Lighthouse is a Harbour Masters port of Banjo-Kazooie, a decompilation and modernization project led by Malkierian with developers JeodC and Caladius. Written in C, the project enables players to run the classic Nintendo 64 platformer on modern systems while providing extensive customization and modding capabilities. The repository does not include copyrighted assets, requiring users to provide their own legally obtained ROM dump of the game to generate a playable version.

The project supports multiple regional versions of Banjo-Kazooie, including US v1.0, US v1.1, Japanese, and PAL releases. Users must verify their ROM dump using SHA-1 checksums provided in the documentation and ensure the file is in .z64 format before proceeding. The build process converts the ROM into an OTR file that Lighthouse uses to run the game. Installation is straightforward across Windows, Linux, and macOS platforms, with users simply extracting the release files and running the appropriate executable for their operating system.

Lighthouse offers flexible controller configuration with default keyboard mappings provided for standard gameplay, including X for the A button, C for B, Z for Z, Space for Start, WASD for the analog stick, arrow keys for C buttons, and TFGH for the D-Pad. Users can create custom controller mappings through the built-in mapper in the Settings menu if their controller is not automatically recognized. Additional keyboard shortcuts enable toggling the menubar with ESC, resetting with Ctrl+R, fullscreen mode with F11, and toggling alternate assets with Tab.

The project supports three graphics rendering backends: DirectX11 for Windows, OpenGL across all platforms, and Metal for macOS. Users can switch between these APIs through the Settings menu or by manually editing the lighthouse.cfg.json configuration file, which is useful for troubleshooting crashes. DirectX11 serves as the default on Windows while Metal is default on macOS.

Language pack support allows users to extract additional language options from different regional ROM versions. The PAL version provides UK, French, and German language options, while the Japanese version adds Japanese support. These language packs are generated through the in-game imgui menu under General Settings and subsequently appear in the language dropdown menu.

Lighthouse supports many ROM hacks that can be extracted from patched ROMs and used as mods through the in-game Romhacks menu in Settings. However, only US v1.0 is officially supported for ROM hacks, inherited from the Banjo's Backpack project. Custom assets can be added by placing .o2r or .otr files in the mods folder, with tools like retro and fast64 available for creating and packing custom asset files.

The project maintains continuous integration builds available for playtesting on Windows, macOS, and Linux through nightly builds, though these are intended for testing purposes and may contain bugs or crashes. Lighthouse is powered by libultraship and benefits from extensive Banjo decompilation documentation and community contributions. The official community gathers on Discord for support and discussion, with developers emphasizing that the project does not condone piracy.