We don’t typically speak about Pipe Mania as an essential and much-copied puzzle sport. It’s not talked about in the identical breath as Tetris or Lemmings, for instance. However with regards to indie puzzle video games on the Xbox, Pipe Mania could be the most influential of all of them. Barely every week goes by with no sport that riffs on the path-planning basic.
The Traveler’s Path is typical of this type of sport. It delivers a grid of squares, and plenty of of these squares have paths on them. There are straight items, bends, junctions and crossroads. At first, they received’t type any form of helpful or viable path. However via the facility of rotating and transferring these items, it is possible for you to to assemble an unbroken path to the exit throughout the degree, at which level the puzzle is solved.
When it comes to theme, The Traveler’s Path is much less about pipes and extra about weary adventurers who need you to place in all of the work. Your little dude sits in a nook of the sport display, and a corresponding flag rests on an opposing aspect of the grid. In between are some paths, and you’ve got two skills – the flexibility to swap tiles and the flexibility to rotate them – which ought to be sufficient to create a path.
The Traveler’s Path makes this tougher by making a number of the squares immovable. Some can’t be moved or rotated, whereas others will be moved however not rotated, and vice versa. These are the restrictions you need to work with, and the enjoyable comes from adapting. If there’s a sodding nice rock in the best way, maybe you’ll have to work round it. If one path around the rock is shorter than the opposite, then you could wish to strive the fast route first.
To The Traveler’s Path’s credit score, it doesn’t cease there. Once in a while it throws in variations on a theme. A second traveler will seem on the grid, and also you might need to get each to in a different way colored exits – difficult whenever you’ve obtained a restricted deck of paths. You’d finest be utilizing these crossroads squares properly. And a few ranges have cash on. It’s a must to discover this out your self, however you might want to acquire the bronze, silver and gold cash in that order, which is tougher than it sounds. We discovered ourselves intentionally creating dead-ends in order that we may bounce our traveler backwards to the following coin.
All of that is performed with the A button to pick out a chunk and X button to rotate it. In some way, The Traveler’s Path fumbles these easy guidelines. Once you begin a degree, you mechanically have the primary piece highlighted. Why, we don’t know, nevertheless it implies that you’ll be deciding on a chunk to carry it into focus, solely to unintentionally swap it with the primary piece on the board.
In any other case, puzzles are simple to become familiar with. Shifting items is easy and apparent. The cursor strikes quick sufficient that you just’re not trudging throughout the puzzle to get from one piece to a different. There’s a chunky tactility to the items that make them satisfying to toss across the board.
We’re large followers of the completely different degree variants, too. We’re shocked that The Traveler’s Path didn’t use them extra, in actual fact: they pressure you to assume barely in a different way, and that’s refreshing. The cash particularly get you considering past ‘what’s the quickest path to the exit?’. You’re fascinated about the items you would possibly use. It’s essentially the most ‘out of the field’ considering that you’ll do in The Traveler’s Path.
Which is a clue to The Traveler’s Path’s greatest gripe, really. Far too typically, the answer could be very a lot ‘within the field’ slightly than out of it. What we’re getting at is The Traveler’s Path isn’t a tough sport. It’s too timid to actually push you to your limits, too anxious that you just would possibly get caught.
In nearly all cases, there are a number of methods of finishing a given degree. There’s no singular answer. You is perhaps simply as profitable going left round a rock as you’re going proper. That is sensible within the ‘Stage Rating’ sense; you get a medal relying on whether or not you succeeded within the minimal variety of strikes. For that to work you want a number of possible options. However a number of possible options does some harm to the sense of problem of The Traveler’s Path.
With so many options, the satisfaction of discovering one turns into lessened. We didn’t really feel particular. Certain, we may have stored enjoying the identical degree to search out the minimal variety of strikes, however the minimal variety of strikes isn’t really introduced anyplace (making it tough to ‘beat’ it) and we had treasured little motivation to take action. There’s nothing to earn, no achievements to achieve for excellent playthroughs. When there are a number of methods to pores and skin a cat, discovering simply one in all them is trivial.
We zoomed to the top of The Traveler’s Path in a single sitting. That’s a constructive within the sense that there’s barely a department to snag your self on. We don’t recall getting caught significantly: we simply moved to a Plan B and invariably succeeded at it.
However there’s a unfavourable aspect to that coin. The Traveler’s Path doesn’t have the gumption to allow you to fail. You’re served up puzzle after puzzle which have a number of options and none of them are tough to search out. We waited, hoping for a puzzle that would actually confound us, nevertheless it by no means got here. So, whereas we sprinted to the top, holding our 2000G aloft like a Triforce, we had that nagging feeling that we hadn’t earned it.
