WILL: Follow the Light Review – A Personal Adventure

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Many video games explore personal stories about characters uncovering their pasts and facing present challenges. But WILL: Follow the Light, developed by TomorrowHead Studio, stands out because of how well it tells its story and its inventive gameplay. It goes beyond what you typically find in games sometimes dismissively called “walking simulators”.

“After having run through his maintenance job, Will gets to sleep for the night.”

This backstory doesn’t directly help solve the game’s puzzles or advance the main story, but it does a great job of fleshing out Will as a character. We even get hints about his past relationship with his wife and his current friendships with his lighthouse coworkers. These early sections also showcase one of the game’s biggest strengths: its atmosphere. Beautiful graphics and sound create a constant feeling of unease about the approaching storm. The game also strongly emphasizes Will’s isolation – you don’t meet another person for over an hour, aside from brief radio chats.

Will finally gets to sleep after finishing his maintenance work, but his rest is quickly interrupted by a power outage and a distress call on the radio. A boat is stranded and needs urgent help to weather the storm, and to complicate things, the lighthouse beacon has gone out. This initial sequence kicks off the main adventure in WILL: Follow the Light. It also cleverly functions as a tutorial, introducing you to most of the game’s core mechanics, with just one exception.

Beyond exploring, reading notes, and interacting with characters, WILL: Follow the Light offers surprisingly detailed gameplay for sailing and dog sledding. It’s clear TomorrowHead Studio put a lot of effort into these features. You’ll start by learning to sail, navigating rough seas and carefully managing your sails to avoid capsizing in large waves. Later in the game, after the story gets going, you’ll also be able to travel by dog sled.

His rest didn’t last long. A power outage and an emergency radio call soon woke him up.

Dog sledding is incredibly thrilling, and you quickly gain speed. Steering through the twisty mountain trails takes practice, but it doesn’t feel clunky or badly designed. Instead, it feels realistic – like actually managing a team of dogs through snowy conditions would be difficult, which adds to the experience.

WILL: Follow the Light doesn’t have a lot of complex gameplay. You’ll primarily explore different areas, searching for clues, solving simple puzzles, and occasionally talking to characters. Most puzzles involve finding and using the correct item, though there are a few tile-based challenges, like one where you restore power by guiding a switch through a system. It’s clear that TomorrowHead Studio prioritized storytelling and character development, and designed the gameplay to serve the narrative.

The environments in WILL: Follow the Light are consistently stunning, ranging from the dramatic opening seas to the panoramic views from the lighthouse and the town where Will grew up, including its ruins. While frequent fog obscures some details, it doesn’t feel like a shortcut; instead, it strengthens the game’s atmosphere and reinforces Will’s sense of isolation, even when surrounded by people.

“Just about every environment in WILL: Follow the Light is downright beautiful”

The game looks great, and it runs well too. On a PC with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, 32GB of RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card, I consistently achieved smooth performance at a 2560×1440 resolution. While I couldn’t always reach my goal of 100 frames per second with all the graphics settings turned up, the game generally ran at a solid 60 FPS, and often reached 80 FPS during less demanding scenes. Importantly, I didn’t encounter any noticeable performance problems like stuttering, lag, or sluggishness.

Because WILL: Follow the Light relies so heavily on its story, the voice acting is crucial – and thankfully, it’s consistently good. The characters all feel believable, and while a few lines are delivered a bit strangely (usually to emphasize the bond between Will and his team), nothing is distracting enough to ruin the overall experience.

WILL: Follow the Light stands out from many ‘walking simulator’ games because it stays engaging from beginning to end. While similar games often lose steam after a couple of interesting concepts, this game’s story kept me invested throughout. Combined with beautiful graphics, excellent voice acting, and occasional gameplay variety, WILL: Follow the Light is a great choice for players who enjoy story-rich experiences.

This game was reviewed on PC.

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2026-05-14 16:12