I strongly want to support the development of indie games, especially those that attempt to introduce new ways of presenting narrative mechanics, but I just can't wholeheartedly endorse Tale of Tales' release: The Path.

The Path asks the player to guide a series of sisters around a forest environment to retrieve their traumatic memories. Before I even get into listing the pros and cons of game, I want to say it feels strange that I, the player, am controlling the sisters to discover their memories because I have no reason to believe the girls themselves have lost said memories. It just seems like a strange disconnect, like ordering a friend to dig through a ton of old photos of him to learn something specific about him, rather than simply asking him directly.

Does that make sense? These girls already know the stuff I'm discovering. It's not like in BioShock where the player and his in-game persona are learning things about the people of Rapture together. It would be as though he already knows everything, but you don't.

Anyway, to speed things up, I just ran these off as a series of +/- bullet points.

+ Moving the camera up while running is a good way to encourage walking because you can see less.
+ I like the way larger overlay images of items you're near appear on screen.
+ Art style is nice.

- Having the little flower things you collect fade out when running feels like a dick move. Just because I start running towards something doesn't mean I should lose track of it.
- In-game text can be hard to read depending on the lighting and overlay images.
- It can feel confusing as to where you're supposed to go, even with the HUD icons and little girl in white. They needed to either explain the game more, or be more clever about building explanation into the gameplay, because a couple hours in and there are still some confusing things.
- Female vocals in music are annoying.
- You can't tell how much more you should run around looking at things before trying to find your wolf. Ex: I saw a guy sitting on bench and sat with him. I figured he was that sister's wolf, but didn't know until afterward that there were more things I could've unlocked for her. And you can't go back and replay the same sister again (which matters because some objects are specific to certain sisters).
- Navigation through Grandma's house is retarded (apologies for the high-minded terminology). It's like they made players hit random movement keys just to keep up the "interaction". But that's not interactivity.
- I don't like that I can't look around with the mouse unless I'm walking/running. Huh?
- HUD icons don't always make sense. I saw a drawing of a bird so I navigated to it, but there was nothing there and the image swung around the HUD as I tried to locate whatever was "supposed" to be there. Didn't remember picking up anything bird-related earlier so I didn't know what was going on. Also, a cemetery icon appeared after I had visited it and I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to return (because there didn't seem to be anything else to do there), or if it was just reference.
- I know it sounds "game-y" but I want to be able to bring up a map and see the known places I've visited. Also, I want to tag certain places/objects that are specific to sisters other than the one I am playing as, since I won't remember later and don't feel like writing it down on a piece of paper. I'm pretty sure the developer's won't budge on this, but I'd enjoy the game better that way, even it if was more conventional.
- Bug? I saved my game and quit after finding one sister's wolf, but before entering Grandma's house. When I reloaded the game days later, I was back in the sister-choosing room with that one sister gone so I never got to experience her visit to Grandma's house.
- Speaking of Grandma's house - after you see your wolf the slow walking into the house is absolutely interminable. I literally started reading through my mail with one hand while pressing the up arrow with the other hand.

I'm still glad I bought the game. But for me, it's more of a learning piece about what works and what doesn't, rather than a complete and satisfying experience. Strangely, it doesn't make me yearn for more "artistic" games of its nature; instead I'd rather see its finest points applied to more traditional game scenarios to deepen their experience.

-Jason