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[Fuzz]

 
Just found out my laptop isn't good enough. I guess I'll just have to wait for the Mac version, as my Mac is decidedly more capable.

[ChevyRay]

Only $8.99 right now on Steam.

[Fuzz]

I'm beginning to wonder whether it just might work on my computer. I don't have the "minimum requirements" for it but I don't have the minimum requirements for The Graveyard or The Endless Forest yet both run fine on my computer.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

From what I gather it uses the same engine as The Endless Forest, although The Graveyard uses Unity rather than that engine. But actually The Path runs a lot *better* for me than The Endless Forest does: with The Path I get around what seems to be 30-40 fps at 1440x900 resolution, whereas with The Endless Forest I got around 20 fps at 800x600 resolution, which is very low, on the same computer with the same video card.

[Fuzz]

That's interesting. This is where I really wish they had a demo.

[Chris Whitman]

I'll admit it: I'm a bit bewildered.

I started the game as Ginger. I spent about two hours wandering around in the forest, got eight out of ten items, found three areas, did not find the wolf. Almost all of the time was spent repeatedly running into the same few areas. After I got tired of that, I went to the house, did the on-rails part and was told I had failed.

What gives? I liked the interaction with objects and characters in the forest, and I thought the art style was good, but it seemed like I spent almost the entire game retreading the same few areas, without finding much of anything new. I don't even really object to the walk/run speed; it just seems that past a point there isn't much to do other than run around aimlessly. Am I doing something wrong? Is there some indicator on how to find things which are interesting or new, or actually win?

[J. Kyle Pittman]

Can't even play it.  I get about 3 or 4 fps with the default settings.  Turning all the options down and running in 800-600 bumps it up to maybe 10 fps?  And this is on a 2.4 GHz quad core, 4 GB RAM, 9600 GT machine that can tear through most games without a hitch.   

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

re J. Kyle: I have an inferior video card with a far more acceptable frame rate (I've the 8500 GT) so you may want to report your lack of speed on their official forums, they are dealing with technical problems there.

re Chris: there's a secret to the game you may be missing, navigationally. Those weird marks that appear on the edges indicate where to go. The dark splotches are the directions to the wolf, the flowery stuff is items, the weird swirls special areas, and so on. It takes awhile to figure out but once you do you can find the wolf and everything else quite easily. Ginger's wolf is the girl in the scarecrow field.

[Chris Whitman]

Yeah, I was kind of hoping there was something like that. I think I'll give it another shot. Regarding the wolf: I found the girl in the scarecrow field, but interacting with her didn't seem to do anything interesting.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I found that in order to interact with people, you need to just stand next to them and wait. Sometimes up to 10 seconds or more before it "triggers" them. This is especially true with people, but even sometimes with items it doesn't trigger unless you wait a fairly long time (the TV, the girl in white, etc.). That's one of its technical problems I hope they'll improve in future patches.

[Fuzz]

Good news: I commented on their blog about whether I could get a refund if it didn't work on my computer and this is what he said:

The Path is actually slightly less demanding than The Endless Forest (on a a busy day) in terms of raw power, but it does do a lot more post-processing (which you can decrease in its options). So if you’re happy with how The Endless Forest runs on your machine, I’d say go ahead and try it. You may need to tweak the options a bit for optimal performance (it defaults to maximum quality the first time it runs). We will refund you if it doesn’t work out. But make sure you buy the regular Windows installer form our site. Otherwise we can’t.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Not too surprising, they're indies, not a corporation -- I only know of one indie who ever refused a refund request, and he only did it once, because he thought their reason was incredibly stupid (from what I remember, they thought his game, Democracy, was about playing as the specific prime minister of the UK Tony Blair, instead of a faceless "prime minister", and were upset that they couldn't play as Tony Blair, but instead were just an unnamed prime minister.)

[Iamthejuggler]

Not too surprising, they're indies, not a corporation -- I only know of one indie who ever refused a refund request, and he only did it once, because he thought their reason was incredibly stupid (from what I remember, they thought his game, Democracy, was about playing as the specific prime minister of the UK Tony Blair, instead of a faceless "prime minister", and were upset that they couldn't play as Tony Blair, but instead were just an unnamed prime minister.)

Oh god, I would love to have seen his face when he read the refund request. I imagine it was somewhat like this.

 

On topic: I do like to support indie games, but this sounds like far too much "wander around, pick random stuff up, look at the scenery, and after an hour or two eventually stumble upon the goal of the "level". I've never been a huge fan of exploration type games. It looks great, just not my cup of tea I think. If there was a demo i'd certainly give it a shot. Hopefully they'll release one eventually.

