There’s a busted TV in the middle of the dark, spooky woods, and it has electricity. I can hear a wolf stalking me along with faint childish laughter in the distance. My breath clings to the mist encompassing me, and no matter which way I turn, endless forest awaits. In the movies, this would be the part when I would die — or the part when I’d run into my distraught girlfriend, make out with her and then die. I was not so fortunate.

The Path begins in a deep-red room with six girls idling in their separate interests. Once a girl is selected, the game transitions to the edge of civilization, where reality ends and fantasy takes lead. After the introduction, you are granted control of your chosen female avatar. The one and only road is at your feet. Grandmother’s house is to the north. A warning appears: STAY ON THE PATH! — as if any gamer is going to follow that advice, right? Once you venture into the woods, the path behind will disappear, locking you within a looping environment. To get out of the forest, you have to reload, follow the girl in white or find the wolf.

In the meantime, you’ll encounter a variety of odd objects about the trees, ranging from dirty bathtubs and shopping carts to mutilated turkeys and used syringes. There also are flower tokens spread about the woods that reveal the direction of special items when enough flowers have been collected. Each item you find can be either interacted with or picked up for a reward. Your prize comes in the form of additional objects or rooms inside grandmother’s house, coupled with quasi-poetic thoughts that get posted to the screen — you can elicit thoughts by entering areas and sitting down. Sadly, the thoughts are purely flavor text for each of the girls and do little more than invoke strange lifts of the brow.

In addition to the quirky junkyard commodities are landmarks (a lake or a graveyard, for example), one of which contains a “wolf” for each girl that is symbolic of an inner fear or demon. When you find the wolf, you will be shown a short cutscene introducing the location, after which you must find a way to trigger the wolf by interacting with the objects or people in the area. Once activated, another cutscene will play and eventually fade to black. In moments, rain is heard clattering against the ground. Your avatar is unconscious, lying outside the entrance to grandmother’s house. Upon rising and trudging forward to the fence, yet another cutscene is prompted. The avatar is seen approaching and entering grandmother’s house as it looms in the cover of a storm. The interior of grandmother’s house will load, and you will find yourself standing inside a room.

At this point in the game, you are positioned on a track similar to that of a guided thrill ride at Disneyland. The only option is forward, achieved by pressing any key or button. Through your avatar’s eyes, you’ll advance at each prod, winding through various rooms of the house. The final room is at the end of a long hall and will be one of two types depending on whether or not the wolf was encountered in the woods. If the wolf was not activated, the room is simply grandmother on her bed; the avatar will step forward and join her. A results screen will follow, indicating your failure. You “succeed” by having met the wolf in the forest before going to grandmother’s house. If you have done this, the end room is a bizarre recreation of each girl’s respective imaginations. You’ll have a brief moment to marvel at the swirling objects and colors flooding your vision — camera controls are reduced while on the ride, so enjoy the view while you can — and then you’ll die.

The Path, in more ways than one, is an experience that defies expectations. Graphically, The Path makes a number of intriguingly artistic movements that are otherwise absent from typical adventure titles. As a visual presentation, I was thoroughly chilled by the stimulating imagery. The accompanying audio cues also, were at times compelling and downright frightening. I only wish the gameplay mechanics were as motivating. While pleasing to look at, I was bogged by some of the more intrusive and uninviting aspects of The Path.

The in-game camera, for instance, follows the avatar in a traditional third-person view. However, once you start to run, the camera pitches up and away from the avatar, almost to a top-down perspective that is obscured by thick branches and foliage, making it impossible to see where you’re going. This frustrated me to no end as it hindered both my desire and my ability to explore. As if the poor follow camera wasn’t enough, I was appalled to discover that The Path didn’t offer a standard map or compass to reference. In a game that is entirely about locating items within a densely populated forest, not having a map is absolutely criminal.

There are a few guiding lights in The Path worth mentioning. Innovations that — despite not being particularly useful — are noble in their efforts to convey information and emotions in a manner unfamiliar to most gamers. Instead of a map, you are given an image of your recorded trail that appears periodically after traveling so many feet. It’s almost like a map, except that it contains no markers and is visible for only five seconds at a time. The brief glimpse is far too short to allow any meaningful adjustments in scouting — I had to take a screenshot just to see what exactly was (or wasn’t) being displayed. It certainly is not my favorite feature of The Path, but I thought it was a clever attempt as it pushed me to continue searching to reveal where I hadn’t searched yet — an addiction cycle in the making. A few visual signifiers are put in place to supplement the lack of a map, such as distant landmarks being coated in brilliant white light, and the occasional projection of a locator beacon around the edge of the screen for nearby items was helpful, but even these subtle aids were not enough to keep me from frequently feeling lost and disoriented.

Another not-so-useful but not pointless aspect of The Path is movement, particularly in and around grandmother’s house. As mentioned, once you embark on grandmother’s lengthy virtual home tour ride, you must continually press keys or buttons to propel your avatar along. This was effective in portraying the utter shock and fear that had more than likely overcome each girl on entering grandmother’s horrifying abode. Compelling, yes, but the process became tedious and boring for me as I had to repeat the same task for each and every girl. Had I been given the freedom to linger about grandmother’s house as I pleased, the redundancy could have been greatly reduced.

Even outside of grandmother’s house, the moments when your avatar awakes in the rain and must walk to the fence are hampered. Instead of moving at full speed you slush and drag your feet as if you were a zombie. Reaching the fence can take upwards of a minute depending on the girl, which doesn’t sound so bad until you realize that you started only 10 meters away from it. I wanted to scream at the game, and yet I cursed and sighed instead while waiting patiently for my avatar to arrive. I understood completely the message of despondency being depicted, but I wanted to get on with the game. Not fun.

Finding items, meeting the wolf and going to grandmother’s house is the only formula in The Path. There’s nothing more to do than that. As an on-and-off gamer in the adventure genre, I was swayed by the aesthetic direction, visualization and experimentation of The Path. Execution was not as polished. I recommend buying this game only if you are interested in an unnaturally different artistic endeavor. If not, there are more enjoyable titles out there.