14 DAY TRIAL // 
In Road Not Taken, leaving a child behind to die in a dark corner of a forest, probably scared and freezing, is something that a player will need to do more than once, but the game also offers moments when gamers will see the joy that emerges when a mother is reunited with her missing offspring.
The team at Spry Fox has managed to create a good looking and complex game experience that brings in together mechanics from two very different genres in interesting ways, but can also scare and frustrate players at times.
Road Not Taken can be played on the PC and the PlayStation 4 and will certainly appeal to those who are interested in the innovation that indie game makers can deliver on the two platforms.
Story
Road Not Taken has a very simple story to tell: children are getting lost in the forest while picking berries and the protagonist needs to try and reunite them with their parents by solving a lot of puzzles and by traveling around the various locations.
The concept is easy to slot into the wider rogue-like family, as every time the player fails to perform their job adequately, the game restarts with a newly-generated set of challenges and with a clean slate.
But the world of Road Not Taken has a little more depth than first meets the eye: the player character, known as the Ranger, can get a house where he meets a fluffy cat, but he can also interact with some quickly sketched but interesting characters inside the village.
Bumping into things results in short bits of dialogue or in descriptions of the various objects and characters, and they suggest that there’s a deeper mythology that can only be unveiled by continuing to play.
The interactions with the other villagers are also interesting, even if limited in nature, and they show how closed societies work when a stranger appears and forces people to re-evaluate their existence.
The writing in Road Not Taken is pretty solid and even chuckle worthy at times, and it does a good job of keeping the entire experience lighthearted despite the relative tragic nature of the events that take place.
The developers at Spry Fox never directly address the issue of how the children are basically exploited by their parents and the mayor, and how they are basically forced to pick the berries, which can extend lives, even if that means that they can die alone in the forest.
The game never fully explores these dark themes, but it’s nice to see the jolly graphics and the humor-filled quips in contrast with the undertone of moral decay.
Gameplay
Road Not Taken asks the player to move through the forest where children have been lost each year, find them and then reunite them with their mothers, and that’s done by exploring and by solving puzzles that rely on a classic match mechanic.
The player has a 15-year contract for this job, and as time progresses, the game becomes more complex and reveals more of its unique elements.
The Ranger character is able to pick up anything he finds and to then either move the object, animal or entity or to throw it away.
At first sight, that should make the puzzles easy to complete, and the game does a good job of easing the player in while it explains the core concepts, but soon it becomes clear that quite a bit of brain power is required in order to get to the lost children and bring them back to their families.
The Ranger can only throw away items from his body, which is one limitation, and he also picks up everything that’s adjacent to him, which means that there are often situations when objects get in bad places even as one puzzle is being solved.
Once something is being carried, each step takes away one unit of energy, which is also the life of the main character, and that means that players need to think ahead and make sure that they only drag stuff around when they absolutely need to and rely mostly on throwing to get things into place.
Some of the creatures in the woods can also be threatening and can take away some energy, but there are also items that can replenish it.
Once all energy is gone, the Ranger is dead and the entire experience starts over, with a new randomized layout for the puzzles.
Road Not Taken also includes a sort of crafting, which happens when some items hit others, and the player can learn more about it either by experimenting, which can be a problem when actually trying to solve a puzzle, or by getting info from the various characters.
Inside the village, gamers need to also decide whom to try and interact with, and they can use their items, from copper coins to little rabbits, to get favors and even find love, although becoming friendly with one character will make the others a little mad.
To make matters even more complex, items can be used to gain some temporary advantages and the performance from each year is linked to how much initial energy gamers will have during the next stage.
Road Not Taken is a hard game, and there are times when it seems impossible to get past the fourth world.
Progress requires a good setup and a little luck, but the best advice for gamers is to simply focus on the task at hand instead of thinking ahead and trying to plan how to get all the kids back to their parents.
The experience can be heartbreaking, but often settling for the minimum number of saved kids is the only way to get past a year, even if the implications are a little unsettling.
Graphics and audio
Road Not Taken is not the kind of game experience that will max out the PlayStation 4 hardware, but the team has managed to create a very good looking title, with a nice, clean, cartoon-like style that will appeal to a large group of potential players.
The various characters manage to show off their personality via their design, and the entire experience exudes an air of cuteness that, as with the humor and the gameplay, create an interesting dissonance with the dark themes that the development team at Spry Fox explores.
The look of the game also allows players to quickly evaluate how complex a puzzle is, and the various ingredients that need to be mixed and matched are easy to distinguish, which is crucial given the consequences of failure.
The sound design serves the same purpose, but is less impressive than the graphics, and there are moments when the music and the sounds are just too cute, the only element of the presentation which seems a little out of place.
The Good
- Mix of puzzles and rogue-like elements
- Dark themes
- Character interactions
The Bad
- Difficulty level
- Some item mechanics
Conclusion
The core ideas of the game are easy to understand but hard to master and that creates a level of challenge that fans of the rogue-like genre will probably appreciate, due to the procedurally generated levels and the replayability introduced by the choices that can be made in the village.
The problem with Road Not Taken is that it can often feel depressive, even when the gamer is actually succeeding, and that the puzzles can sometimes be too hard to complete because of their random nature.
I like the fact that video games have evolved enough to use their story and their mechanics to seem approachable and cute while exploring some dark themes, but the bait-and-switch strategy might annoy some of those who pick up the new title from Spry Fox.
