The Path is a psychological horror art game developed by Tale of Tales originally released for the Microsoft Windows operating system on March 18, 2009 in English and Dutch, and later ported to Mac OS X by TransGaming Technologies. It is inspired by several versions of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, and by folklore tropes and conventions in general, but set in contemporary times. The player can choose to control one of six different sisters, who are sent one-by-one on errands by their mother to see their sick grandmother. The player can choose whether to stay on the path or to wander, where wolves are lying in wait.
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ser una niña es la experiencia más desgarradora por la que puede pasar alguien
I have a gender, and I must scream
As a game... It's just not a game. It's a different way to tell a story.
This review contains spoilers
stay on the path.
☆
The Path is a game that is definitely more interesting to discuss rather than playing it. It's a walking simulator, starring a group of six girls, in which you're just immediately shoved into an apartment without any explanation/story and forced to choose one to begin your journey. Once you do choose between one of six sisters, you're met with a path, and only one objective: "Go to grandmother's house and stay on the path".
Sounds simple enough, right?
With very straightforward instructions, you begin to walk the path all the way to grandmother's house, enter, find her lying in bed with a sweet portrait of your chosen sister above her head, and the game ends there. At this point you'd feel like you have just wasted your time and money, until you're met with a screen stating, "failure"...
...Huh?
How could that be if you followed the instructions given?
After being sent back to the apartment and being able to choose either the same girl or a new one, you're back on the very same path with the very same set of instructions. This time, you stray away from the path.
This is where the game begins.
Once you walk far enough, you turn around and discover that the path is no longer visible, and no matter how far back you retrace your steps, it seems to have vanished into thin air. After enough wandering, you would stumble upon various objects that will trigger text from your chosen girl to pop up on screen, leading you to form a new objective on your own: Find all the objects hidden in the deep woods, and discover the meaning behind them. However, it isn't as easy as it sounds. The area is extremely hard to navigate and ends up looping when you reach a certain distance, causing you to feel lost at all times. It doesn't help that running for too long causes your camera to move up, casting a downward view on your character and making it much harder to find your way around.
Upon starting your new objective, you seem to discover a deeper meaning behind these girls and try your best to form a story to attach to each one. As you continue to walk around you can end up finding another little girl who seems just as lost as you. Stand by her for a few moments, and she will do you the honor of taking you back toward the path. Stand still on your own for long enough and she will come running toward you to do that same. This makes it feel like anybody else you meet would be kind enough as well, right?
Then you end up stumbling upon each girls' "wolf".
Each "wolf" for all the girls is vastly different from the other, ranging from people to... an actual wolf. These, along with each girls' specific discoverable objects, are extremely important to the story. Play through a little cutscene with each wolf and unlock a deeper part of the story, told almost artistically and forcing you to come to your own conclusions about what you witnessed, and what happened to your girl. After interacting with your wolf, you are thrown right outside of grandmother's house, able to do nothing but walk straight forward and inside in a slow, haunting manner.
Once inside, everything changes. You aren't met with your grandmother, but with a house in which every room changes to some cryptic area and all you can do is walk through, trying to connect the dots. Once you reach the end, you are knocked out, and shown images that correlate to your girl and what she has gone through. The story is completely up to interpretation, but there are very obvious hints to events for each girl that are not ignorable.
You are usually given a ranking after this, and that's where your journey with your chosen girl ends. You are sent back to the apartment, forced to choose a new girl (since the one you completed has now vanished) and repeat the process all over again. Once all girls have gone, the apartment is almost completely empty. There is one new girl left, the same one in a white dress you meet throughout your playthroughs. Choose her, spawn in on the path, and have the same objective as all the others.
Playing as her makes it extremely easy to go and collect all the items you missed beforehand since she is able to navigate around the woods with her ability to always find the main path when needed. One difference is that it's raining for some reason. Once you're finished and head to grandmother's house, you're met with an array of rooms before heading into grandmothers' room, in which your girl does not sit on the bed, but kneels at its side. The run is over, and you are sent back to the empty apartment. The girl in white stands there with blood staining her dress as the game restarts, and all six sisters enter the room, returning to their respective places. The little girl in white's section can 100% be open to interpretation, with many people speculating her to be a wolf herself.
While this game is very basic gameplay wise, it's the aesthetics that make it what it is. You truly end up feeling just as lost as these girls are, and everything just feels so cryptic until you're able to piece together small sections and finally form anything coherent. I'd recommend playing this game as an artistic experience, but only if you'd be willing to enter discussions about everything you endured. Watching video essays on it or putting your own interpretation/review out there is key to enjoying the game to its fullest. As for me, this game just SCREAMS girlhood, and what it's like going through the scary world being one no matter what age you're at. With this mindset, everything feels even more eerie as you play through the game.
