Prepare to be whisked away to a remote village where the only access is via a boat when the ice breaks and access to the outside world opens.
Dark things are afoot in this village, and it’s your job as the town’s Ranger to save the children from the winter storms that whisk them away into the forest every winter. Your predecessor perished in those woods while searching for the children, and you’ve been given a 15 year contract by the Mayor in their absence. It’s a bleak thing to know that every year some children are lost in the cold, and it is your job to save as many as you can.
Developer Spry Fox has crafted a dark yet charming world for Road Not Taken, one that teases many secrets to keep you going back for more. The game moves at your pace as you transition between the town and forest parts of the game. Each year on the first day of winter you’ll be called into action by the Mayor to venture forth into the Forest to navigate its randomly-generated areas in a bid to save the missing children.
As a Ranger, you’ll have to use your magic staff to lift, move, and throw objects around the areas to complete puzzles and objectives. The ultimate goal is to reunite the children with their parents, who are scattered around the woods; but things are never as simple as that. The whole experience has childlike fairy tale quality that feels straight out of a Brothers Grimm’s story.
First and foremost, the forest is an incredibly dangerous place, populated with animals, traps, and puzzles hindering your progress. Your staff can lift almost anything, and fortunately lifting doesn’t cost any energy, as your energy also doubles as your life bar. But moving lifted objects does drain energy, and you’ll find that tossing objects around to be a much more efficient way of rearranging the forest into your feng shui.
Energy is precious though, and you’ll quickly find that one wrong move will cost you dearly as hostile animals, bad weather, and disagreeable ghosts will be more than happy to drain you of your precious life force. As this is a turn-based isometric puzzle game, nothing moves unless you do and that gives you a bit a breathing room to plan your movements. The randomly-generated rooms of the forest mean that no two experiences will ever be the same, and so you soon learn to rely on your wits in order to solve each puzzle. There are some events that you might see pop up a few times over multiple playthroughs though, be they bosses, fun events, or things that are downright weird which I don’t want to spoil.
Puzzles range from magical doorways that require you to group two or more objects together, to simply navigating a room without dying at the hands of the creatures present. As the years go by the difficulty level ramps up from manageable to horribly unforgiving, as the game laughs in your face while it quickly destroys all the progress you’ve made.
The puzzles will evolve from being confined to a singular screen to branching over several that will force you to move objects between them to open doors. This quickly gets as tedious as it is frustrating, and it’s becomes too easy to make a single wrong move and lock yourself out of the solution: any children behind that door will be lost. Ever year you must save at least half of the children to progress to the next year, but you’re given one chance to abandon all the children and progress. Just be sure to heed the Mayor’s warnings and not look their parents in the eyes when you leave their child behind. You’ll find that missing one child can change the perception that several townsfolk have of you once you return from the woods empty-handed.
The village provides you with some refuge during the off-seasons. You can interact with villagers and explore the impressively large house that the town has granted you, which was the former residence of your predecessor. Don’t worry; they cleared out all of the last Ranger’s belongings before you got there, but they left the cat. The villagers are originally distrustful of you upon your arrival, but by trading items obtained in the woods you’re able to improve their perceptions of you. In a nice touch, each townsperson is unique, with their own little stories and personal tastes, and by paying attention to what they say you can work out which items they find most desirable.
Successfully improving your relationships provides you with rewards ranging from simple tips and tricks to items that will aid you in the wintry woods. Over time, your house starts to fill up with trinkets, while your basement stores various totems that represent objects in the woods. By interacting with the totems, you can choose to ban different objects from play. Only two can objects can be selected at any time and it’s up to you to decide which you would like to remove, but if you want some advice, the wolves are a good place to start.
Once you raise your relationship status up high enough with one of the villagers you’ll be given one of the game’s best rewards - the option to remove your hood and show your face, which takes on a different appearance depending on your previous choices and actions in a similar manner to the Fable series. You could have long purple flowing hair and horns that wrap around his head, or short orange hair with large antlers. Each time I started a new game my Ranger looked different, and it was one driving force behind creating and maintaining relationships with the townsfolk. Unfortunately, they always seem disappointed by what they see.
On top of all these mechanics there’s an in-depth crafting system, but it’s left to the player to work out the right combinations through trial and error. You’ll discover useful combinations of items to help you in the woods. Three orange ghosts turn into an ax that can be used to cut trees and make fires, and those fires will then turn kids into hyper kids that will follow you around freely. There is a wide range of possible restorative items that can be created, and are essential to completing the later stages of the game. You also have a detailed note book that is a button push away, but the navigation can get clunky and when it fills up you’ll have to search through page after page for the right pattern.
I hate to say that any game may be too difficult, but Road Not Taken is a game that punishes you for carelessness and rewards you for your patience. Each time you die and have to restart you’ll have to patiently make your way through each puzzle in a methodical dance, as one slip up early in the game can cost you dearly later. The relationships with the villagers are truly fun, and it kept me coming back for more when I died. But the forest will quickly get overwhelming and frustrating, and unlike most other modern roguelikes there is no one thing that will dramatically decrease the difficulty as you play. You cannot brute force your way through the puzzles as that is sure fire way to end up dead, and the times you do make it through the gauntlet you’ll never really feel that sense of accomplishment that you should.
Road Not Taken has a lot to offer, but it takes a little teasing out to see everything. When you do, you’ll be rewarded by the little things. It’s certainly not for everyone, but for those with the patience and dedication to stick with it, there’s plenty of joy in these woods. Now, if only someone would put a leash on these kids…
Brian Kale
@brianwkale
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