Review - Mind: Path to Thalamus
You wake up after a fierce tornado to find yourself in a strange world. This isn’t the Wizard of Oz, it’s Path to Thalamus. This is a puzzle game that came out back in 2015. You play as a man who has been thrust into his own mind-scape as he thinks back over his long, dark history. In a lot of arenas, Mind seems to push the envelope, such as their successful combination of gameplay and thematic elements, however it has its own problems at the same time.
In terms of the gameplay, the player walks around the environment usually looking for strange balls. These can be used to activate different nodes that affect either the weather or time in the environment around the player. By combining the different nodes, puzzles are created which usually require the player to either pass through a certain area or enter a portal at some point.
These puzzles were a bit of a mixed bag. Each of the elements was fairly successfully presented to the player by isolating them. From there, the combination of different elements created deeper puzzles. Some of the puzzles were quite good, especially near the end. With limited balls and numerous nodes to interact with, it could be a challenge to figure out what needed to be done. However, the interesting puzzles definitely came at the end of the game. The beginning had some of the least interesting pieces. Instead of manipulating different nodes, there would be invisible walkways that just necessitated a trial and error system to determine where one needed to walk. Others were so simple that they could hardly even be called puzzles. Had Path to Thalamus focused on revealing the different nodes to the player earlier on, the experience would have been much better. The puzzles would have been able to mature to a complexity that was actually worthwhile.
Where the puzzles really succeeded was their narrative significance. The nodes focus on the two aforementioned areas: weather and time. Both were vital themes throughout the story. Much of the conflict that the player encounters is focused around storms where the avatar lost something. On the other hand, the avatar also dwells on the past to the point of obsession. By having the puzzles reflect these two key themes the game was capable of coloring the entirety of the experience to match the story. Very few other games have succeeded to this extent.
The narrative was a bit of a mixed bag. Story was expressed through nodes that the player could activate to hear some dialogue. It would have been much nicer to have more nodes, as they were few and far between. Given the small quantity of nodes, there wasn’t much opportunity for deepening the story. That being said, it was an interesting piece about loss. The loss of one person lead to obsession and the ultimate loss of another. It navigates the interpersonal relations, especially familial, that arise when a loved one passes on.
While the narrative was somewhat short, it was a constant element throughout all of the design of the game. I’ve mentioned the puzzles already, but the level design reflects the same holistic schema. As the player progresses farther into the game and learns more clearly about the nature of the world they are in, that being the mindscape of the avatar, the world alters itself to better reflect it’s nature. One level is almost certainly meant to depict a world of synapses where the player’s actions work to fix the avatar’s broken mind. The narrative was successfully expressed not only in dialogue but also in the world around the player.
Where things become a bit more problematic are the aesthetics. On their face, the aesthetics are quite nice. They are two years old, thereby making some of the scenes look dated, however it is pleasing overall. The problem with it is the voids in the game. By void I mean anything that is empty. On its own, the emptiness of many of the environments would have been able to be overlooked. The problem is that Path to Thalamus creates far too many audio voids where there is little to no sound. The combination of empty sound and empty space makes the world feel even emptier than it actually is. The player is then left with little to occupy themselves, especially when they no longer have to think deeply about a puzzle. That lack of occupation leads to boredom with the game. Had the developers added a more prominent soundtrack, or even more background noises, this would not have been so much of a problem. As it is, the game often leaves the player wanting for there to be more to see, more to hear, or more to do.
It must be noted that there are some technical issues with the game. There were sometimes glitches that caused balls to not be placed but to instead be thrown, causing puzzles to be much more annoying than they should have been. Often times the balls would fly out the player’s hands for no apparent reason. Physics was, overall, not the game’s strong suit. The subtitles were, also, terribly implemented. Some voice lines didn’t have subtitles, there was at least one line where no spaces were put in, and the subtitles (even on 100% subtitle size) were ridiculously tiny.
To sum it up, Mind: Path to Thalamus really succeeds in its holistic narrative approach. The puzzles were okay, but the interesting ones only came at the end of the game with much of the initial portion being a slog. If you want to see an example of a game that threads its story throughout all of its elements, then this is the title for you. If you’re looking for a good puzzler or a easy, relaxing walking simulator then you should turn away now. Path to Thalamus was as frustrating at times as it was interesting. Admittedly, it is a pretty good buy for the price.
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