☆
The Path is a game that is definitely more interesting to discuss rather than playing it. It's a walking simulator, starring a group of six girls, in which you're just immediately shoved into an apartment without any explanation/story and forced to choose one to begin your journey. Once you do choose between one of six sisters, you're met with a path, and only one objective: "Go to grandmother's house and stay on the path".
Sounds simple enough, right?
With very straightforward instructions, you begin to walk the path all the way to grandmother's house, enter, find her lying in bed with a sweet portrait of your chosen sister above her head, and the game ends there. At this point you'd feel like you have just wasted your time and money, until you're met with a screen stating, "failure"...
...Huh?
How could that be if you followed the instructions given?
After being sent back to the apartment and being able to choose either the same girl or a new one, you're back on the very same path with the very same set of instructions. This time, you stray away from the path.
This is where the game begins.
Once you walk far enough, you turn around and discover that the path is no longer visible, and no matter how far back you retrace your steps, it seems to have vanished into thin air. After enough wandering, you would stumble upon various objects that will trigger text from your chosen girl to pop up on screen, leading you to form a new objective on your own: Find all the objects hidden in the deep woods, and discover the meaning behind them. However, it isn't as easy as it sounds. The area is extremely hard to navigate and ends up looping when you reach a certain distance, causing you to feel lost at all times. It doesn't help that running for too long causes your camera to move up, casting a downward view on your character and making it much harder to find your way around.
Upon starting your new objective, you seem to discover a deeper meaning behind these girls and try your best to form a story to attach to each one. As you continue to walk around you can end up finding another little girl who seems just as lost as you. Stand by her for a few moments, and she will do you the honor of taking you back toward the path. Stand still on your own for long enough and she will come running toward you to do that same. This makes it feel like anybody else you meet would be kind enough as well, right?
Then you end up stumbling upon each girls' "wolf".
Each "wolf" for all the girls is vastly different from the other, ranging from people to... an actual wolf. These, along with each girls' specific discoverable objects, are extremely important to the story. Play through a little cutscene with each wolf and unlock a deeper part of the story, told almost artistically and forcing you to come to your own conclusions about what you witnessed, and what happened to your girl. After interacting with your wolf, you are thrown right outside of grandmother's house, able to do nothing but walk straight forward and inside in a slow, haunting manner.
Once inside, everything changes. You aren't met with your grandmother, but with a house in which every room changes to some cryptic area and all you can do is walk through, trying to connect the dots. Once you reach the end, you are knocked out, and shown images that correlate to your girl and what she has gone through. The story is completely up to interpretation, but there are very obvious hints to events for each girl that are not ignorable.
You are usually given a ranking after this, and that's where your journey with your chosen girl ends. You are sent back to the apartment, forced to choose a new girl (since the one you completed has now vanished) and repeat the process all over again. Once all girls have gone, the apartment is almost completely empty. There is one new girl left, the same one in a white dress you meet throughout your playthroughs. Choose her, spawn in on the path, and have the same objective as all the others.
Playing as her makes it extremely easy to go and collect all the items you missed beforehand since she is able to navigate around the woods with her ability to always find the main path when needed. One difference is that it's raining for some reason. Once you're finished and head to grandmother's house, you're met with an array of rooms before heading into grandmothers' room, in which your girl does not sit on the bed, but kneels at its side. The run is over, and you are sent back to the empty apartment. The girl in white stands there with blood staining her dress as the game restarts, and all six sisters enter the room, returning to their respective places. The little girl in white's section can 100% be open to interpretation, with many people speculating her to be a wolf herself.
