Father-son relationships have been a steady source of narration in games for some time. You can look as far back as Heavy Rain and its portrayal of Ethan’s search for his kidnapped son or in God of War (2018), where we see the father try to pass on their knowledge to their child while contending with world-ending external stakes. These and many other games have successfully managed to shine different lights on father-and-son bonding, and Will: Follow the Light is the newest game to attempt to explore what can be a turbulent and confusing connection between parent and child.
You play as Will, a lighthouse keeper set in a quaint, undisclosed UK town. While at his post, he had to rush back home as a storm had created a damaging mudslide that had devastated parts of the town. Will can’t find his son Thomas, who has been with Will’s father most of the day, which sets Will on a journey to try and find both his son and his father through solving puzzles, speaking with the locals and exploring the sea on Will’s yacht, Molly, which will take you to a few surrounding destinations.
The narrative weaves through items found while exploring different locations. A picture will spur Will to spill some memory, or a tape with a recording of a close person to Will feeds more into the backstory and his rocky relationship with his dad. The game also utilises a clever mechanic with a lantern which can shine different-coloured lights. This can be used on certain drawings found on walls that, when the correct light is shone, will kick-start a scene from the past. These usually contain conversations from people close to Will that will either pass on information to fill in even more of his backstory or give you hints at a particular puzzle that you may be attempting. It’s also a fine fog killer when the need arises!
While the story that flows throughout the game is heavily orientated around Will and his dad, it also touches on death and the aftermath it brings while also delving into Will’s relationship with his own son and how Will may share more of his own dad’s traits than he would like to admit. This all leads to quite dark material, but the game has been written well enough to deal with these difficult subjects in a tasteful manner, threading a heartfelt and relatable story. Saying this, there are times the writing lets the game down, especially with how some characters respond to Will and his situation.
The game starts strong as we join Will at his post, helping him to take weather readings for the upcoming storm and helping to ready the lighthouse. It’s in these moments that the game is at its strongest, throwing light on a life many know little about. This early point in the game gently eases you into the type of environment puzzling you’ll be doing throughout – namely, entering said weather reports into the system that’s gathered in a multitude of ways. Later in the game these puzzles evolve to include moving fuel tanks to start a generator for power, trying to find a combination to a padlock or its many item fetch quests.
Although I loved the settings around the puzzles and the elements they involved, they did become too frustrating in the end. This is mostly down to the solutions being held in clues scattered or hidden (with some hidden a little too well) around the close proximity to the puzzle for you to find and figure out. It caused me to wander around aimlessly many times, which in the end resulted in me looking up the solutions in some places. This may be a ‘me’ problem, but anybody else who feels they will struggle with this type of puzzling may want to prepare a guide for the latter part of the game.
Some of the tasks involved also didn’t make too much sense to me either. For instance: Will is at his wits’ end trying to find his son but for some reason still has to spend time finding spark plugs for a lazy engineer who’s fixing his boat. And there are other instances just like this throughout the whole game. It also felt, especially near the end, that it was just throwing problems at you to solve just to stretch the game’s playtime out, as these really felt unnecessary and didn’t add anything to the narrative. It actually made me sigh that I was so close to the resolution of Will’s journey but still had to contend with these issues.
Aside from these problems, a big part of the game is the sailing in your boat ‘Molly’, moving from island to island in your search for Thomas, and it was one of its biggest appeals to me. I’m no sailor, but it felt like the development team really did their homework, making sure to get the right feel for sailing. With a multitude of options at hand to get the boat moving, it felt realistic without it ever being overbearing. The tutorialisation was also on point, with it being featured in a flashback with Will and his father.
Visuals stand out here, with much care and attention taken to be as detailed as possible. Locations and buildings are realised beautifully, especially in remote areas, as you really do feel cut off from the rest of the world. Sailing is another plus, as Molly has been created perfectly from its cabin to its sails, and the water effects, especially when out at sea, are impeccable. There’s a stage at the start of the game where a person sets off a flare from sea in the pitch dark, and the effects are beautiful, creating one of the game’s most memorable moments solely through its visuals.
So it makes it all more frustrating that although the character models have received mostly the same attention to detail, they are so wooden in their movement. They just stand there, as if glued to the spot, which instantly undoes all the hard work the developers have put into the realism of the game. There’s a moment where Will falls asleep on a couch with a character he’s speaking with just standing there, and when he wakes up, the same character is still standing in the exact same spot, wearing the same clothes and presumably holding the same cup of coffee he was when Will went to sleep.
This plagued the whole game, and it felt like I was back playing something in the early 2000s. It constantly reminded me I was playing a game and sucked away any connections I had with Will and the narrative. I appreciate the scope of the game, and funds may not have been available to fully animate all the characters, but I would have preferred a little less realism if that meant having movable character models.
