The Way

10/10. I cried multiple times. This is what a masterpiece of a game looks like. The story is beautiful, emotional, and strung through every moment of the game. The sci-fi genre is beautiful, the style, everything. I wish there were more like this. Reminds me a lot of epic sci-fi worlds like Hyperion or Foundation.

I rarely review games before completing them, most of the time even a review it´s the final step before unistalling tons of games for me, when I trully feel there´s nothing more to experience about it, that´s when I trully think my oppinion is informed enough to be shared. With The Way though I have to make an exception, cause I understood a long time ago that I will never complete it. The negative reviews are correct, this game is utterly frustrating, it has never being patched despite the multiple complains and probably never will, remaining as uncompleted for most players, specially since it lacks steam cloud and therefor unless you take your own messures, losing your progress is a posibility and you simply wouldn´t want to repeat any of the frustrating, difficult and time sensitive puzzles you may have manage to overcome allready.
But why the positive rating then? Becuase this game is as beutiful and well design as frustrating. The art style is used masterfully alongside some really good designs for an alien world that is completely unique. The story is presented with such simplicity yet care that takes you back to your childhood games if you happen to be a little older, where the limitations of hardware and sofware would force devs to get creative on how to present a narrative. And it´s difficult not to get hooked precisely due to the puzzles being kind fo hardcore, the more you progress things escalate and there´s a point of no return where the game would have capture you enough to desire finishing it. It trully manage to pay a heck of a homage to the games it clearly draws inspiration like Flashback and Another World.
Overall I think this puzzle action platformer needs to be experienced, again, the only drawback it´s the fact you may not be able to experience it entirely. There are a series of specific puzzle that have become notoriously infamous for the community, some are more doable with either patience or a guide and others less so depending on the type of player you are. But it´s also super cheap when it´s on sale, as I write this review it´s on a sale for 0,89, that´s a crazy bargain even if you don´t manage to complete it. I think I paid a similar price and have 7 hours registered, when I got stuck I decided to watch on youtube the rest of the game to see the ending and sucks I wasn´t able to get there but I did enjoy the story still even if I wasn´t making those final steps.

The Way feels very immersive, it has great artistic design and atmosphere.
It's an adventure game and a puzzle-heavy platformer.
I haven't played the games that inspired it, but the retro sensibility is obvious and feels authentic.
If you like puzzles, adventures, and a sense of wonder it's a good fit.
However, it has one downside for my taste, possibly explained by those retro sensibilities.
It's very die and retry.
You play as a human, grief-stricken, driven by mad resolve, gradually moving from mundane reality into wondrous alien landscapes.
This is conveyed by the gorgeous color palette, and by a sense of scale: functionally, you are a speck.
You have one (1) hit point.
The platforming is fiddly. The game registers your inputs just fine, and it knows how to be responsive, but vertical movement is often based on grabbing ledges, and you have to be precise with the positioning just to move around.
Dropping by more than a few hundred pixels (your character avatar is small relative to the scenery) is death.
If the boundaries of where you can survive aren't quite obvious, you die, retry, until you hopefully have finger memory of what works.
You'll gain a handful of abilities (starting with a gun), which you absolutely need for your survival, but you can only use those when standing and not moving. Cool-downs require you to plan ahead. Moving triggers animations (those ledge interactions), and those also make you a vulnerable target.
Each area is a little tableau, entering one gives you one (1) checkpoint, after that you are generally on your own. (Solving a puzzle occasionally gives another). Whenever you are facing enemies, your extreme vulnerability doesn't much encourage experimentation or improvisation, you have to be patient and repeat what works.
The well realized atmosphere makes it worth persevering. I just wish being a resolute speck didn't involve so much dying.
PS:
The puzzles are much more friendly to experimentation.
You'll occasionally need to take notes, I used steam's screenshot and notes functionality which worked out well and saved some backtracking.

fantastic sound, great music. very nice art work. very smoothly programmed. authentic, meaningful and comprehensible emotions. the puzzles are not very innovative, but they keep you busy.
made me relaxed after work 👍

Nice game, some puzzles are a little bit frustrating and the ending is not that satisfactory (some questions are totally and disappointedly unanswered) , but it's worth a play.

This game was really good. It has it's pros and cons however I will recommend this overall.
This has a very retro vibe of an old 90's microsoft game and others like it (I tried looking I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the game that I'm thinking of). Nice choice of animation style and amazing world environment and detail. The story is pretty good overall it does have some very impacting moments especially if you go for the 7 hidden collectables that adds to it. There were plenty of times I was taken off guard at how new areas were presented and some of the points in the story (Even made audible noises in response to some of these)
This game is pretty short if you look up guides on it and if you care about achievements you should. From one guide on Steam I used going into this there are miss-able achievements 16 of the 29 and one of the points that I didn't like is that there is no manual save it is only auto save. This means if you progress just a little too far to trigger the auto save you could have missed an achievement. If you don't care about achievements then there is plenty of puzzle solving to do (Puzzle interfaces at times others is a section where certain actions and routes depend on what you do).
Another part that I wish was a little different was that there was more save points at some areas. The mid point was a little frustrating because the auto saves were more stretched out requiring more precision for a longer period (You only take 1 hit on anything). It's not exactly a difficult game just the areas with more spaced out saves felt like it was padding the time a little.

Great concept and game. Beat it in 14 hours, several of those afk, so the lack of checkpoints others mentioned didn't bother me as I got back quickly (maybe I didn't repeat the sections as much as they did though haha). Ends up being almost a dollar per hour if you don't achievement hunt, but it's old and goes on sale for 90% off like it is now. If it's under $10 and you want to unwind with a nice puzzle and story oriented game to play for a weekend, give a try!