by Amr @siegarettes

• Arca’s Path
  
• Developer: Dream Reality Interactive 
  
•  Publisher: Rebellion 
  
• PSVR, Vive, Occulus
  

Arca’s Path is straightforward. It’s a game about rolling a ball through abstract spaces, framed in a basic sci-fi plot. It never struck me as something with any big ideas, about its worldview or its mechanics. What it does have is a wonderful sense of tangibility. 

The environments are basic but are rendered in chunky shapes and textured with visible brush strokes. Objects fade into view, with a gentle fog revealing the path and objects unfolding into full detail. Paired with VR’s 3D display it gives spaces a diorama-like appeal, where the materials themselves catch your attention. This works even better within its story scenes, where its comic style presentation lays panels in impressionistic spaces and uses the panel borders as windows into multi-layered scenes.

Sadly Arca’s Path severely underutilizes these elements. The vibrant colors of the its levels give way to a dreary, washed out color palette. The layered story scenes initially come at a regular pace, but then become infrequent in the second half, leaving the puzzle sequences to carry the rest of the game. Here problems with the limited control scheme keeps these puzzles from moving past the most basic and obvious solutions.

In an attempt to combat motion sickness and the usual problems with VR, Arca’s Path uses a head tracking cursor to guide the ball. Looking at a certain area will start moving the ball towards it, speeding up as you point further into the distance. The implementation of it is solid, with a clear indicator, smooth tracking and visual and audio clues that intelligently help you track your speed. The level designs initially complement this, using barriers to keep you from easily rolling off the stage and keeping paths wide. As it demands more precision it breaks down, making me wonder what kept it from just using a regular controller.

The control scheme also gets in the way of one of VR’s core strength: the ability to look around the world. Because the cursor is locked to your gaze, turning your head is a good way to send your avatar veering off the cliff at high speed. Instead, you’ll either have to hold down the touchpad or pause the game first to enable free look mode and get your bearings. This starts to become aggravating the further the game progresses, as level paths begin to branch off and become more complicated.

These complex paths don’t generally add anything meaningful though. Instead they’re just alternate paths to the same main road that only challenge you to look ahead to make sure you go onto the one that contains the collectibles needed to unlock the time trials. Worse, they slow down the pace and serve only to distract you from how straightforward most level designs are. By the end of the game I was actively ignoring the collectibles and only trying to get through the game to see more of the story. Turns out there wasn’t much more than truncated scenes and even longer stretches of rote levels that failed to build on each other in any interesting ways.

Arca’s Path makes a really good impression, and for a while I thought it’d carry me through its simple stage design. But the playable sequences never reflect meaningfully on the little story that is there. Maybe if the game had given more attention to the world it gave me a glimpse of then it could have drawn me in. As it stands it isn’t more than a VR curio that runs out of novelty fast.