Drizzlepath, a casual walking simulator that hopefully won’t make you walk away from walking simulators.
While on a binge of walking simulator type of games, I decided I wanted to buy a whole lot at once, and this happened to be one of the whole lot I came across. Aside from Myst, I think Drizzlepath is the only actual walking simulator I played.
It was a nice distraction from other combat games. But it certainly wasn’t the greatest.
- Developed by Tonguç Bodur
- Published by Tonguç Bodur
- Available on Steam
Who is this game for?
Game length
Less than an hour
Genres
Explanation to Negative Feedback
Can’t understand female narrator
Because the woman who speaks has a thick accent and speaks in riddles rather than how an ordinary person would speak, it’s really hard to understand her, and there are no subtitles available.
Graphics are quite outdated
I mean…yeah. I want to say they aren’t bad, because they really aren’t, but they’re certainly no longer the realistic detailed environment that they once were when this game first came out. It’s still nice but…definitely flawed as far as an open environment goes.
Intermittent music
The soundtrack isn’t consistent in the game.
Very disappointing, because it really is beautifully done and nice to listen to.
Instead, it comes up at checkpoints–they’ve basically used the music to provide you with motivation to move forward in the game. Because when there’s no music, you’ve got silence, and (almost) nobody likes that.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Relaxing game
Despite there not being much to take in with Drizzlepath, or the fact that you honestly can’t interact with anything, aside from stumbling into some wooden fence boards and causing them to collapse, it is a pretty relaxing game to play if you need to wind down and just take in the environment without actually going outside.
Drizzlepath Review
Drizzlepath is, in all sense of the words, a walking simulator.
As such, I don’t really understand why people hate on it for being exactly what the genre says it to be. And if you don’t know what a walking simulator is, well, let’s take a look at some other games of the like, such as PowerWash Simulator, Thief Simulator, Lawn Mowing Simulator, and even Surgeon Simulator. They all simulate a certain thing, and so, a walking simulator simulates walking.
You walk.
And walk and walk and walk.
Granted, walking simulators these days grant us a lot more than Drizzlepath does, and that’s because it’s meant to be a relaxing hike in nature up to the mountaintops. There’s nothing to read along the way. Nothing to interact with. You just…sightsee as you make your way to your destination in mind.
But, since the game is so old (we’re talking 2015 here) and the first game of one single developer, it’s not as pretty as it used to be when it first came out, which was sort of on the precipice of amazing. Kind of hard to imagine when you’re going back to it these days, as there’s lag to it now and not all resolutions are your friend and can cause the game to crash.
Now days when someone says “walking simulator” you might think of the game Death Stranding, which crushes this one in terms of environmental beauty. In fact, a lot of the negative reviews compare this game to both Dear Esther, which I haven’t played as of this review, so I can’t compare it, as well as Gone Home, which I have played, and this game is vastly different from that one.
While Gone Home focuses on a story of what happened by reading different things in a house, Drizzlepath’s story is…nonexistent. It’s a hike out in nature, in which case a story doesn’t have to exist. It’s a bad comparison.
Despite all this, it is a nostalgic game that represents the beauty of a time long past.
When you first enter the game, you’re under water. You don’t have to worry about staying under too long and running out of air, as this is a game that’s more about taking everything in rather than struggling with something you might not have–air. Funnily enough, though you can’t die while submerged, there is fall damage and there aren’t any invisible walls to stop you from walking off the edge of a cliff further in the game.
Therefore, despite it being a relaxing game that has no other way of dying, there’s always the risk of falling off a cliff if you’re not careful.
Just, y’know, don’t look down.
When you emerge from the water and start walking, there’s an unfortunate head-bob mechanic. Without any proper settings that today’s games have, the head-bob that occurs while you walk may aggravate those that get motion sickness or succumb to headaches easily (such as myself). Honestly, I didn’t find it too terrible, but…it’s there.
While that’s noticeable, you might also notice the lack of something as you progress through this open world.
Wildlife.
Where on earth is the wildlife in this game? When you’re near water you might be able to see turtles, lobsters, and frogs, but no fish, which is probably the most weird about the water, besides you being able to breathe it for an infinite amount of time. There are also moments you might disturb a flock of birds, but aside from that…there are no birds in the sky. There are no rabbits. No deer.
Nothing.
I don’t understand why, considering there are dilapidated buildings, meaning nobody has been out here in a long while, which should make it ripe for wildlife looking to scavenge for a place to hide. Not so much deer, but smaller critters maybe. Maybe they thought they’d be too dangerous for a lone hiker and decided to forego adding them to the game.
I mean…that makes the most sense. It’s still really weird and lonely.
As you progress, there are two things you won’t know until you either press the appropriate button or get to a certain point, which are the jump mechanic as well as crouch. You won’t be using crouch for anything specific in the game–I personally used it when I wanted to capture a screenshot and wanted a certain angle. Jump, however, is a mechanic you’ll use once, toward the end of the path.
Don’t worry, the game will tell you when that time comes.
As I said, I do enjoy using crouch in order to get some nicer looking screenshots. It’s one of the things that you can take advantage of when playing a walking simulator based outside. Nothing to interact with? Get some good shots in then. Make it fun.
You’re outside. You’ve got scenery. It’s quiet. You’ve got a camera in the form of a screenshot button, so use it.
The quietness of the game was something that probably annoyed me the most, because the soundtrack, when you reach certain checkpoints, is so nice to listen to and if Drizzlepath had more of it, it really would’ve made the game a lot better, even if nature doesn’t include music unless you’ve got headphones in, which could be a possibility, or there’s a bard following you or something.
I mean, submerging yourself with headphones on probably isn’t ideal, so bard it is.
Along with the short bursts of music, there’s also a woman narrating, though you probably won’t be able to understand what the woman is saying all the time, as she has a thick accent and there were no subtitles added to the game. The developer also mentioned that he couldn’t implement them into the game after its release I guess due to the engine they used to create it.
Now, while you could probably decipher what she said if she were talking normally, you’ll notice that she also talks in riddles. A kind of poetic speech every time a checkpoint happens, and only when you come across a checkpoint.
Going back to the environment, one of the reasons it’s not as nice looking as some of the games as today is there’s not a whole lot of foliage, and the mountains in the distance aren’t detailed. They’re smooth and without texture, since you’re not close enough to actually see any texture to them, I guess. The trees are more repetitive in their looks and the flowers are all the same in small patches here and there.
It’s just a whole lot of grass without a lot of other things to attract your attention aside from a single statue, a dilapidated ruin, and a few old houses here and there.
Once you get up into the mountains the environment becomes even more abandoned by nature, which is natural because there’s not much on an actual snowy mountain unless there’s a body laying in your path. Even looking out over the distance isn’t breath-taking in this game though.
When you progress a certain point up along the mountain, there are markers with candles in them here and there. I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if the candles are lit when someone has walked the path, to show that there are people somewhere up ahead? Otherwise the lights would have to burn out, right? Is this an actual thing?
Even further ahead the environment changes to a bright sunny day to dark and foreboding with drizzles (hence the name) turning into snow flurries. The path gets thinner so you’ll need to be a bit more careful as to not step over the cliff and fall by accident.
Eventually you’ll get to a small tent at the very top with your friends.
It’s a game that’s less than an hour long, especially if you’re not doing much but sticking to the path from the start to the end, and it’s not the prettiest, but it is fun to try and capture nice looking screenshots that capture the beauty of a game that was once so realistic looking.
