Thank you for appreciating it!

“The Path” is superb! Thank you for making that!
=)

Those interested in similar concepts could see Eno’s work with light installations and ambient music. Similarly, this project seemed to resonate with the idea of the Long Now, and you might advertise it to that group.

Lastly, I note in some replies above that you’ve taken the player to task for their experience: “you made it to the end without the sensitivity to appreciate the Prologue.” That comment alone dissuades me from purchasing the product. If the point is the experience, then even the unexpected or negative one has some value and instruction, and I was surprised to see you label the player/patron as inadequately sensitive.

It was worth it, it’s an entertaining piece of art that makes the player examine aspects of their own personality. I spent the good part of a whole day wandering around the forest (which then inspired an hour or so of internet searching, wanting to know what other people thought – not something I normally do :P )

Grandmother’s house itself is brilliant. And terrifying. I mean psychologically, it really freaked me out. In many different ways.

Once I found out that all you could do in the prologue was observe, I gave up on it. The interaction with the bird was promising though.

Perhaps that’s the life metaphor that the flower search was meant to illustrate. Or maybe not – art can be so subjective.

I genuinely think that Prologue will ultimately be detrimental to your sales. Which is a shame, because I respected you trying something different to just extracting part of the full game, it’s a far better approach for many reasons.

I loved the atmosphere, loved the visuals, loved the dynamic sound track.

Sounds like that would be worth your 10 Dollars to me! :)
Try it!

Sorry for the “demo”. We didn’t feel like extracting part of the game and we really wanted to create the situation in the Prologue. But it probably makes more sense to people who have played to full game.

I tried the demo without knowing anything about the game. I knew it was special and I was ready for a new experience.

On my first run I entered the house right away, the demo ended.

Alright I give it another shot.

I run all around the place expecting to find something and I find nothing. Not even a flower. You don’t see flowers when you run…

I quit after 10-15mins.

I read some more about it and give it another shot.

I found a flower!

1 of 144…

Alright let’s find them all!

135 of 144. My map is showing trails all around the place. It took me a good 2 hours to get there.

I’m annoyed. I read some more.

Apparently the demo is just to show the setting, collecting flowers is pointless.

I really tried to. I really wanted to have a glimpse of what this experience was about. I really wanted to see a bit of this wierd story.

I loved the atmosphere, loved the visuals, loved the dynamic sound track.

I don’t know…

I feel that by removing all interactivity from the demo you’ve actually managed to undermine your own game; the idea of a structureless, ambient game is intact, but everything else, everything that I hear is great about the game, is missing, and by this you don’t show what The Path is about, and lose potential buyers of the full game. You say that it’s mainly to test a user’s hardware? Well, it would be nice to label it as a testing trial rather then a game demo, then. I feel like I’ve wasted my time.

I wonder about the placement of the prologue. Does it happen before the girls come to the forest? (Apparently the white girl is entirely supernatural or perhaps metaphorical, since she appears the same age later).

The livejournal pages indicate that the grandmother and mother both know something of the forest. Reverse psychology, perhaps, telling the sisters to stay on the path? A necessity in order to grow up?

This is indeed intentional. Some people have called us cruel. ;)

It’s difficult to make a game for a broad audience. different people like different things. And with The Path we needed to appeal to a reasonably sized group of them. So we included elements in the design that appeal to different people. As a result, per definition, The Path cannot be perfect. Not for a single person. That saddens me, as an artist. But it’s a fact we need to accept.

We know that there are a lot of people ready for an experience that is completely devoid of game structure. And their number does seem to grow. It wasn’t like that when we started the design of The Path three years ago. Hence probably an excess of ironic comments on game design and gaming habits.

Still, that humour adds another layer to the game. And you can never have too many layers! ;)

You’re right that going in with the wrong expectations can lead to disappointment. And in the full game, it’s probably easier to adjust your expectations more quickly (even though some people never do…). But I’m not sure if we should warn people too much. Many have reported that this confrontation with their gaming habits was enlightening.

Don’t take offense. I wasn’t implying that The Path is a bad game. It’s just that, given my resources and the way I felt playing the game, I don’t think the game is compelling enough for my tastes.

The whole ambiance and the strange, increasingly difficult search for the flowers made me curious, which is why I tried to collect all 144 of them. Given the “challenge”, I thought something might happen if I collected them. I didn’t nicessarily expect a reward of some kind, but I certainly expected something to happen. I was disappointed in that regard. Maybe you will find it a bit shallow on my part, but I still play my games to enjoy them and have fun (whatever the form it takes), so I’m not surprised that The Path didn’t really appeal to me.

Maybe having no reward is the point, but even so, this is the kind of point I don’t really enjoy even if I get it. With that said, I wish you good luck with everything. You and Auriea certainly know how to create a unique ambiance.

There is no reward for collecting all the flowers. That’s sort of the point. Have a look here for some tips that may help.

I liked the visual style. It looks great despite being below today’s technical standards. Otherwise, well, what can I say? Looks like an artsy game/piece of software, and I have a hard time really enjoying them, but at least it made me curious. I wouldn’t buy it though.

The game itself is like the Ouroboros Worm. It’s an ongoing cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
To quote Dr. Manhattan: “Nothing ever ends.”