WILL: Follow The Light is a mixed bag of a game. It starts incredibly promisingly as you navigate a small boat through a storm, with the sea raging around you and huge waves coming at you from every direction. It sets the tone for the game’s premise of Will searching for his missing son, but that early set piece creates an expectation the rest of the game just can’t match.
WILL: Follow The Light follows the story of Will, the lighthouse keeper who goes on a journey to find his son after a mudslide destroys much of his town. It should be a game about high stakes, danger, and panic as a father looks for his son in the wake of a natural disaster. Instead, the wind is quickly taken out of the game’s sails when you discover early on that Will’s son was taken out of town by his grandfather before the disaster hit. What we are left with is a series of puzzles set around some pretty menial tasks.
Will wants to find his son, who has been taken to another island. To get there he has to follow the light of the lighthouses he encounters on the way. Before embarking on this journey, Will needs to solve puzzles that include flipping fuses in the right order, retrieving fuses from a shelf in a convoluted way, and repairing a sail winch.
The final puzzle can be beaten with trial and error as you see which piece turns green to fit, while Will makes remarks about whether a piece is needed or not. At no real point is there a sense of satisfaction completing a puzzle, save in the last chapter trying to survive against an angry sperm whale.
We need to talk about Will too. Unfortunately, for much of the game he sounds absolutely bored with everything that is happening from the fact the town as been partially destroyed by a landslide to his son being taken. There is no sense of urgency when he is looking for Thomas, his son, and no real emotion when he is reminiscing about his relationships. He also moans quite a lot when coming across locked doors.
Will: Follow The Light becomes a story about broken relationships following hard moments, and it deserves more emotion behind it especially as it deals with the themes of death, the impact of loss, and how people cope with it.
The tedious puzzles and monotonous delivery of lines really goes against the moments when Will: Follow The Light shines, namely its traversal moments. If there was more sailing then the game would have been so much better for it, because navigating the sea across the open waves, or in places where there are hazards are the parts that standout. The sea and the sailing look near-lifelike too. There is another part of the game where you guide a dog team through an avalanche, which is again a fun section, but these enjoyable or high-stakes sections are few and far between.
