Path to Mnemosyne (PC)

The rivers of the dead are a popular idea from Greek myth that still appears in our media today, and while the Styx dominates such allusions as it divides the lands of the living and the dead, there are five rivers all with different purposes. The river Lethe is said to have waters that wipe away the memories of those who step into it, the clean minds prepared for reincarnation by washing away their old life. However, some myths spoke of a separate river overseen by the Titan mother of the nine Muses, Mnemosyne. To bath this in its waters would instead ensure that the memories of the dead remain with them as they are reborn. These two rivers are actually key to the minimal story of Path to Mnemosyne, a small girl left to decide whether she wants her memories to return to her or not.

The very sparse telling of Path to Mnemosyne’s plot and much of its interpretative nature does mean it takes some time to make this angle clear, the game at first only having the child in the plain white dress wandering down a seemingly endless path with a male voice guiding her. Soon a feminine voice will join, the two encouraging different endpoints for the journey and raising questions about whether or not you should want to retain memories. The rather swiftly wrapped up endings do little justice to the concept no matter which path you go down unfortunately and there doesn’t seem to be any grand statement or major questions left on the table to consider because of how rarely these voices interject with anything of substance.

Between major segments of the journey though the young girl will have old memories crop up that at least implicitly raise the question of whether or not these memories are worth keeping. While the mostly black and white world of Path to Mnemosyne engages in some surreal and unsettling imagery, the truly grotesque or horrifying sights are saved for these abrupt flashes of a life we never get to see in full. With her pulse loudly pounding in the player’s ears after the flash of unearthed trauma, the child’s discomfort is shared briefly with the player. However, it’s also posited that these moments of dark reflection might be cherry-picked to encourage the path to the Lethe, but it does feel like Path to Mnemosyne doesn’t build on this idea well enough for the player to make an informed decision on the girl’s fate. In fact, the game’s two endings can be accessed fairly simply with nothing taking place after the choice beyond a barebones wrap-up, so the weight of that moment instead feels mostly tied to the actual making of the choice rather than a resolution to what little narrative was explored in this title.

Path to Mnemosyne’s moral questions and plot hardly seem like the focus though, as the game really feels more like an artistic showcase. The game is billed as having “infinite zoom”, referring to the fact that walking down the path before you will continue to lead to more and more sights with very few obstructions. Naturally you can’t see anything too distant due to perspective, but as you open the path more and more it can be interesting to walk backwards and view the seamless way the path unfolds. You aren’t merely walking across a straight line the whole time either, as this path, despite being wide open in parts, can take on an almost cylindrical orientation where at parts you’ll find yourself moving to walk on the walls and ceiling instead. The viewpoint adjusts to prevent more disorientation than intended and important information is always oriented properly so you can solve the puzzles you’ll encounter. The ethereal feeling of this white expanse occasionally populated by grey and black structures that are seemingly drawn by hand definitely contributes to an eerie sensation before you even factor in the shapes and textures of the objects that ring around the path to the rivers.

As you walk along the path, the white ground you stand upon is often wreathed with surreal imagery. One part involves manifestations of the senses groping at the path, the game in general favoring disembodied parts with objects like tongues, teeth, hands, and human faces often springing forth from organic masses to serve as unusual set dressing. There is no danger to these strange sights or at any point in the adventure in general, but the visuals that wrap around your long path forward do give this place a sense of intentional discomfort. Sadly, while some of the imagery definitely has some meaning behind its inclusion, it can also feel like the game is simply varying up the theme of its subjects for the sake of it. One portion features animals like boars, fish, and snakes as part of its twisted sketchy art, but it feels a lot more direct rather than abstract in their representations in addition to not feeling as closely tied to the meanings of other visuals. It could be said that you’re moving from the social memories of people early on to more instinctual fears here, but also the game asks you to toss out your senses rather early which feels almost like the ultimate removal of the building blocks of memory so it might just be me searching for meaning when the art just pursued new ideas to keep the presentation fresh and varied.

The art is definitely striking and were this some interactive art exhibit or maybe just a video clip of running down these hallways, Path to Mnemosyne would be worthy of looking at just for the intriguing sights and creative stylization featured. However, Path to Mnemosyne is also a puzzle game, and its implementation of such puzzles ranges from negligible to bothersome. The little girl at the heart of things moves in a realistic way, needing to wind up a little for a very small leap forward and having a brief moment to build up to speed when she starts moving, and while these choices don’t impact many moments, they do interfere with key areas. One puzzle near the end features the only moment where you need to be extremely precise in when you move forward, the tight timing hard to nail due to the girl’s walking quirk. The jumping on the other hand just adds to the slowness of some puzzle solving segments like when you’re trying to learn the path of portals in the floor through trial and error, the player needing to hop over each one if they don’t wish to travel through it.

Those two segments in particular are the game at its worst due to a suddenly sharp spike in required reflexes for one and plenty of wasted time learning a portal maze for the other, but other puzzles aren’t exactly making up for these flawed ones either. One puzzle involves a sound-and-repeat structure where thankfully you can view the panels that light up to align with music notes so you don’t actually have to learn the short music piece you’re repeating, and the ring puzzles are a bit too straightforward in concept to really stoke your brain. Certain gates during the journey can have mildly interesting puzzles like using perspective on an object to create the desired shapes, but a lot of the puzzles feel like busywork or bland obstacles to progress. Near the end you also begin to acquire memory fragments if you’re angling for the second ending which can involve spending more time with things like the portal mazes, and with how hollow the finales are, going that extra mile can feel a little fruitless once you see you spent more time engaging with weak concepts for little payoff.

THE VERDICT: While perhaps prioritizing the impact of its striking visuals over their meaning within the sparse story, Path to Mnemosyne’s distinct and unsettling art is definitely the highlight of an otherwise rocky experience. The nearly monochrome world’s infinite zoom plays into a surreal showcase of its captivating visual direction, but traveling this particular path loses its appeal as puzzles that are either plain, slow, or outright frustrating keep standing in the way of progress, and the art cannot make up for the issues prevalent in the gameplay design and weak storytelling.

And so, I give Path to Mnemosyne for PC…

A BAD rating. The interactive element of Path to Mnemosyne is certainly important in that traveling yourself and seeing the sights come into focus down a path that seems to stretch on endlessly increases their impact and intrigue. Unfortunately the pit stops to bring up some lifeless puzzle or challenge that feels at odds with the game’s own design does not do that journey any favors. Rarely it seems to have narrative cohesion with the featured puzzle like an eye-shaped gate featuring a challenge about perspective, and this concept of synergistic design would do a lot more for the game than busywork involving portals or needing to time your movement just right during a timed portion of play. With the story seemingly shoved aside in favor of the visuals as well, it generally feels like Path to Mnemosyne was not conceived as a complementary package but an artistic framework that video game elements then needed to be added to. If Path to Mnemosyne could have achieved harmony between its three components it could have delivered on the potency of what such well drawn art promises, but instead the host for that striking graphical style makes it hard to appreciate the artistry featured in only one part of the overall experience.

In the end, a player of Path to Mnemosyne is asked a similar situation to the girl. There are things worth remembering here like the uncanny detailed art that surrounds the visually impressive adventure, but the puzzles are either already forgettable or experiences not worth remembering due to their irritating design. The story doesn’t go anywhere particularly notable no matter which ending you take, but it too had its potential with the flashbacks and how they could have come together into an interesting moral dilemma. Path to Mnemosyne’s unfortunate design problems probably mean a trip to the river Lethe would be preferred unfortunately, the game’s best aspects easy to experience through screenshots or brief video clips rather than going through the trouble of playing it yourself.