Being a "walking simulator", Drizzlepath: Genie's gameplay is very simplistic. There is almost no action to be performed apart from some jumps, pulling a lever and stepping on a platform. However, the whole gaming experience comes from admiring the beauty of the scenery while walking down along a path in the mountains and listening to the narrator's voice. The visual and auditive stimuli are very well balanced in Drizzlepath: Genie, successfully inducing in the player a state of deep relaxation and introversion - which in my opinion is the essence of this genre.

Reminiscent of the symbolism of the red/blue pill of the movie The Matrix (like my boyfriend cleverly noticed), the protagonist Lula has to make a choice between journeying on the red path or the blue path. The red path, which is the shorter of the two, will lead her to embracing the painful truth of reality - of who she is and what the purpose of the journey was; on the other hand, the blue path, which is supposed to let the protagonist remain in her own fabricated reality will leave the end entirely to the player's interpretation.

While walking down the path, the narrator will provide various texts - ranging from words of wisdom, memories, little stories or anecdotes to abstract snippets rich in philosophical metaphors. While I largely enjoyed reading the texts from the first categories, the latter were almost incomprehensible for me and felt like random words glued together without conveying any palpable meaning. That's unsurprising, considering that I am not endowed with a poetic soul; though I am pretty sure that the fans of this aesthetic genre would enjoy them. The ability to toggle the subtitles on of course helps understanding the narration, however I found myself desperately wanting a button that allowed me to scroll up and read those abstract snippets again, in an effort of apprehending them.

However, what really "spoke" to me was the music that follows you almost all the time, a soothing, relaxing music, sometimes emotional, other times mysterious, always changing according to the scenery; the sound of the rain and thunder, the sound of the wind whooshing when you're on a high peak of a mountain.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=638535357

The landscape is simply beautiful and stunning. You will often find yourself deviating from the straightforward path for the purpose of taking a screenshot of a valley from up above the mountain. The path is most of the times rather narrow and doesn't leave much space for exploration around it, but it will lead sooner or later to openings from which you can admire a breathtaking view of the entire world, triggering in you a very palpable feeling of expansion, just like a walk through the mountains in reality would do.

In comparison to the first Drizzlepath game, the graphics are considerably superior, the game now using the Unreal 4 engine (as compared to CryENGINE from the first game). There is a noticeable increased attention to the detail - the mountains are now covered with snow, the flowers and trees come in many shapes and forms, the drops of rain sparkle on the rocks in the light of the sun etc - in one word, the textures are much more complex.

On the other hand, both Drizzlepath: Genie or Drizzlepath could use some adjustments and improvements in configuring their engines. While Drizzlepath completely crashed my PC because of GPU overheating while playing on highest settings (my PC is not optimized for high-tier graphics but it's still a decent gaming PC), Drizzlepath: Genie was much more forgiving in that regard, resulting only in some frame drops and a blurred motion while turning the camera - nothing that I couldn't fix by lowering a bit the quality of the shadows which seem to be very resource-consuming.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=638535402

In conclusion, Drizzlepath: Genie is a very relaxing experience and one of the good games of its genre. Would I recommend it? Yes! For the beauty of the scenery, for the boundless world, for the calming music combined with the narration, for the quite lengthy gameplay that it offers (2-4h for the red path, 3-5h for the blue path), I consider the price to be very affordable. Note though that in order to enjoy all of these, you must come equipped with quite a good gaming PC, since the graphic requirements are quite high (make sure to check the recommended specs before buying it).

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Being a "walking simulator", Drizzlepath: Genie's gameplay is very simplistic. There is almost no action to be performed apart from some jumps, pulling a lever and stepping on a platform. However, the whole gaming experience comes from admiring the beauty of the scenery while walking down along a path in the mountains and listening to the narrator's voice. The visual and auditive stimuli are very well balanced in Drizzlepath: Genie, successfully inducing in the player a state of deep relaxation and introversion - which in my opinion is the essence of this genre. Reminiscent of the symbolism of the red/blue pill of the movie The Matrix (like my boyfriend cleverly noticed), the protagonist Lula has to make a choice between journeying on the red path or the blue path. The red path, which is the shorter of the two, will lead her to embracing the painful truth of reality - of who she is and what the purpose of the journey was; on the other hand, the blue path, which is supposed to let the protagonist remain in her own fabricated reality will leave the end entirely to the player's interpretation. While walking down the path, the narrator will provide various texts - ranging from words of wisdom, memories, little stories or anecdotes to abstract snippets rich in philosophical metaphors. While I largely enjoyed reading the texts from the first categories, the latter were almost incomprehensible for me and felt like random words glued together without conveying any palpable meaning. That's unsurprising, considering that I am not endowed with a poetic soul; though I am pretty sure that the fans of this aesthetic genre would enjoy them. The ability to toggle the subtitles on of course helps understanding the narration, however I found myself desperately wanting a button that allowed me to scroll up and read those abstract snippets again, in an effort of apprehending them. However, what really "spoke" to me was the music that follows you almost all the time, a soothing, relaxing music, sometimes emotional, other times mysterious, always changing according to the scenery; the sound of the rain and thunder, the sound of the wind whooshing when you're on a high peak of a mountain. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=638535357 The landscape is simply beautiful and stunning. You will often find yourself deviating from the straightforward path for the purpose of taking a screenshot of a valley from up above the mountain. The path is most of the times rather narrow and doesn't leave much space for exploration around it, but it will lead sooner or later to openings from which you can admire a breathtaking view of the entire world, triggering in you a very palpable feeling of expansion, just like a walk through the mountains in reality would do. In comparison to the first Drizzlepath game, the graphics are considerably superior, the game now using the Unreal 4 engine (as compared to CryENGINE from the first game). There is a noticeable increased attention to the detail - the mountains are now covered with snow, the flowers and trees come in many shapes and forms, the drops of rain sparkle on the rocks in the light of the sun etc - in one word, the textures are much more complex. On the other hand, both Drizzlepath: Genie or Drizzlepath could use some adjustments and improvements in configuring their engines. While Drizzlepath completely crashed my PC because of GPU overheating while playing on highest settings (my PC is not optimized for high-tier graphics but it's still a decent gaming PC), Drizzlepath: Genie was much more forgiving in that regard, resulting only in some frame drops and a blurred motion while turning the camera - nothing that I couldn't fix by lowering a bit the quality of the shadows which seem to be very resource-consuming. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=638535402 In conclusion, Drizzlepath: Genie is a very relaxing experience and one of the good games of its genre. Would I recommend it? Yes! For the beauty of the scenery, for the boundless world, for the calming music combined with the narration, for the quite lengthy gameplay that it offers (2-4h for the red path, 3-5h for the blue path), I consider the price to be very affordable. Note though that in order to enjoy all of these, you must come equipped with quite a good gaming PC, since the graphic requirements are quite high (make sure to check the recommended specs before buying it). [h1]Note: A key has been provided by the developers with the request to write an informative review. No other consideration, compensation or instruction was received. My personal opinions about this game are not influenced by this.[/h1] [quote]More reviews on the [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11354094]Lilly's Corner Curator page[/url][/quote]