PC Review Code Provided by Journey Bound Games
It’s always interesting how many different ways a puzzle can be set up, but finding a style that can be pushed through a growing difficulty and maintain its entertainment value can be hard. The married development team at Journey Bound Games did a great job picking the style for their game Path of Giants. After bringing their mobile game to Steam for a wider range of players to enjoy, it turns out that the game still works rather well.
Story
Three adventurers are on their way to finally reach the lost treasure they’ve been searching for. In order to obtain it, they must make their way through a series of trials and challenges. Only together can the adventurers overcome what lies within the icy caverns and snow-covered cliffs.
Gameplay
All you have to do is switch between the three adventurers and move them one at a time through each puzzle section. You will need to use each other in order to move up or down ledges, balance the weight on the elevator lifts, and get to the end goal. Each adventurer is color-coded and their end goal matches their same color, so there’s no confusion on where you need to go at any point in the game. The challenge lies in how to get each adventurer to the goal point.
Sometimes there are buttons that can only be pressed by the adventurer of the same color. These tend to move one part of the level in one direction. Once you step off of the button, the moved level chunk will return to where it was originally, Then there are what are best known as switch buttons. These buttons can be pressed by any of the adventurers and once pressed the level gets a permanent change to it that will help with the next steps to get the trio to their end spots.
Once you complete all the puzzles in each chapter you will come across a line puzzle, Solving this puzzle opens the door to the next section of the game. Each orb, again color-coded to match each adventurer, will be powered up and the goal is to get all three orbs power to flow through each other. This is done by twisting the pathways until you get them all connected.
The entire game is a simple point-and-click mechanic, so nothing difficult in how to play. Also, each adventurer can have their color changed between a small pallet unique to each one, so you can use whatever three colors suit you best. There are also pots throughout the game that can be broken by clicking on them. Some pots are hiding a coin and there are three coins in each chapter to find. Finding all of these coins will unlock a secret chamber, or rather a locked and more difficult chapter.
Visuals
With such a cutesy art style used, this game is visually appealing to pull off the casual feel even when the puzzles start to get more challenging. The backgrounds are also very well done at giving depth to the trial rooms.
Sound
It isn’t exactly going to catch your interest musically, to be honest. There is a gentle, yet pretty generic music style used that is fitting and not distracting. Good for the fact that it is a puzzle game, but could have been better.
Replayability
There is the hidden chamber that can be unlocked, as well as a whole new section of puzzles once the game is completed called Winterfest. It seemed like a Christmas themed section and provided the hardest puzzles I came across in the game. Hopefully, they will keep providing more themed sections to give more puzzles for the players who enjoy the game.
However, once you complete all of these puzzles there isn’t much reason to go back as they are always the same.
What Could Be Better
After getting all the coins and unlocking the hidden chapter, I couldn’t help but feel that it could have been longer. Why not make the series of puzzles before the end of this special chapter longer than the others? Or perhaps provide multiple chapters that would be unlocked? It just seems like there was potential here that was passed up.
I like how the game is a casual puzzle game, but it took that term quite seriously. I only found myself stumped twice and that was during the Winterfest section of the game. Sure, each puzzle required some thought and examination, but I would have enjoyed some harder puzzles towards the end.
Conclusion
Path of Giants is one of the better casual puzzle games out today! I like the art style and puzzle set up they utilized for this game as it worked well throughout the whole adventure. The whole game was enjoyable to play through. It is a bit short length-wise, but it comes at a fair inexpensive price as well. I hope to see some DLC or more games from this team featuring gameplay like this game offers.