While this game is very basic gameplay wise, it's the aesthetics that make it what it is. You truly end up feeling just as lost as these girls are, and everything just feels so cryptic until you're able to piece together small sections and finally form anything coherent. I'd recommend playing this game as an artistic experience, but only if you'd be willing to enter discussions about everything you endured. Watching video essays on it or putting your own interpretation/review out there is key to enjoying the game to its fullest. As for me, this game just SCREAMS girlhood, and what it's like going through the scary world being one no matter what age you're at. With this mindset, everything feels even more eerie as you play through the game.
haven’t seen skinamarink but I assume it’s just like this tbh.
rlly uncomfortable and disconcerning.. the fact this runs so badly and barely functions as designed makes it more disturbing. very fascinated by its usage of overlaying different animations and scenes over one other, reminds me a lot of various experimental video work and short films I’ve seen and it’s not smth usually present in games. the scenes where ur navigating the house are so like disorienting and nauseating. def unique and probably very novel in 09 but now seems quaint and well intentioned but still problematic. like idk I think gameifying assault and abuse is incredibly fucking iffy, I don’t mean like making a game out of these concept but including more arcade-y elements of game design like collectibles and ranks I find a bit gross. of course drakengard 3 and rule of rose are very game-like games w big boss fights and similar themes and both were trying to be marketable but also both are so dense in terms of both written text and implied text. and this simply isn’t, it’s incredibly visual which I do like but sometimes the shocking image is just that, it’s just shocking and a little toothless, they can be powerful images but still seemingly only there to push boundaries of accepted good taste.
also pls listen to the ost it’s seriously so beautiful
will prob draw some fanart of the girls bc in love w their designs
rlly uncomfortable and disconcerning.. the fact this runs so badly and barely functions as designed makes it more disturbing. very fascinated by its usage of overlaying different animations and scenes over one other, reminds me a lot of various experimental video work and short films I’ve seen and it’s not smth usually present in games. the scenes where ur navigating the house are so like disorienting and nauseating. def unique and probably very novel in 09 but now seems quaint and well intentioned but still problematic. like idk I think gameifying assault and abuse is incredibly fucking iffy, I don’t mean like making a game out of these concept but including more arcade-y elements of game design like collectibles and ranks I find a bit gross. of course drakengard 3 and rule of rose are very game-like games w big boss fights and similar themes and both were trying to be marketable but also both are so dense in terms of both written text and implied text. and this simply isn’t, it’s incredibly visual which I do like but sometimes the shocking image is just that, it’s just shocking and a little toothless, they can be powerful images but still seemingly only there to push boundaries of accepted good taste.
also pls listen to the ost it’s seriously so beautiful
will prob draw some fanart of the girls bc in love w their designs
Chapeuzinho Vermelho é um conto popular que passou por várias iterações ao longo da história, mas a Tale of Tales conseguiu extrair um resultado muito intrigante, agoniante e, em termos de design, inteligentíssimo.
Chapeuzinho segue o caminho do bosque para visitar a avó, apesar da advertência dos perigos de sair do caminho. Chapeuzinho é ousada e pega rotas alternativas. Nela, ela se depara com um Lobo que descobre o destino final da Chapeuzinho, chega lá primeiro, se disfarça da avó e engana a Chapeuzinho, que é salva por um caçador.
Esse é talvez o conto mais simples da Chapeuzinho, mas essa história possui várias versões em seus séculos de existência, algumas que abordam temas muito mais sombrios. São esses temas que encontraremos em The Path.
The Path é um "slow game," um jogo a se queimar lentamente enquanto aproveitamos o caminho, ou no caso desse jogo, a falta dele. Isso é uma provocação clara aos termos do game design, o que eu aprecio e não me surpreende vindo da Tale of Tales.
Vamos começar pelo tópico "caminho" em game design. Se torna quase um mantra. Temos caminhos principais, secundários e atalhos. É esperado um comportamento padrão de quem joga, e os designers precisam ser oniscientes e prever os passos e as posições para garantir o ENTRETENIMENTO. É uma tarefa injusta para as duas partes.
Mas The Path desconstrói isso com uma ordem a ser quebrada e usa a história da Chapeuzinho Vermelho para ilustrar a vontade rebelde dos jogadores em descumprir ordens e explorar tudo, menos os caminhos.
A analogia aqui te coloca na pele de 6 personagens diferentes, cada uma com um conjunto de traumas e memórias que transformam elementos característicos do conto, como o lobo, o lenhador e a casa da avó.
O mais interessante é que, diferente do conceito de caminho alternativo no design que geralmente te entrega uma mecânica concreta, aqui em The Path os caminhos alternativos não entregam uma recompensa, mas um desfecho sinistro em cada uma das 6 personagens. Exploramos o medo e os traumas em diferentes versões do "Lobo" e de outros personagens. Desde os mais clássicos até as iterações mais bizarras, como um lobo que abusa da Chapeuzinho, que ilude a Chapeuzinho, que a alicia em atos ilícitos e muito mais. Mas tudo isso é contado de forma obtusa e abre muito para interpretação.
Esse jogo brinca com um conto famoso, com game design e com nosso imaginário.