The Path Review

The other game I played through this last weekend was The Path. It's a creepy adventure game based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Basically, you select from one of 6 different "Red" sisters. Each of them sport a unique personality: little Robin is young and naive, Scarlet is the responsible "mom" type, Ruby is the rebellious goth, etc. Regardless of your choice, you are dumped at the start of the path with two instructions:

1. Go to Grandmother's house
2. Don't stray from the path

Like any good little gamer, I walked straight down the path, entered Grandmother's house, navigated to her room (you just press a button and watch the girl automatically move through the house), and was promptly informed that I had failed.

I immediately started again and decided to carefully make my way off of the path. At first I was hesitant and kept the path in sight, fearing that I would be attacked by a wolf if I strayed too far. After I continued to encounter nothing, I decided I would just run directly away and see what I could find.

Before long, I came to a graveyard. I looked around and saw some objects I could "interact" with: a skull, a dead bird, and even a mysterious girl in white. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I spent the next hour or so wandering aimlessly through the forest. I found various things strewn about, some of which I could "collect" and some I could not -- there was an obvious indicator on some that I would need to visit it with another girl. Eventually, I had an encounter with the "wolf," who was some sort of water entity or something. When I awoke, I was lying on the ground just outside of Grandmother's house. I limped inside and quickly discovered that the interior was quite different. Instead of walking peacefully to Grandmother's room, I went from room to room, each of which was like some sort of personal Hell for my "sister." Instead of arriving safely at the end, I eventually encountered a final room and I think I was killed somehow. I don't really know.

That's pretty much the whole game. I played through with each of the other 5 girls for good measure, each of which had a different feel and experiences, but were all pretty similar.

Okay, my final thoughts:

Loved

• Creepy. The game had great music and a great visual style. I also really enjoyed how the comments of the girls were written to the screen. In general, there always seemed to be some sort of danger lurking, even though there wasn't. I also thought the scenes in Grandma's house were both creepy and disturbing.

Hated

• WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?! I basically spent the whole game asking that question. I figured it would become more clear when I starting playing with other girls. Nope. Then I figured it would become more clear when I played the Epilogue. Nope. Finally, I went and read a walkthough of the game hoping that would make it more obvious. Nope. I get that the game is dripping with symbolism (the wolves represent things like rape/approval/etc.), but it was WAY too abstract for me. There was just lots of stuff (read: pretty much everything) that there was no explanation for.
• Wandering in the forest. The game expects you to find various objects throughout the forest. Each girl has a subset of the overall group of items that she can find/interact with. These subsets overlap between the various girls. Each girl also has 2-3 "special" items that she finds that unlock extra rooms at Grandma's. Finally, each girl needs to find her "wolf." The forest is a ridiculously annoying place with visibility at only a couple hundred feet, sides that wrap (think Zelda Lost Forest style), and very few landmarks of any distinction. The only map you initially get (until you finish the game once) is a 2D overlay that shows up every so often on its own, indicating the path you have taken. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the forest was different (at least slightly) for every girl. All of these things combined meant that I spent the VAST majority of my time just sort of wandering aimlessly, looking for things I could interact with. It was quite tedious and definitely sucked away from my overall enjoyment.

The Path is definitely in the "art as games" category. I'll be honest: I didn't "get it." That's not to say that somebody else wouldn't, but I'd have a really hard time recommending it. If you like weird, artsy adventure games, give it a try.

And make sure to come back and explain it to me when you're done.