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.
Steelx
2 months ago