[Melly]

I'd like to support this one the premise alone, and on the fact that I imagine this game as an experiment in a new direction. Sure, those don't always work, but supporting them means someone else may be able to get the concept and make something amazing with it.

But with all the technical issues around I guess I'll wait before trying it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Update: it now seems the guy who wrote that "rape" review issued a "retraction" of sorts:

UPDATE 3/23/2009, 8:13PM EST: Jarboe commented to me a few minutes ago that the conversation we had before the review went up never took place. As it was done over email, Jarboe says that the person I spoke to must have been a fake. In fact, the email I had the “rape and murder” conversation is ever so slightly different one from the email I just recieved from her. As such, there is a chance that the person I spoke to about the game that was claiming to be Jarboe was a magical internet fraudster. If this turns out to be true, then I need to apologize to Jarboe for hurting her feelings and let you, our readers, know that two of the comments in the thread below are erroneous. I’m going to do a little investigating and until I know for sure, I’m going to turn off comments until I know if it turns out I was tricked.

Update 3/23/2009 8:48PM EST Okay. It appears I’ve hurt the feelings of someone I thought was my friend, and to be honest, that’s not cool on my part. A review is about the product and not the people that made the game. The fact I hurt someone’s personal and not professional feelings with this review doesn’t sit well with me, so I do want to apologize to anyone who was hurt by my review in Tale of Tales. I still think the game is god awful, but please know I don’t think any of YOU that made the game are. Call this covering my bases.

So I would like to make it clear that the Jarboe that made this “Of course this is just a rape and murder game” was someone pretending to be her, most likely in an attempt to create more drama and negative attention for this game (Like MY REVIEW wasn’t enough) and that I hurt the real one’s feelings by making the “tone deaf” comment which was meant to be a joke. Sorry about that Jarboe. It was meant to be light hearted in an otherwise very critical review. None of this was meant to be mean towards you.

I find the idea of someone faking being her just to cause drama and him falling for a fake version of a friend he supposedly knows well far-fetched, and the more likely scenario is that he made up the entire part about the musician of the game agreeing with his review.

Also, for sake of discussion, I found this post by redmech78 about what happens to each girl (rather than rape) illuminating:

*SPOILERS*

To my mind, the one even remotely "sexual" ending was Carmen's, and I did not perceive it as rape. It was obvious all throughout her story that she was intent finding a man, from making comments about how she'd like to bathe while a big strong woodsman watched, to describing a bath having "a little soap, and a lot of warm and wet. Never alone again."

As with all of the other sisters, Carmen's ending found her getting exactly what she was craving... except that the woodsman was probably a psycho and hacked her to bits afterward with his axe.

None of the other sisters' endings struck me the least bit sexual: Robin pissed off a werewolf. Ruby got involved with the wrong element and likely died in a car crash. Ginger ended up playing a little too roughly with a girl and probably ran into a barbed wire fence while playing tag or something. Rose should've been more aware of the generally unpleasant nature of evil air spirits, especially when they appear to be covered in blood. Scarlet (I think) found herself victim to a witch's claws... I'm still not clear on this one yet.

**END SPOILERS**

[Tom Sennett]

So it sounds like this art game nailed the "art" and failed the "game". I hate when that happens.

Though I can't find out for sure, seeing as I'm broke.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Why do you believe it failed at the game part? Could you be more specific?

[Tom Sennett]

I keep hearing from more mainstream gamers that it's really repetitive and the gameplay is never anything more than just walking around.

Again, I haven't played the game. If these people are missing something let me know.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I haven't heard that much actually. Could you link to examples?

As for a good video review of what playing the game is like to play, you can check this out:

[Noyb]

I found that in order to interact with people, you need to just stand next to them and wait. Sometimes up to 10 seconds or more before it "triggers" them. This is especially true with people, but even sometimes with items it doesn't trigger unless you wait a fairly long time (the TV, the girl in white, etc.). That's one of its technical problems I hope they'll improve in future patches.

From what I've played of it so far, that feels less like a technical problem than a solution to how you do character studies in interactive pieces. Telling the player to wait to let the girl interact gives you a more parental role. You can't control directly what the girl will do at those moments, hence you cannot control or change who she is by her actions. You can only walk her around and give her the space to act according to her character. The wolves do terrible, terrible things to the girls, so the game wants to drive home that she is only choosing to go down that path because you, personally, are not actively stopping her.

This reading is a bit problematic, since the decision to leave the path *is* up to the player, but I believe the point about how the actions show what the girl will do in the absence of supervision stands.