Mark Newheiser at Adventure Classic Gaming has posted an interview with the creators of The Path, one of my favorite games* so far this year. But unlike other games, I'm not really that interested in analyzing it, or explaining it, or even really talking about it. For me, The Path was an experience I'd just as soon leave alone to turn over in my mind from time to time.

However, the interview serves at a sort of director's commentary. It's fascinating hearing the developers, Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey, talk about a lot of the nuts and bolts of the game. For instance, when asked which horror films inspired the look of the game:

...even though we watched many horror films in preparation for this project, not much of the visual style of the game was inspired by cinema. The inclusion of overlays was initially mostly motivated by a desire to make the image dirty. Default 3D rendering is so smooth and clean. It's what the computer does best. But humans are not so perfect. And we want to make art for humans, not for computers. So we just added layer upon layer to mess up the image. Gradually, parts of this messiness received a function in the design. Because, since the computer is the medium, it needs numbers to do anything. So we fed it numbers that came from the gameplay and game state, instead of random ones. This is how some of the graphics in the overlays can be used as a tool for navigation for instance, or how other elements serve as a warning for something in your vicinity.

There are also insights into how the game is built for the player to fail, what genres it does and doesn't fit, and whether there are correct interpretations of the imagery.

Everything in The Path is open for interpretation. To tell you the truth, we don't even know what it all means ourselves. And we find this wonderful!

Read the interview here.

* Leaving aside the fact that it's not really a game in the conventional sense of the word.