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The Pathless, from the team behind Abzû, is an adventure on a deadly, mystic island, and coming to Apple Arcade

Off the beaten path

The Pathless, from the team behind Abzû, is an adventure on a deadly, mystic island, and coming to Apple Arcade

When Apple announced their Apple Arcade subscription last week they promised that when it launches — later this year — there would be over 100 new and exclusive games available. We currently know about twenty of them, and here at Pocket Gamer we're going through that list and spending a bit of time talking about the ones that we really like the look of. The Pathless, from developer Giant Squid (Abzû) and publisher Annapurna Interactive, is definitely one of those games.

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The Pathless is a mythic adventure game which has players simultaneously controlling an archer and an eagle as they explore a massive forest filled with deadly foes and beautiful sights.

The unnamed protagonist is on a simple, if extremely dangerous, mission to remove the curse on the island that the game takes place on. That big, hot, looming rock in the trailer isn't meant to be there, and it being there has definitely got something to do with that galloping fire beast, and I'd put money on it having to do with that multi-headed snake thing which appears at 1:07 in the trailer too.

Want to know more about Apple Arcade? Read our article on everything you need to know about it.

From what we can tell from the trailer, a lot of The Pathless somewhat ironically seems to play on rails — with the character pace and direction set by the game. This allows players to focus on aiming at the weak spots of the massive beasts that they're trying to defeat, as well as the floating markers which we see shattered early on in the trailer. At the the moment, however, details are light on the controls. But, I know that if I was designing a game with mobile phones in mind, I'd have used those beacons as a way to have players indicate which way they want to move or change lanes. That said, it is also coming to other platforms, so we'll have to wait for confirmation on how it plays.

What more is there to say about The Pathless? Aside from the beautiful artwork there's the brilliant music that we hear in the trailer. It's from Austin Wintory, who is composing the soundtrack for the game, and previously put together the audio of The Banner Saga and Giant Squid's previous title Abzû. I've had the trailer on repeat while writing this article, and really want to hear more of the soundtrack.

We'll make sure to keep you updated on any The Pathless news as it approaches its release. It is currently down to launch at some point this year, and when it does it will do so for iOS, PS4 and the Epic Store on PC.

Dann Sullivan
Dann Sullivan
A job in retail resulted in a sidestep into games writing back in 2011. Since then Dann has run or operated several indie game focused websites. They're currently the Editor-in-Chief of Pocket Gamer Brands, and are determined to help the site celebrate the latest and greatest games coming to mobile.