The Path: Demo Released

not a game

Passage is not a game.

The Path is just as much a game as the Silent Hill series.

Not a game

WALKTHROUGH FOR “THE PATH: PROLOGUE”

1. press and hold “up arrow” key
2. press and hold “shift” key
3. wait 90 seconds

I’m not playing it untill they reply to our “we made an art game check it out it’s called the gutter” e-mail.

“In The Path – Prologue, you control the mysterious Girl in White.”
If only that were really the case.

The girl controls herself and the user fights the 3’rd person camera angles, constantly rotating around the character. Controlling the girl is like trying to teach a drunken baby how to paint. The game looks interesting but it’s not fun.

Looks okay on wine, the only thing that (terribly) fails is the animation of the character…

You can’t buy marketing like this right here (& on other boards).

Not a game. Not art. But hey, It’s a giraffe.

If anything, I’d say it’s an interactive piece of digital multimedia, which all games could be called in the end…. Just saying you didn’t enjoy it would be good enough :/

If you bought it, and were highly disappointed or think you’ve been tricked then, I guess you should have done your research better ;)

Whether it’s a game or not, I’ll support stuff like this. Too fed up with mainstream in any form, sorry.

Better than that one with the old lady.

@Paul Eres:
“you seem to be taking my comments too seriously: is it that important? You’re treating this like a political or religious argument instead of a lighthearted discussion about a game. My comments were meant in a teasing fashion.”

I interpreted disrespect, so it doesn’t matter how the comments were presented, only the content. If you meant to assert that people who think it’s not a game (whom I’m not among) never played it, that’s just the reason I posted. Actually I took your first statement as a joke until you pressed it with the “evidence” thing.

“As for “evidence” that I played it, see…”

*I* know that you’ve played it from previous comments. The point was that evidence has nothing to do with people’s comments on a game, unless it’s evidence that they didn’t play it (which doesn’t exist here).

I hope the extreme disappointment that some people will experience when playing “The Path – Prologue” will help them decide that our work is not for them. And save us all from the endless and pointless debates of why it is so great for software to be a game.

Ooh nice! I’ve been curious about the path ever since I saw that review on the escapist.

now i’ve collected all those flowery things and still she’s dressed.

not a game :(

Right, but for an… uh, whatever they claim The Path to be, interactive art or however they call it, ToT certainly chose to use all the standard video game mechanic for whatever little interactivity this game has and despite what they say, it is obvious that they made it for the gaming crowd. So, I think that this and other such sites are the right place for reports on ToT’s products, regardless of their quality. They sure as paint don’t belong in a museum, or anywhere else for that matter.

Ultimately, it’s up to ToT to (finally) decide whether they want GAMING sites to talk about them or not. But yeah, you cannot have an interactive piece of software that’s using established game mechanics and then claim it is not a game.

By calling The Path “not a game”, you absolve it from any game-based criticism. “Oh it’s not a game, but neither is Citizen Kane, right? Plenty of things aren’t games and are still wonderful! Because it’s not a game, that means all these people who like/ don’t like it are only thinking of it the wrong way!” No, my friends. It’s a situation governed by rules. That’s more or less all a game is. The Path is a game. It’s just a really bad one.

As far as I’m concerned, things like this should be discussed on TIGsource. It embodies the extreme end of a growing trend in independent game design. Many games that exhibit the same problems The Path does (at smaller magnitudes)are met with blind praise. By coming to understand what it is about The Path that makes it a crappy game allows us to figure out what we really value in the games we play.

And if you LIKED the path, as a GAME, just disregard this post. I’m not really in the mood to argue about it right now.

I don’t know about you guys, but I played the first Silent Hill and I liked it, clunky mechanics and bad writing and all. Just a thought. Also, it was a game, as was Silent Hill 2, and I suppose The Path is a game as well. Maybe not the best game, maybe not a good game, maybe not a game that you enjoyed or would recommend. But I have a hunch that it was a game despite what you feel about its quality.

But then, i suppose, arguing to the tune of “What is game!?” is just as stupid as arguing about “What is a Gundam!?” or “What is a man!?”.

There’s more to it than that, but I either haven’t figured it out, or it doesn’t work.

You aren’t intended to stay on the path.

I found some flowers, a grave-yard, and ampi-theatre, a phone (which when used seems to reset the game), a scare scrow with some power-lines and colorfull flowers in the middle of the dark forest, and a campsite. All of these, except for the phone, emit a black smoke which makes them sort of visible from a distance.

