I can’t for the life of me remember how I found it – it was through some series of links – but yesterday I discovered The Path, an independent horror game that has apparently gotten a lot of attention for being more “art” than “game.”

Six sisters live in an apartment in the city. One by one their mother sends them on an errand to their grandmother, who is sick and bedridden. The teenagers are instructed to go to grandmother’s house deep in the forest and, by all means, to stay on the path! Wolves are hiding in the woods, just waiting for little girls to stray. But young women are not exactly known for their obedience, are they? Will they be able to resist the temptations of the forest? Will they stay clear of danger? Can they prevent the ancient tale from being retold?

It’s a short game so I’ve already played it through once. First and foremost: god damn, can’t these girls walk any faster? Yes, it’s a “slow game” (they say so on the site), but seriously, the only thing more boring than walking through woods is walking through woods in a video game. I understand the concept of forcing the player to slow down – if you run things get dark/blurry and you can’t see, so it encourages you to go slow – but if it’s a game “based on exploration” you’ve gotta give me something more to look at.

So, the game encourages you to go slow and go exploring. There are no puzzles, there is no real narrative – you don’t even have to do anything if you don’t want to (but if that’s the case, why’d you get the game?). You mostly just wander around and learn about the characters through interacting with a (woefully limited) number of objects and locations. Most interesting to me is how you interact with your surroundings: you let go of all buttons. You walk your girl up to an object, close enough to get a superimposed image (such as the skull below), let go of the button and let her do her thing.

Why has this boring-ass woods-walking game garnered so much attention (well, as much as an independent game CAN garner)? Well, from the gaming point of view, the fact that they throw out pretty much all gaming conventions is pretty noteworthy. But on the “art” side: it is surprisingly emotionally engaging. When I FINALLY stumbled upon some kind of object, I got to learn something about the girl (her comment/thought would appear across the screen in text) and the characters would begin to unfold (the game is much too short in that regard). I don’t want to give too much away, but when/if you encounter the Wolf, it is a different experience for each girl – and given when you learn about her character, the encounters make a lot of sense. Open to a great deal of interpretation, but still, you kind of feel like you know them on some level. The overall atmosphere of the game is very well done – I left the game with a feeling of unease, and considering it’s a horror game it’s good that they managed to get me (although not good that I had trouble sleeping last night!).

Interestingly (and not too surprisingly), the developers of the game do not come from a video game background, but come from other arenas and were interested in telling a story above all else. It’s certainly not a linear story, but, for me at least, they succeeded in getting an emotional reaction (Carmen’s story scared the crap out of me; I loved Scarlet and Rose) and I am very interested to see people exploring games as another way to tell good stories. This game also reaches beyond the characters/game and brings up bigger issues such as (loss of) innocence, growing up, death, etc. I wasn’t sure I liked the game last night, but when I found myself thinking about it on the train today, I had to admit it got to me! I guess that’s what makes it more “art” than “game”: the primary focus is getting the player involved in some capacity (on their site they even say that the game relies heavily on the player’s imagination), to tell an engaging story, rather than just offering puzzles and junk to solve.

I don’t think it’s necessary to get RID of the puzzles and junk, but I am really excited that, as game-making gets easier/more accessible, there can be different takes on it (from what I understand the current gaming industry sticks very rigidly to formulas that they know will sell). In this case, it was more of a semi-interactive experience than anything else; frustrating at times since you had to give up so much control and experience the story rather than exert your will over it (there is no way a game like this would be popular in the mainstream), but it definitely left an impression.

I think the developers are onto something here, but they don’t quite make it, mostly due to cumbersome game mechanics. I hope they (and other story tellers) keep trying their hand at new games. Despite its problems, I do recommend the game. It is available for download on the official site; for only $10 you can’t really go wrong. Plus, it’s difficult to explain it without spoiling it, so play it and we can talk about it.

The Path for Art Games: a much better blog entry than this one.

Speaking of good story-telling games, The Longest Journey is one of the best games ever (and has also been hailed as a work of art). It’s several years old by now so the visuals are a little dated, but still worth playing if you’ve never done so! It has a really engaging storyline/characters, but it maintains all the regular gaming stuff (solving puzzles, MacGyvering your way out of situations). I remember I once cracked one of the discs, so I actually went out and bought another copy of it, which I have never done for any other game. I still have it around. Maybe I will revisit it…