Via StumbleUpon, I came across the website for a short horror game which will be released in March or April 2009:  The Path.  Produced by a small independent game company called Tale of Tales (and I mean small: two programmers), the idea of The Path has totally captivated me and I can’t wait for the game to come out!

The Path is inspired by the tale of Little Red Riding Hood: the player’s official goal is to get six sisters to their grandmother’s house through a dark forest.  The girls have been given one important instruction: stay on the path to grandmother’s house.  Apparently, one can easily follow the path to grandma’s place without incident.   However, unlike most horror games, the true goal of the game is not survival; rather, the only way interesting things happen is by breaking that one rule.  Exploration of the areas of the forest off the path will reveal more about the story of the girls and eventually lead to their deaths.

The artwork looks very atmospheric and creepy, aided for me at least by the fact that it has a bit of an Edward Gorey “Gashlycrumb Tinies” feel to it.  If you aren’t familiar with the “Gashlycrumb Tinies”, it is a twisted work of humor that alphabetically describes the horrible fates of twenty-six children on an outing (“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears”… damn, I still have it memorized).  If you compare this image of the six sisters,

with the famous image from “After the Outing”,

you may get an idea of why I make the comparison.

If you’re tired of “Resident Evil” games which become more and more “Halo with zombies” in each iteration, you might want to give The Path a look when it comes out…