The Path

aka: 144
Moby ID: 39703
Windows Specs
Buy on Windows
$9.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

The Path is an unconventional psychological horror game based on the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood and a French grandmother's tale from the 14th century. Described by the developers as a game about growing up, it consists of three acts that can be played with six different girls. To tell its story, the game uses the first-, second- and third person perspective. As much of the game depends on surprise and exploration, the game's outline as described below can be considered heavy on spoilers.

The game starts inside a house where a mother can instruct one of her six daughters (Robin, Rose, Ginger, Ruby, Carmen, and Scarlet, all aged nine to nineteen) to bring a basket with wine to their grandmother's house. Players then control one of the sisters as she walks down the path leading to the house. When players follow the road and enter the house, a chapter is completed, but rated poorly. To fully experience the game, the player eventually has to instruct the girls to leave the path and venture into the surrounding woods.

While exploring the woods, the graphics fade to a dim palette, with haunting sound effects and music (composed by Jarboe, formerly with the band Swans), and graphical patterns appearing as a screen overlay. There are no visible or invisible borders to the endless forest. The girls need to find key locations (called attractions) and items they can pick up. Scattered around are abandoned objects that all bring about fragments of a story. The forest layout is randomized for each playthrough and sometimes only specific daughters can interact with an object in the environment. At the same time, their different experiences are interwoven as they make remarks about past events.

Items bring about memories and lines of text that subtly explain the girl's history and desire to leave the path and venture into the woods. The real meaning behind the game is largely left to the player's imagination, but many clues for interpretation are provided. The game sometimes takes over control, adding a black border around the screen, but never to take over decisions for the player or to lead him into a certain action.

Virtually no clues are provided while exploring the forest and a map with the walked route only briefly appears after every 100 meters. The daughters are able to walk and run, but the latter is largely discouraged through an in-game mechanic, making it a slow game in general. Players can also pick up up to 144 flowers that reveal a location for every six collected. It is not possible to fail in The Path, but conscious decisions by the players lead to events that cannot be reversed.

The game is controlled through the keyboard and the mouse, while actions are performed by letting go of the mouse. The game also uses a behaviour system called Drama Princess, where a girl reacts with the environment when the players lets go of the controls, chosen randomly from a pool of possible actions in that scene. While playing, sequences, actions, items, or characters also appear as a faded overlay over the left side of the screen. After completing the game once, it can be turned into a cooperative multiplayer game by plugging in a gamepad. There is an inventory, but rather as a reference than as a way to interact with the environment. The game does not contain voiced conversations, everything is conveyed through written text, gestures, or actions.

Spellings

  • Тропа. Страшная сказка - Russian spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

54 People (40 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Design
Direction
Character Design
Animation
Sound
Music
Typography
Technical Artist
Programming
Engine
  • Act-3D
Financing
  • Creative Capital
  • De Vlaamse Overheid
  • Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds
  • Design Flanders
  • CultuurInvest
  • Villanella
Testers
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 28 ratings with 2 reviews)

Couldn't have said that better

The Good
I always refer to the game (and other games from this producer) as an interactive painting. Even if you didn't play it yourself, you will have to admit that it looks really awesome. I had a brand-new graphics card when I first played this and I had to upgrade again just to run it. The world is also not very repetitive and full of interesting things.

The character design is equally as awesome and they are also characterized amazingly well. The first game I played from this company was The Graveyard, so I did expect something, but not this much. Also it needs to be said: I love it how you learn more about them by finding objects and areas which they comment on.

The story is open for interpretation and because of that I will not go deeper into my own opinion as it may clash with yours. This is really a game that you shouldn't discuss as it is much more enjoyable when you just know your own version of it.

The game is very atmospheric and I just loved it. Everything from the music to the small visual details that showed up every now and then, it got me crying while playing this game. I know a masterpiece when I see it and this is one of them.

The Bad
The gameplay could have used a little polish. Most of the time you are looking for objects that get the story going and the easiest way to find them (as opposed to the incredibly annoying way) it to follow the girl in the white dress, but she always runs and if you run the camera slowly moves to a top-down perspective making it impossible to see the girl.

Even with GeForce 9500 GT this game still runs rather poorly.

The Bottom Line
This game is only for the people who love going to museums or a very story-heavy game (or a combination between the two, like me), but maybe some other people will like it as well. The game itself has one major flaw, but it redeems for that by been written incredibly well and having an unmatched presentation!

Windows · by Asinine (957) · 2011

Not for everyone, but will appeal to story-driven Adventure gamers

The Good
The music really gets the job done; I didn't always enjoy it, but some of it is really good. Even so, when you are aimlessly wandering through the forest, confused about what you are supposed to be doing, the music may start to get on your nerves.

