Here I am trying to record one of the most stimulating gaming experiences of my life; it’s quite easy to write about The Path - you can make tons of comparisons, there are loads of landmarks, it’s a post-modern game due to its many references. But on the other hand, the experience itself is hard to describe. As in the case of the Go game: it takes 10 minutes to learn the rules and a life time to master it. Therefore tread with me on this path and don’t go astray (unless you find the forest more appealing over grandmother’s house...)

The Path can be likened to many games, belonging to a multitude of genres, starting with Mike Oldfield’s obscure and unfortunate MVR (Musical Virtual Reality), all the way to recent episodic productions by American McGee. From a game’s mechanics point of view, the similarities to the MVR are more obvious – unlimited space, full of various objects that the gamer can easily interact with, minimalistic and intuitive control of the avatar and a super score, which sticks into your head much later after leaving the game’s universe. But unlike the MVR, The Path is supported by the idea of the story – we have no sterile and impersonal environment like in the MVR, but we belong to a universe which we are familiar with from our childhood- the story of  Little Red Riding Hood. This is where the style similarities to American McGee’s twisted mind start – the creators of this game have worked with archaic and bizarre versions of the story, versions where the element of morality  is almost absent. We’re talking about a Little Red Riding Hood with no regrets, no blame... but I'll get back on that soon.

We step in...

Once upon a time, there was an invisible mother, who had 6 daughters. Carmen, Ginger, Ruby, Rose, Robin and Scarlet, loving sisters with an extraordinary weakness for the colours black and red, maybe due to an old, shared trauma, and due to their turbulent youth. Legend has it, that one day, the mother, as if under the spell of a playful god, decided to send one of the daughters to her grandmother’s house, far from their safe haven, their apartment from the big city, far from the well-traced paths of the sidewalks. No one knows what was in that mother’s head, nor why would she not tell her daughter more than just “Go to grandma’s house and make sure you don’t go astray from the path”. The fact is that the little girl obediently left, and once she found herself in a groove she felt something in the air. Perhaps it was the perfume of some flowers from the ever-so calm forest, to which the path was a mere wrinkle, perhaps it was the whispering sound of a cradle, somewhere within the cluster of some nearby trees, or perhaps it was just a tomb stone with a wheel chair next to it, so peaceful and scenic, in a way only a child could understand.

It’s a fact that the girl went astray and let herself be seduced by that unique combination of silence and noise from within a forest, by that clear music, making waves through the leaves, and started to play hide-and-seek with the shadows among the trees. No one knows what happened next. Some say the girl might have met the Big Bad Wolf who would have asked her one question: “Which way do you wanna go? The way of the needles or that of the BOLDURI?”  She might have answered something, regardless what, the Wolf would have eaten her. Some whisper that the girl might have the Hunter, strong and wild, and that next to the fire no-one can really tell who is friend or foe. The grandmother cried a sad song for her Little Red Riding Hood, that never reached her destination, but we all know how grandmothers can be quite forgetful... It’s not easy to learn the end of the story of a curious little girl in an endless forest. But when the mother sent another girl, with another basket, the signs become clear... Each of the girls is attracted to something else within the game’s universe – each chooses to interact easier with different objects found in the forest, which is wonderful, an innovative way of ensuring the ‘re-play’ and a subtle challenge of the player’s curiosity, who each time ends up indentifying with the chosen ‘Hood’s avatar.

The absolute liberty, the inimitable atmosphere, the specificity of the choices make me believe that The Path has many common grounds with some of the best RPG examples. On the other hand, whilst RPGs are based on the idea of ‘learning’, in The Path, like a Quest from the genre's glory age, the central verb is ‘to explore’, this being closely related to the philosophy which led to the birth of this game. Moralising art is not art, it’s a manual. The Path’s producers understood and avoided that exact kind of thinking which led to the mutations of Little Red Ridding Hood’s story and transformed it into what it is now. The coming back to original brings along that bizarre feeling of the alert familiarity which so few games can still capture, and the direct consequence is the famous syndrome “five more minutes and I’m done”.

And we step out...

The truth is that you just don’t want to leave your computer while playing The Path. Although the rhythm can be painfully slow for the public used to Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike or Quake championships, the game naturally instigates patience, curiosity, it stirs those childhood feelings up, while exploring the forbidden. Moreover, all the technical elements count for the plunge: the graphics are exceptional, especially for such a small game based mostly on artistic images instead of photorealism, like in the case of the game Okami, being inspired by different muses. The way in which the game draws your attention when you are around an interesting object is very efficient – there are tons of embroideries on the screen’s edges, the superb and dynamic overlays draw you deeper within the forest, sensual and dangerous as they are. As far as music goes, as I was saying earlier, it’s wonderful; I’ve tried, and had a hard time with it, to listen to it outside of the game (and I failed) – it’s a perfect combination of childishness and the bizarre which would fit not only such a game but also an adaptation of one Stephen King's horrors.

The handling is pretty intuitive, way better than some of the blockbusters that came out this year. And also, it's optimised for three types of controllers – keyboard, mouse and gamepad. As according to a warning on the official site, the game is drafted on a children’s story, but it’s fully addressed to an adult mind. You can’t walk on the ‘path’ unless fully conscious of what you are doing – this is where the whole image of the game lies: you must break rules, you must understand that you chose to put yourself in danger (or at least your avatar, although the distinction is less obvious once you get caught up in the game). A child would not take rules into account either way. The paradox is that this conscience makes you feel like a child. That’s way I can say that The Path is a work of art, no doubt about it – it’s worth buying, playing and appreciating as a successful experiment.