The Path

The Path is a short horror game inspired by older versions of Little Red Riding Hood and set in the modern day. Six sisters live in a city apartment, and their mother sends them one by one through a forest to visit their sick, bedridden grandmother. She tells them to go to the house and stay on the path, while wolves wait in the woods for them to stray.

The sisters and the forest

You play as each of the six teenage sisters, who differ in age and personality. The game explores growing up, change, choices and their consequences through exploration, discovery and introspection. Much of the story depends on your imagination, and each interaction expresses an aspect of the narrative.

The sisters can choose whether to resist the forest’s temptations or enter its dangers, and their journeys determine how the old tale unfolds. The game centers on playing, failing and accepting the consequences of choices, including the possibility of death.

Explore at your own pace

The Path takes place in a fully explorable, real-time 3D environment viewed through third-person navigation. Characters, including the sisters you control, have some autonomy through artificial intelligence, so encounters can vary from one journey to another.

There are no ticking clocks or monsters to defeat, and no difficult puzzles that block progress. Most activities are optional, leaving you free to explore and experience the forest.

Sound and atmosphere

The game uses stylized graphics and a continuous soundtrack composed by Jarboe. It has few sound effects; instead, the music changes with events in the game and, like the characters’ behavior, is never exactly the same twice. The melancholy mood and potentially unsettling events allude to violence and sexuality without depicting graphic violence or sexuality. A playthrough takes about 6 hours.