Will you take the path of needles, or the path of pins?

Hello, my dear readers!

Welcome to this week's Of Stories and Dreams!

Terribly sorry about the delay, but moving houses tends to throw a wrench in your plans like nothing else does.

Either way, let's dive straight into one of the games that started my devotion for storytelling in interactive mediums:

 Modern day, family of 8. The parents, and six daughters. 

From left to right: Carmen, Ginger, Robin,Scarlet, Ruby and Rose.


Their mother wants one of them to go visit their grandmother. They are to walk the path in the forest to get to their granny's cottage. Sound familiar yet?

This should be a dead giveaway

The game explicitly states that there is only one rule: Do not leave the path.

However, if you want to play, that is the rule you have to break.

Created by the amazingly creative minds at Tale of Tales, this is a modern-day retelling of Red Riding Hood as taken from both a version of the story from 14th century France AND the 17th century version of Charles Perrault (Which both can be heard here in the game's page, at the bottom).

The point of the game is to wander about the path (or off of it), and when finding anything interesting, letting go of the controls, and watch the girls interact with the interesting thing (or not). 

At the start, one picks one of the six girls to visit granny with. Each has their own personality, interests and things they'll find in the forest. Some will want to open a locked cottage, while some will not want to touch it.

An example of something in the forest

At the end of the path, once you are done with the forest, lies the Grandma's house. Depending on what you found in the forest, what will be inside. The more you find, the more is in it, and the more you learn about the particular girl you decided to take, for different items will change the house in different ways for each girl.

It is VERY open-ended, with little to no voices, and the occasional blurb of text on screen coming from the girl showing a thought about whatever happens to be near.

It's been discussed over and over, all over the internet, as to what the message is.

I think I'll leave that for you to discover. It's much more interesting to find out on your own; not to mention it's hard to describe as it is.

If I've piqued your curiosity, go visit the makers

Tale of Tales

There is a demo, which is more of a prologue to the story than it is a demo. Try it out. You will not be disappointed.

Now I leave you with the question: Will you take the path of needles, or the path of pins?

For another game that has a more active gameplay, and an equally dark atmosphere, look at the flash game AND Steam game Closure.

Have a good week, dear readers!