The final score is easily one of the most surprising contradictions of the game: from such an obvious “journey means more than the destination” experience like The Path, I was expecting anything but an old-fashioned Sierra-like point indicator. I don’t know if this choice was motivated by a tempting appeal to casual gamers or if it is intended as a satirical jab at more conventional games, but whatever the reason, this addition feels utterly unnecessary and completely out-of-place in this particular game. This last screen will tell you how many flowers you have collected (there are 144 of them in total, and I found the whole task so pointless that I don’t know what happens, if anything, when you collect all of them), how many objects you have found, and how many secret rooms you have discovered. These objects – ranging from a can of beer to a teddy bear – are very well hidden, and once discovered are simply stored away so that you can’t use them to interact with the environment, making their addition rather useless. The secret rooms are more interesting: based on your wolf encounter – at least, I think, since the game isn’t very clear on what triggers these rooms – you will have access to a different area of grandma’s house. Disappointedly, the difference between these rooms is only aesthetic, and after my first few playthroughs, I stop feeling the urge to try unlocking them.

As a “game”, that’s really all there is to The Path. Whether that’s enough for anyone will depend on what you seek in a game. Personally, even deep and thought-provoking themes are not enough, since I also desire an engaging plot development and clever, imaginative writing. Unfortunately, The Path fails to provide these things. At first I was intrigued by the thoughts of my character, displayed on screen in a lopsided, childish handwriting, and I had high hopes that each girl would start to display a personality with which I could bond, thus discovering something interesting about my own reactions to the situations presented. I was wrong. These thoughts soon become such repetitive rants with all their flourish and rhetoric (“People die. It's hard to imagine for a kid like me. They die and we put them in the ground. Like flowers.” , says the nine-year-old) that it seemed like I was watching an “Edward Scissorhands meets Twilight” spoof, leaving the six sisters with no real character, no real substance, and ultimately feeling to me like uninteresting puppets on lonely strings. The player is meant to be disturbed by apprehension of their impending fates, but I ended up being so bothered by their dull presence that I had to stifle the urge to find their wolves in the quickiest possible way.

The whole process (repeated six times with just minimal variation according to the girl you choose) is so seemingly confident in its artistic value that, by the time I reached the fourth sister, I was really tired of this fulsome conceit. I dutifully followed the developer's directions (the ones they actually mean players to follow) by taking my time to explore slowly and thoroughly, not rushing to the end but rather losing myself in the woods like my on-screen avatar. I really tried to immerse myself in the experience as intended. The problem is, I couldn’t, and while I certainly applaud the experimentation, the whole experience struck me as not only contrived, but also detached. It’s contrived because it deals with its important themes by telegraphing them with banal and uninspired symbols (the playground stands for ruined childhood and loss of innocence, a broken TV represents the black-and-white nostalgia of things lost, and a ruined cemetery – guess what? – symbolizes death) and even more ostentatious writing. The Path feels detached, too, because the developers made six “playable” characters, but chose not to imbue them with any spark of personality. They were clearly intended to represent six different ages – better yet, six different embodiments of the same human being through different ages, from childhood to maturity – but the differences are buried beneath so much ill-conceived rambling that disconnected me from the on-screen experience. In a nutshell, I couldn’t care less for them, which all but removed any sense of dread or horror I would otherwise have felt on their behalf.

In the end (not that it has a pre-defined end), even taking The Path on its own merits as an artistic experience more than a game, I felt neither emotionally challenged nor enlightened on any of the themes I was so eager to explore. I was mainly just bored and finally decided to make the only real choice in The Path: I quit playing. Given my personal experience, it is hard for me to recommend it overall, but one thing is certain: there is nothing else currently like it. Whatever its failings, it’s bold, it’s ambitious, and absolutely unique. That alone may warrant a look from those who are tired of the same gaming formulas and interested in a fresh new approach. For those people, the game can be downloaded for a very reasonable $9.99 from the official website. For anyone expecting a traditional adventure in any sense of the word, however, you definitely won’t find it along The Path, and even for those prepared for an all-new experience, you may just find it falls short of both the horror and profundity it means for you to find.