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“Will Glow The Wisp” is a relaxing platformer that does away with platforms, a rather important part of the platforming genre. Self-described as a melee bullet hell, Will Glow The Wisp sees players taking control of wisps to navigate small levels underscored by a genuinely relaxing and upbeat soundtrack.

Giant moving death walls show up in this platformless platformer.

As the Steam description says, Will Glow The Wisp is ‘just distilled gameplay’. A constant downward momentum encourages players to keep moving, to keep managing their speed, which makes for fast gameplay and fast deaths. Fortunately, respawning is near-instant without any fun delaying loading screens. A dash ability takes the pace up a notch, momentarily slowing down time as the screen distorts to allow players to fling wisps through the level. Dashing is useful for correcting your speed to avoid obstacles and in shaving off seconds to attain a higher score.

Looking dashing is no small feat. Well, at least not in the world of “Will Glow The Wisp”.

The largest flaw of “Will Glow The Wisp” is found in its title – the wisps. Players are told that the three wisps have varying strengths and weaknesses and are encouraged to change wisps for different situations, but these pros and cons are not explained clearly. From personal experience, the blue wisp feels the fastest of the three, the pink wisp being the slowest, and the green wisp being a comfortable middle.

Naturally, I stuck to using the blue wisp, choosing speed and score over the safety and survivability that the pink and green wisps offer, but even if I wanted to use the slower wisps I was discouraged to. Changing wisps resets the level, meaning if you wanted to use the pink wisp in a bullet hell section or the blue wisp to whizz past a series of moving hazards, you would have to go through the entire level.

Another flaw with the wisps is their color. You see, several obstacles (including the walls of levels) match the color of the wisps… And in many platformer games obstacles of the same color as the player will be harmless. So I mistakenly assumed “Will Glow The Wisp” would be the same. However, this was not the case in “Will Glow The Wisp”. So this led to several deaths where I was testing out how the game worked. With an art style as simple as Will Glow The Wisp’s I expect it to be clear.

A careless wisper, is a dead wisper.

Sure, there are leaderboards and ‘beat the developer’ wisps encourage replayability. However, I did notice a few issues with the developer wisps, because every so often the developer wisp would fling itself into a wall, unharmed by the level boundaries. So tragically enough, this symbolizes my experience with “Will Glow The Wisp” as a whole, because the game is either on track or wildly off course. That’s also why I can’t recommend “Will Glow the Wisp” to anyone (at least not in its current state), because there are so much better alternatives out there on the market.

Pros:
+ Great soundtrack
+ Fairly priced
+ Unique crossing of genres

Cons:
– Poorly conveyed mechanics
– Too abstract art style
– Repetitive levels

Gameplay: 2/5
Graphics: 2/5
Sound and music: 3/5
Controls: 3/5
Replay value: 3/5

tgg grade 2 out of 5

Verdict: 2/5
Will Glow The Wisp shines brightly in some areas but is disappointingly dim in others. So “if” you’re still interested in the game despite what I just stated, then I would recommend you to try the free demo first before you buy the full game.

Title: Will Glow The Wisp
Developer: PartTimeIndie
Format: PC
Genre: Platformer
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Release date: 2017-09-15
Difficulty: Easy
Spent time: +5 hours
Average grade internationally: N/A
PEGI age rating: N/A
Price: £5.59 via Steam