I suppose the constant stream of discounts on Steam is having the intended effect because I bought and played through The Path over the weekend. I have to admit that I’d never have bought the game if it weren’t for Tom Chick’s comments on it on Fidgit and the discussion thread on QT3. This is because The Path is as atypical a game as you can think of. In fact, it’s barely a game at all. Its website boasts it was designed for accessibility, meaning that there’s no combat, or hard puzzles or any of the other challenges you’d expect to find in a typical game.

Instead, it’s something that you experience rather than play. The game draws on the familiar story of Little Red Riding Hood (which like many other fairy tales is really quite horrific if you think through it). Six different girls, each with different personalities and dreams, need to walk through a forest to reach their grandmother’s house. Your job is to guide them there and you’re admonished to always stay on The Path! But can the girls (and you, the player) resist the temptation of wandering through the forest?

I probably shouldn’t post too much about it because a big part of the “gameplay” is actually about realizing what the “rules” are and how the “world” in this game works. The end result isn’t quite horror, but it is most certainly an extremely disturbing experience that will leave you wondering, in true David Lynch fashion, what the various elements mean. Do note that as the developers claim, while there’s no graphic violence or sexuality portrayed in game, there are plenty of allusions to it, and in many ways this is far more psychologically effective, making this one a game strictly for adults only.

One reason why I was drawn into the game in the first place was because I was intrigued by Tom Chick’s comments on how rare it is to have horror done well in games. In something like, for example, F.E.A.R. which touts itself as a horror game, the horror element doesn’t really work because the monsters are just another type of enemy to deal with. In order to really scare the player, a game needs to make the player feel truly helpless but this isn’t really possible in an action-based game. Adventure games like The Path is probably the best way to convey horror, but they end up being a sort of tightly directed experience with interactive elements. Still, I’d certainly recommend this one just because it’s so different and, yes, even genuinely scary. And hey, it only costs US$9 and takes about a couple of evenings to play through.