio-logo-light.png · for dark backgrounds
Ephphatha Games studio mark, dark
studio-logo-dark.png · for light backgrounds

History — how it was made

FIRST LIGHT was built by one person in 32 days, followed by three more months of work to reach version 1.0.0.

The level design began as 132 machine-generated placeholder boards. Not one survived. All 132 were rebuilt by hand, brick by brick, most of them in Microsoft Excel.

“Slop was never a question of what made the thing. It’s a question of whether anyone stayed in the room while it was being made.”

The developer’s essay on the making of the game, Built, not Generated, is published in full and is the longest answer to how the tools were used — alongside a second essay written by the AI that helped build it.

AI disclosure

FIRST LIGHT uses generative AI for player-facing assets, and says so on its Steam page. Specifically:

AssetToolHuman work
Music Suno (licensed, commercial) Over 750 generations auditioned to find the ones that fit; each track matched by hand to the level it scores. The vocal credits song took 150+ generations, 96 of them in one day
Narration ElevenLabs (licensed, commercial) Dozens of voices auditioned down to five; every take regenerated until the inflection matched the scene
Illustration ChatGPT Images Directed for character consistency across the four boss paintings; some art drawn by the developer from scratch
Code & level scaffolding Claude All 132 placeholder boards discarded and rebuilt by hand

The developer is happy to discuss this on the record in as much detail as an outlet wants, including what the tools did badly.

Trailer & video

  • Official trailer (0:55) — watch on YouTube
  • “There You Are” (4:43), the game’s vocal credits song — watch on YouTube
  • Opening cinematic (1:54) — the game’s cold open, in both castings: female voice · male voice. The same scene in two tellings is the clearest look at the choose-your-teller casting
  • Unedited b-roll — available on request, no music or commentary, for outlets who need clean footage

Selected facts

  • 132 hand-built levels; every one of them replaced a machine-generated original
  • 185 recorded narration takes across five voices
  • A 64-song original score, close to three hours of music
  • The script was written to never name the protagonist’s gender; the player picks the narrator’s voice
  • The high-score board ships with one name already on it. You find out whose

Credits

Design, code, writing, direction, level design
Jonathan Mellette
Lyrics
Jonathan Mellette
Built with
Electron, PixiJS, TypeScript
Generative tools
Claude, ChatGPT Images, Suno, ElevenLabs — all under commercial licence

Contact

Press & creator enquiries: press@playfirstlight.com

Steam keys are available on request to press and content creators. Just ask — there is no application form and no follower minimum.

Coverage permission: monetised video and streaming of FIRST LIGHT is expressly permitted, including full playthroughs, on any platform, in perpetuity.