By Liyo Kikon
One more day left until Hornbill starts and this means that a lot of travelers will be coming to Nagaland. But for most of us who can’t travel, we can at least explore new lands through the game “The Trail”. For the last few weeks, i have been playing this game every chance I get, and I can tell you that I’m kinda addicted! It is a simple game where you walk across a vast land, collecting objects, hunting, gathering and building stuff with the materials you collect.
The game starts off with a character customization screen and after you have selected your character and customized it, you will start walking the trail. You can either walk or run simply by dragging your fingers up or down on the character. There are several objects scattered across the land and you can collect them by swiping to get it. At first these objects can be simple things like twigs and pebbles but as you go further down the trail, you will find better collectables. You can use these collectables to craft into objects. Crafting can be done when you arrive at camps and using the things you collect, you can create tools like axes, slingshots or clothing like shoes, hats, trousers, shirts or backpacks. You can also craft toys which you can sell them in camps. To craft an object, you simply go to the menu, select the thing you want to create, place the items you collected in the right order and pull down the leaver on the right. There are a lot of things which you can create and as you go further down the trail, you will find more exotic things and use those to create more advanced items and these advanced items can either get you more cash when you trade them or for items like clothing, you can get more stamina during your journey.
There are objectives which you get from a mysterious lady who will tell you to collect certain objects along the trail and once you have collected them all, you will be rewarded with a recipe to create more things and these recipes are important since you can only craft things on your recipe book. Once you have been given an objective, a bird will sit on the lower left side of the screen and this bird will let you know when there is a collectable objective item nearby and you can collect those to complete the objective. After you have collected the required amount of collectable objective, the bird will fly away and the mysterious lady will be waiting for you in the next camp to reward you and give you an option to choose a new recipe.
There is a health bar on the top of the screen, but since there are no enemies to fight or anything like that in this game, the health bar signifies the stamina of the character and this is something to watch out for since you can quickly drain your stamina if you are not careful. You can replenish your stamina by consuming foods like apples or crafted items like apple juice. The stamina will drain quickly if you don’t have better clothing and as you progress down the trail, you can craft better clothing which will give you more stamina. If your stamina runs out, the character will fall down and the items you have collected will drop one by one as your stamina regains and until your stamina fully regains, there is nothing you can do but sit and watch as other travelers walk past you and they will most definitely “steal” your items as you lay there helplessly watching. For collecting items, the backpack is a fun little thing since everything you collect will either go to the backpack or your pockets and you can re-arrange the backpack to make everything fit and this can be challenging especially if you have a lot of stuff.
When the game starts off, your first challenge will be to get to “Eden Falls” and with each camp you visit, the distance will get shorter and shorter. Once you reach Eden Falls, you can buy your own land and build a community. In this land, you can build new things for your house such as walls, windows, purchase furniture and other items. The community you build will then compete with other communities as you try to raise as much money as you can by trading which you can do by collecting certain objects across the trail. You can always return back to the trail to explore further lands since it is free to travel from camp to camp if you have already gone past them.
I have to say that this game surprised me since I did not realize that I was playing it every chance I got and the best bit about this game is that you can easily resume anytime you want, so it is a perfect game for anyone who don’t have much time to sit and play all the time and it is casual and easy enough for anyone to pick up and play. And even though there are in-app purchases, there is no need to spend any real money since everything can be accomplished without the need to buy anything. “The Trail” is available for free with in-app purchase on iOS and Android.
