A Path to the Princess is a game I’ve had on my Atari VCS for a little while, but have only just put on to play. It’s a short but sweet puzzle game where you control a heroic prince who has to rescue a princess. Or at least meet up with a princess. This is one unlike most other puzzle games I’ve played.
In this latest edition of the Geek Battle Gaming Puzzle Game Power Hour, let’s get into everything that is A Path to the Princess on Atari VCS!
It’s one of a few games I’ve now looked at on my channel from Metgan Games who made the likes of Metgan Traffic Mission and the enjoyable Doodle Taxi that I reviewed around a year ago, which is one of my favourite games on the VCS.
I believe I’m correct in saying that these games are essentially made by just one or two people. The credits for the game say a game by Ahmet Aydemir, and I think that is the man behind Metgan Games. It does also say art by Sena Bostanci, but even if there’s a couple of people involved, I’m always impressed by 3D games from solo or near solo indie developers.
This is a short game, but it was also a very cheap game on the Atari VCS store, and for its single player campaign, you could probably beat it in around half an hour. There are forty-five levels in the single player mode, and I believe a shade under forty if you want to play in two player mode. I think I’m correct in saying that the stages are unique between single and two player mode, so in theory you can get more mileage out of the game if you play with a friend or even just set up for a two-player game and complete the additional levels. I’ll explain more about the two-player mode presently though.
The game sees you play as a generic looking prince in a blue tunic and a red cape. When I first played it wasn’t until near the end of the game that I realised it wasn’t meant to be a superhero in a Superman like costume. You stand on what looks like a US 9 Ball that has been pinched off of a pool table, and you glide about on a grid and can only move in straight lines. Throughout each stage you have to guide the nameless prince towards the end of the level where a princess awaits at the top of a tower…or a lighthouse…it looks more like a lighthouse.
Along the way there are several holes in the path you’ll need to take on the grid and if you go over one, the ball you’re on will get pocketed into it. Fortunately, along the way on each level you can usually pick up extra balls which will stack underneath you. Mostly, the gameplay is about working out the correct path to take so that you can pick up extra balls and make sure you have enough balls to pass every chasm.
There are lots of ideas in the short game that do vary up how you think about stages. Sometimes there are what appear to be ice blocks that will melt underneath you so you can return over this area of path, and there are frequently switches which activate when you roll over them. With these you have to make sure you go over them so that some gaps get closed and avoid going over them so that extra gaps are opened.
As a 3D game, the graphics are as simple as they could come. There’s no real logic to why the prince traverses the world on balls, it almost feels like it was two game ideas combined into one. One where you just have to guide a ball to the end goal, and I guess this would have been a bit like the tilting table mini game in Wii Fit, and another game where you have to guide a Prince to a Princess. If the focus had just been on the latter, I think the same gameplay could have worked with the Prince just have a certain number of planks of wood to build bridges across gaps as he went. That at least would have made sense story wise.
As I’ve said there are no character names that I am aware of, and no real story at all. You’re not actually rescuing the princess from anything, which again, I feel could be implemented here. If the tower was burning and the was graphics of a dragon it’d make the concept feel more fleshed out.
Whenever you get to the Princess at the end of a stage you seem to share a kiss with her. When you beat the final level, number 45, I thought the game had frozen as the Prince and Princess just eternally kiss, and then you have to quit the game back to the menu. This would be fine, and I mean, I think I’m correct in saying that Super Mario 64 ends on a screen where you have to crash the game, but this s does have a saved high score for each level which seems missing for the final level once you’ve beaten it. It would have been nice if there had been a congratulations or they lived happily ever after screen.
Although this brings me to the two player mode where two players play in a race to get to the Princess first, and presumably try to win her heart. The first player plays as the princess, although player two plays as a court jester that looks like a mix of the evil clown from Terrifier which is a bad horror film series and the he’s the r character from the old PSOne game Pandemonium.
In fact, speaking of Pandemonium, the graphics do somewhat remind me of it. They’re very very simple, and look like HD graphics of the very earliest 3D games. That’s ok for a indie game, and I like that it’s a 3D game where you can move the camera to examine the stages and potential paths from a different angle, but truthfully, this game could be exactly the same gameplay in 2D from a top down perspective. It has similar gameplay to the game Big2Small which I reviewed on the Evercade last year, and now it’s really going to bug me, because both that game and this remind me of another game where you’d slide across a screen until you hit a wall and had to work out the path based on this limitation. If anyone else knows any games that play similar to this let me know in the comments.
This game is super cheap on the Atari VCS, and is also available on Steam. For the price it’s worth getting for an easy to beat puzzler on the VCS as there’s not really anything else like it on the Atari. I got it on a sale which made it even more worth it.
As I journey through different puzzle games this one is certainly something different, and if you want a. Short distraction on Atari VCS, this is a good game to get.
What would you rate this game?
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