Areia: Pathway to Dawn Is A Fun, Mellow Challenge
I couldn’t wait to activate the Steam key for Areia: Pathway to Dawn by GILP Studio I received for review, and dive in to the game. As with many of the games I like to play and occasionally review I tend to be in Discord with a friend or two and bounce back and forth ideas and brainstorm while relating what I’m experiencing. My friends had a good time listening to me talk about how many times I almost fell asleep while playing this game and at times they would comment that I had grown silent and “zoned out” during the conversation. Having a theme of meditation and calmness, Areia: Pathway to Dawn really just hits all the notes for me in all those meditative categories
The game starts off with you being the “vessel” and beginning a journey through a desert landscape toward what appears to be an unknown mountain. Off in the distance you can see what looks like people with glowing clothing fading in and out while a strong wind nudges and coaxes you either forward or back. The desert itself seems to be covered in shards of glass that slow you down while a powerful wind buffers and nudges you, causing you to pause here and there. Its organic puzzle design comes into play as patches of clear areas show up that allow you to jump into other patches to bypass the shards of glass on most of the area around you.
As you progress, you find more of the areas open up to allow for different types of puzzles and some can be a little confusing purely because of the semi-organic progression. There are no markers to guide you forward and since you rely on audio and visual context it can be a tad confusing. In one case I passed through a meditative portal into a secondary area and spent about ten minutes moving around it before realizing I had to travel “back” toward the place I had just exited so that I could continue the progress.
One could make a comparison to the game Journey which has a similar premise that begins with a desert and moves toward a mysterious mountain location. The comparison starts to fade as you begin not only figure out the path of Areia but also the self-reflective journey that the game developers strived to provide. The game intentionally lacks a HUD or anything like a health bar and you aren’t penalized for making mistakes, and “dying” just means being quickly returned to the same location you stood on before that death. The ability to use the elements of water and sand to figure out the puzzles helps to provide the duality of the spiritual and the physical which is what they both represent within the game.
The very Buddhist-influenced soundtrack provides a haunting yet beautiful auditory experience that assist the game very well in its approach to calmness and reflective journey. At times I caught myself feeling more calm and relaxed as I progressed in the game and at times I simply stopped moving forward so I could enjoy more of the music.
Despite being a small studio that focused on mobile games, Brazil-based GILP Studio’s first entry into the PC market has felt like a solid one. Though on occasion you can notice the lack of detail, some polish issues and blurry textures that seem to pop out on occasion, most of that just disappears into the world around it and none of it takes away from the game and the story it presents. The game does not support widescreen and 4k resolution as of this writing and the company hasn’t mentioned any updates concerning if they will patch that in.
All in all my final verdict is a 7/10. Areia: Pathway to Dawn sticks to its formula well enough and really does sell itself well. I enjoyed it for what it was and felt that it hit all the right notes with how it presented itself. It isn’t a long game by any means which helps it in many ways as a game of this type shouldn’t become long to the point that everything becomes repetitive and annoying. It hits all the right notes in regards to its meditative journey and it’s definitely fun to walk through the game. I recommend people give this game a shot if only for the experience.
