Let go…

The control mechanism to make your avatar interact with something in The Path is a little bit peculiar. Rather than clicking or pressing a button or a key, you simply need to let go of the controls and allow the character decide on her own.

It’s an attitude that I like to adopt as a designer as well. Rather than controlling everything in the game, I prefer to create little systems that do things on their own and then sit back and see what happens between them. Of course, often things happen that are not desirable or interesting or that are plain wrong. But personally I feel that the potential for surprises outweighs the risk of failure.

Of course we’re not just making The Path for ourselves. So a lot of things are much more tightly controlled by the game than would be our personal preference. Just so that the player has a better chance at understanding what we’re trying to say. But there’s still quite a few things that are variable and unpredictable. I hope people will appreciate these.