Disclaimer: The Print and Play files were provided by the publisher

I always aspire to play more print-and-play games, especially now that I have a new ink tank printer and a desk job. They seem like such a perfect game, small, generally simple, something to always have on hand when I have a few down minutes between tasks. That’s where my head was at when I came across Forgotten Paths by Myrto Gkizli and Spyros Kallos, a solo roll and write adventure.

To start a game of Forgotten Paths, you only really need to print 2 sheets. A map, and a character. Well, less of a character and more of a class, really. I chose the Paladin, as I generally tend towards the bulky knight classes rather than struggle through combat encounters with a spongey mage or Wiley thief. The story begins with you, the last of the Mistwalkers now that Alton has gone missing, defending the nearby farms from zombie-like monsters. Monsters that have never before come this far out of the mists. There’s trouble brewing in the Misty Isles, and it’s up to you to figure out where everything has gone astray.

I find it somewhat ironic that I literally just finished playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, where the story revolved around a caravan wandering out into the dangerous Miasma, with memories fading being a core theme of the game. It’s funny when stories separated by decades just happened to show up in my life at nearly the same time.

In addition to the 2 printed sheets, you’ll also need to assemble a pair of dice, a pile of cubes, and a pencil to play the game. The storybook gives a page of narrative context and introduces the gameplay quirks of the upcoming map. Forgotten Path‘s gameplay is simple enough, each round you’ll roll 2 dice, then use those dice to traverse the quest map. You are represented by a cube on the main map, while the rest of your cubes are used to move up and down on various tracks, keeping track of the various resources you collect along the way. See, the game is mostly about you running around powering yourself up so you can tackle the mini-bosses, and eventually, the main boss of the level.

To reveal new locations, you need to spend a die to ‘place a tile’. The size and shape of the tile you place depends on the die you choose to use, and you must cover the corresponding number hex with the tile you place. So if I played a level 3 tile, I have to place at least 1 of the 3 hexes next to my character, and at least 1 of the 3 hexes I cover with that tile must be a 3.

I say ‘place a tile’, but I mean that in the metaphorical sense. You shade the area with a pencil, not placing any physical pieces. This is a print and play, after all.

But once you place your tile, you need to go through and resolve each tile you placed, starting with the lowest number and moving up. For every hex, you’ll roll a die and claim the result on a table. The lower number hexes are chock-full of benefits, letting you slide your power meters to the right, while the higher number hexes might make you fight a monster or deal with a trap.

The traps and monsters behave in mostly the same way, when you encounter one of them, you roll a die that dictates the strength of that trap or monster. Generally, you’ll need to expend some of your resources to overcome the challenge, and get rewarded for doing so. Or fail and tactically retreat like a coward.

That’s the bulk of the game, really. Cover the map in tiles, collect resources, and spend them on defeating the baddies. The mini bosses are a bit trickier, as they require more resources, but will give much greater rewards, like permanent resources and help make the final boss fight easier.

Speaking of the final boss, once you engage the big bad of the day, you’re committed, win or lose. You need to dump the appropriate amount of resources into the boss, and spend the right dice to fell the foul beast. It’s nothing a little forward planning can’t take care of. If you need to take multiple rounds to beat the boss, you’ll need to withstand multiple of their very heavy attacks.

Forgotten Paths plays on a strict timer. Each adventure is a firm 20 rounds, and in each round you only roll 2 dice. You can earn bonus dice in a variety of ways, but dilly dally long enough and you’ll find yourself at the end of your rope. The lethebane resource you pick up helps a lot, as you can spend one to modify your die up or down one, or spend 2 to roll an extra die for the round. Should you choose to progress through the campaign, you’ll spend your leftover lethebane on items in the shop, just like you’ll spend your XP on powerful skills to make your character stronger or more versatile.

I enjoyed the flow of Forgotten Paths. It was easy to play, and once I got into it, I didn’t find myself needing to check the rules every few seconds. I just rolled and rolled and rolled, scratching my way across the green map. There’s randomness, sure, but plenty of ways to mitigate that randomness. Only once did I find myself kind of stuck in a hallway, requiring a specific number to get out, but that is probably more of an example of my own ignorance.

I chose to play as the Paladin, who has a perpetual defence resource. Some of the other characters like the Wizard and the Fighter have a perpetual magical and physical attack respectively. At first, these characters don’t feel different from each other at all, but as you make your way through the maps and earn XP, you’ll acquire new skills that help make each character feel unique. There is a fair amount of overlap in the skills however, making them feel less unique than they possibly could.

Overall, I quite enjoyed playing Forgotten Paths. I enjoy when the rules of a game melt away and I can just get into a flow state of play. While the game doesn’t have as much replayability as you might first expect with the variety of different characters. I did enjoy the growing complexity as I crawled through each of the maps, and how each map felt fairly different from one another. From mini-bosses gating off the rest of the map, to hopping around on thin ice, each new map was an interesting puzzle to dive into. I felt more pull to revisit a map to see if I could finish it quicker, and having multiple character classes to play with was the perfect reason to dive right back in.

If you like your print and play solo games with a dose of narrative and variety, then Forgotten Paths fits the bill quite well. When I first sat down with Forgotten Paths, I was looking for the kind of game I described at the beginning: something small and easy to pull out when I had a bit of time to kill in between tasks. What surprised me was how quickly it became something I wanted to sit down and actually play in my off-time, rather than something I only played because it was convenient.

If Forgotten Paths sounds interesting to you, you can support the project on Gamefound