Farewell North Review — A Light in the Darkness

Farewell North is a puzzle story game about bringing light back to a colorless world. From the unique perspective of a dog, you use the game’s symbolic mechanics to restore the color to the life of your owner as you witness a story about grief and moving forward, all set in the iconic Scottish Isles. A beautiful game with a great soundtrack, Farewell North is sure to tug on your heartstrings and bring a little bit of color into your day.

This review does contain very minor spoilers for the story of Farewell North, though if I’m being honest, while the game’s story is emotional and well-written, it is not at all unpredictable. If you’re anything like me and other reviews I’ve read, you should see a good amount of it coming before it does.

As I mentioned above, the game puts you in the shoes (paws?) of border collie Chesley and their owner, Cèilidh, who has come to spread her late mother’s ashes among the beautiful wilderness of the Scottish Isles.

When I said that Farewell North is a game about bringing color back to a person’s life, I meant it literally.

At first, the whole game is presented in black and white, with people and animals being featureless blobs of white. This may seem fitting due to the myth about dogs only seeing in black and white, but since that is a myth and the fact that we can actually restore color to the game suggests otherwise.

Yes, when Chesley barks, a quick burst of color fills the air around them. Using this ability, you bring color to nodes that can maintain the color for longer or spread it into the environment around you.

A great deal of the game is played with pretty easy-to-solve platforming puzzles, the majority of which are solved with the color mechanic. Specific paths are blocked only until you can bring a flower or other source of color back to the area, revealing invisible paths or otherwise unlocking the way forward.

I want to mention Farewell North also features canoe segments designed around what I can only assume are realistic canoe physics, with A and D controls to paddle to the left or right of the canoe. I can only imagine this is how a real canoe works because, with no idea about the physics of canoe travel, I found myself immediately crashing into the shore of an island and failing to make my turn. Thankfully, the game allows you to switch to simplified canoe controls for a less immersive but easier-to-control experience.

Of course, the color mechanic is much more than just a clever way to platform; it is the crux of the game’s symbolism.

As you can probably imagine, at the beginning of and for most of the duration of Farewell North, protagonist Cèilidh is not in a good place. To describe her as literally missing all of the color from her life would not at all be inaccurate. The game’s greyscale color palette is not just interesting to look at but a visual representation of our main character’s grief. At moments that are especially hard for her, the game gets even more colorless and heavily shaded, giving an almost overwhelming feeling of hopelessness.

Chesley, then, restores light to Cèilidh’s life by chasing butterflies, herding sheep, helping neighbors, and generally just being a dog, sparking little moments of happiness in their owner’s life. Bringing light back to the scene is much more than a simple platforming mechanic. It is meant to literally represent Cèilidh’s emotional state and healing, with the light stored gradually at first and eventually filling entire scenes.

I find it fitting that Farewell North uses a border collie as the conduit of this light, and the way said border collie does it simply by being there for their owner. Isn’t that exactly what a pet does? When we’re feeling our lowest, our pets have a way to make little moments of happiness in our lives by simply being themselves. Those little moments add up and become cherished memories that we carry with us forever. A beloved pet can quickly become a member of your family and a piece of yourself you’ll have forever.

Farewell North is also unique in the way it covers the topic of Scottish identity. It covers the concepts of cultural erasure and conformity, something I understand the Scottish people have been dealing with for centuries. An example of this is the character I have been referring to as Cèilidh, who is actually introduced to us as Cailey, having changed her name to better fit into an English-dominated society. However, by the end of the game, she reclaims the original Gaelic spelling of her name, and it felt weird of me to refer to her as anything else after the fact.

Farewell North is an emotional game for sure, one that will challenge you to feel and may even make you cry, especially if you yourself are a dog owner. It also has a fantastic soundtrack for this, with heartwarmingly beautiful orchestral music. If I were to criticize the game, I would say that the platforming is a bit too easy, with puzzles that are solved almost without effort, and that the price is a little too high for what the game offers. While the latter complaint is more of an opinionated statement, to the former, I will also add the caveat that the game is there to share its story, not necessarily challenge you, so for most people, this won’t be a problem at all.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Farewell North is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.