There are two hundred different objects and creatures to discover in the game, many of which can be combined in different ways. Throw a raccoon onto the fire and the resulting meaty stew will renew your energy. Hurl the axe at a tree and it'll change to a log. Combine four red forest spirits, for example, and you'll craft an axe. Group certain objects together on the map and they'll combine to create new things. Every solution is yours alone to discover.Ĭomplexity is added by way of an arcane crafting mechanic. This is a puzzle game about angles - the kicker being that the procedural generation ensures no two rooms are ever the same. The ultimate aim is always hurl a child at a waiting parent, but there are many spatial micro-puzzles that must be cleared first. Like rearranging the furniture in a cramped room you begin moving and swapping. Rather than heft the objects around, then, it's better to save your energy by lifting and throwing them into place. Lose all of your energy and you'll die out there in the forest. You can move while holding an object or creature but doing so will forfeit one unit of energy. You might need to arrange three hedges so they're touching in order to move West, or shepherd three deer into a huddle in order to move South. Many of the forest's clearings have doorways that lead off the new areas, which open only when you match a set number of specified objects. Most objects and creatures can be lifted. Otherwise, your interactions are limited to lifting, carrying and throwing. You are able to move freely around the gridded environments each time you move any other creatures in the vicinity take their move in kind. The forest is divided into a series of linked, randomly generated areas that house animals, objects and the absent children. Fittingly for a game that's about combining different things to create novelties, developer Spry Fox has combined the match-three genre with a rogue-like to create a game that is both idiosyncratic and unfamiliar and the story helps to ground its curiosities with a clear goal. It's an emotive premise, and one that injects Road Not Taken's brilliant yet convoluted mechanics with urgency and soul. But, as the mayor advises, if you choose to leave the forest before you've found every last child, try not to look the parents in the eye on your way back home. You must rescue at least half of the children after each storm in order to progress to the next year. There you search behind rocks, trees and wolves for the lost children whom you must deliver safely back to their pacing mothers. On the morning after each year's storm you crunch into the forest's shifting clearings. Your job, as the newly hired ranger, is to lower this annual death toll, to make the "few" fewer still. Bereavement is the cost of living in a remote village where once a year a winter storm sweeps the children from their beds and deposits them somewhere in the vastness of the bordering forest. "Every winter we lose a few," says the mayor, matter-of-factly.
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