I don’t know what any of these things are for, as frustratingly, the only thing I seem to be able to manage is opening the gate to Grandmother’s house.

I want to enjoy this, but I must be doing it wrong.

It’s too bad, I sort of wanted to play the path. I can’t bring myself to pay for it now though (I don’t have much cash to spare).

I can’t find the last three flowers, so would some one tell me if any thing happens when you do, or are there just no more flowers?

And before someone has the nerve to say something like OH YOU HAVE ADHD THIS GAME ISN’T FOR YOU, I mean, come on.

There is a fine line between suspense and just walking around doing absolutely nothing. Surely, they could have made the game about something a bit more than just walking around and staring at objects. Is that really all there is to it? I really don’t know what to say. This is one of the few times where calling something “boring” is completely justified but I am going to be nice and just leave it at that.

Pretzelking: u hatin mah game!

Michael Samyn: I think you need to work on your definition of art.
Video games are art. Combining several fields of art – music, painting and design among others – your game automatically qualifies, albeit no more than Halo. So what exactly do you mean by your games going to turn out art?
Are you talking about art as in [insert wiki definition copypasta] or that other artsy fartsy European thing pretentious people call art? ARE YOU AN ARTIST OR ARTISTE’?

@Michael Samyn: Hope you’re still here.

>We don’t mind calling The Path a game. But other people sometimes mind that we do.

As I’ve said before, The Path is a game. As is “Non Human” from the Action 52 on NES.

>Sometimes because they feel that games should not attempt to be artistic. We are artists. So we can’t help making art. If we make a game, it’s going to turn out art.

Yeah, I’m an artist, too. Everything I create is art. Last time I made art, I flushed it down shortly after. “Art” is a vague term, and in this day and age it does not imply quality. You should never use “art” as an excuse for unintuitive game design and boring games.

>But this shouldn’t disallow us from making games, should it? We’ll just make really bad games.

Of course! Of course! You keep making crappy games, and we’ll keep harshly criticizing them. Last man standing.

>The extremity of the joy that those “few” people experience, more than makes up for the boredom that “the masses” encounter in the same game.

Just because your critics are numerous doesn’t make them “the masses”. I assure you, much of “the masses” have never even heard of The Path. Chances are they haven’t heard of Cave Story, either.

>You can’t please everybody. But we have pleased a small number of people in ways they had never been pleased before.

Did you know that a small number of people get off from being peed on?

I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m just blasting ad hominems here. What I’m trying to get across is that oft-ignored aspect of indie game design: the goddamn games. Your graphics, your style, your sound effects and plotlines are all just clothing for the game itself: the controls, level design, engine, physics…the rules. That’s not to say that all the “clothing” is useless tripe, but it’s all clumsy as hell if the game sucks. For the sake of eloquence (brevity is the soul of wit, etc), consider that The Path would have made an excellent series of short films. Without being bogged down by a frustrating half-assed “game” that even your fans are simply “dealing with”, the full impact and value of your story and atmosphere can be judged on its own merit. Reaches a wider audience, a few hundred thousand views in the first month, film festival, hooray Tale of Tales!

In short, games are a lot different from books and films. Concentrate on what you want to get across, what exactly it is that you are trying to communicate, and decide how to most eloquently execute it (be it through game, movie, novel, poems, Jackson Pollock ripoff paintings, etc). Because I can’t go easy on you for all this: you embody an ugly, stupid trend in game design that will ensure that not only will games never be considered an art form, but that truly good games will be ditched for interactive movies and empty dream simulators. Chess is not art (though its pieces can be art, and its players can be artists). But it is a great game. As far as I’m concerned, that’s better than art.

That’s all I got. Hope this post fits.

>I realize that many people don’t like The Path. But if you would only see how deeply and genuinely some other people are moved by the experience, you’d understand why we stick to our guns. The extremity of the joy that those “few” people experience, more than makes up for the boredom that “the masses” encounter in the same game.

That reminds me of something.

I once took a bunch of stock footage of people eating ice cream and nuclear explosions and put opera music over it.

It ended up getting several comments saying how people were moved by it and how they saw the deeper meaning behind it. The thing is, there was none, I just put random clips together with unfitting music.

But they believed it anyway until the video was eventually was removed by YouTube for some bullshit DMCA request.

But consider this. Was that art? Because even if it was, it still doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t much of an actual movie.

No. No. Must. Resist. Will. Never. Never. Design. Gameplay. Never.