The graphics will start to grate after a while, but are nicely done, with perhaps too much of a tendency to try for 'artistic' effects. In general, the graphics and backgrounds are pretty muted, so that when you do get to anywhere really significant, you know it.

The Bad
This can be quite a slow game, and it spoon-feeds you nothing. You have to just go with the flow and try things, which is almost all of its charm.

This means that you just have to trust that the developers knew what they were doing, and try it for a while. Which means complete submission to a pace that seems glacially slow. There is no 'instant gratification' here; you will have to block some serious time to play this - minutes won't do, it will take hours.

So it can be quite a stretch to work through a game like this, as you never know if you have done the right thing or the wrong thing, and most of it really doesn't seem to make any sense anyway. [It does eventually make quite a lot of sense, but you have to travel quite a long way down 'The Path' to get to this point.]

There was some buzz about the graphics; for my part I found them pretty old-school, which works but wasn't quite up to what I had been led to expect. The scenery tiles away endlessly into the distance, in fact it really does tile away endlessly, as the map loops around, so you can spend huge periods of time wondering where the heck you are on the map. But in the end it doesn't really matter ...

The Bottom Line
This is really a throwback to pre-Disney times when nursery tales were meant to educate young children rather than simply entertain them. While everyone THINKS they know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, in fact it is actually a very old story that has been told in different ways at different times and in different cultures. This game re-imagines that story as a computer game. It's pretty successful at this, but modern expectations of a computer game may lead buyers to expect something different than an interactive story.

At one point, one of the characters says "Art is where the nobility of humanity is expressed. I could not live in a world without it." I would take this as being the voice of the games developers/creators. Even so, if you are not in agreement with this statement, you probably will not like this game. It definitely qualifies as Art, meaning it tells a story (or a number of them). Their meaning, like all good stories, is to be determined by the player and largely depends on what the player brings with them. Nothing is cut-and-dried - many computer games have a recognizable beginning and end, and once you have finished playing you know whether you won or lost. There is none of that here. The stories are a jumping-off point for further discussion - like the best of art, they are open-ended, a beginning rather than an end. If you were looking for mindless entertainment, you will be disappointed. If you were looking for something that may stick with you for quite a while - like the 'Dark Eye' perhaps - then you may well like this title quite a lot.

Windows · by thud (97) · 2009

Discussion

Subject By Date
The Path - Teh Reviewes!!! Slug Camargo (583) May 4, 2009

Trivia

8

The Girl in White is a character from Tale of Tales' first, eventually cancelled game, 8.

1001 Video Games

The Path appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Blogs

Leading up to the release of the game, the creators created LiveJournal blogs for all six characters. They would post entries revealing their character and hint at the events of the game, and would even comment on each other's blog entries. The links to the blogs can be found in the related links section.

USB stick

Besides as digital download, The Path was released on a black, sturdy metal 1 GB USB stick with a print of Ruby and the The Path logo under a rounded glossy plastic overlay and with a transparent plastic cap to protect the plug. A black (Windows) or red (Macintosh) satin ribbon was attached by hand and can easily be removed. The stick includes a copy of the game and digital goodies such as desktop wallpapers, work in progress movies, and audio clips.

Information also contributed by game nostalgia

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Related Sites +

  • Carmen's place.
    fictional LiveJournal blog of Carmen, a character from the game
  • Everything A Big Bad Wolf Could Want
    A five-minute radio broadcast by the NPR show All Things Considered, which discusses the themes and unique gameplay in The Path, with additional commentary being provided by Co-Designers Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey. A partial transcription is also provided (July, 2009).
  • Ginger The Great!
    fictional LiveJournal blog of Ginger, a character from the game
  • Grandmother's house
    official game website
  • Mac Gamer Review
    A review of The Path by The Mac Gamer's Brad Snios (June 24th, 2009).
  • Robin!
    fictional LiveJournal blog of Robin, a character from the game
  • Ruby's funhouse.
    fictional LiveJournal blog of Ruby, a character from the game
  • Scarlet's World
    fictional LiveJournal blog of Scarlet, a character from the game
  • The Diary of Rose Red
    fictional LiveJournal blog of Rose, a character from the game
  • The Path
    project page on the developer's website
  • The Path Post Mortem
    an extensive post mortem by the developers, one year after the original release
  • The Path: A Fairy Tale for Adults
    An Apple Games article discussing the Mac version of The Path, with input from the designers.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 39703
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Zeppin, Klaster_1, FatherJack.

Game added March 18, 2009. Last modified July 17, 2023.