transmediation of red riding hood and it's common theme of male domestication of women. That's carried by the woodsman in the tale. Carried differently in the game.
Designers work against the conventions of games in
No win
No levels
Flat hierarchy
Pace
No ostensible goals : meander, collecting objects and having an adventure
Death comes after red enters gms house, envisioned by a final scene of trauma
employs a range of distinctly literary elements
Sees it as metaludic narrative
metaludacity
Those elements that
make players reflect critically upon game mechanics and gameplay.
in subversive contrast to ludic games
The Path is a game that can't, and doesn't want to, be won. At its core lies its subtextual and subludic message: the trials and tribulations related to adolescent maturation and the toll they take on young people's personalities and self-image. Therefore the designers suggest that players " try working with the game, rather than against it" (Tale of Tales 2009b: 13, emphasis in original) and develop a lusory attitude that will be conducive to reading gameplay in the context of its narrative and symbolical framework.
Allusive devices
deployed misleading cues
- Have literary functions
- Fog and limited visability
- Icons on frame of interface
- Girl in white
- Pro and analepsis signaled by fade in of other sister in some places
Illusion of agency
First pass looks wide open. But player gets sense of strategy and more and more signals of what to do, where to go, what to avoid, etc. agency becomes restricted.