Secret Paths in the Forest is a puzzle game that was developed

Video game developer

A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...

 and published

Video game publisher

A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....

 by Purple Moon

Purple Moon

Purple Moon was an American software company based in Mountain View, California, targeted at young girls between the ages of 8 and 14. The company was founded by Brenda Laurel and others, and supported by Interval Research. They debuted their first two games, Rockett's New School and Secret Paths...

 and released in 1997

1997 in video gaming

-Events:*October 4 — Gunpei Yokoi dies after a double car accident.*November – Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association launched.*3rd annual E3...

. It is the first game in the Secret Paths series by release order, which is set approximately one year before the Rockett series and two years before The Starfire Soccer Challenge, which was aimed to spin off a new Starfire Soccer series. The continuity as a whole is also referred to as Purple Moon as the developer never made any other games.

The game was released concurrently with Rockett's New School

Rockett's New School

Rockett's New School is a visual novel video game that was developed and published by Purple Moon and released in 1997. It is the first game in the Rockett series by release order, which is set approximately one year after the Secret Paths series and one year before The Starfire Soccer Challenge,...

, but while it got considerably less publicity than its twin title, it still made its mark in the beginning of the 1990s surge of girl-oriented computer games.

Story

The Forest Treehouse is a magical place that can be accessed from anywhere for help if someone is in need. A group of seven girls, who normally do not interact in school and sometimes outright dislike one another, have bonded in this secret place and converted it into a girls-only clubhouse. Time acts oddly around the treehouse, and two other girls from vastly different time periods have met this group before and been chosen to help them with their problems. The first is Hannah-Rose, who lived at least one hundred years before the setting; she has passed the duty to the second, the player, leaving behind her diary, which acts as an in-universeinstruction manual.

Each girl has a power that not even she understands; she can lead the player character through the door of the Forest Treehouse and end up in a mystical Secret Path. These are beautiful scenic paths that have the basic theme of "forest" in their design, although they take the theme in vastly different directions. Inside are puzzles which, upon solving, reveal Secret Paths Stones. Upon collecting all of a girl's stones, they form a Garland, or a necklace that displays a fable

Fable

A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...

 with the answer to her problem.

The stories of the Secret Paths games are split into optional story arc

Story arc

A story arc is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, boardgames, video games, and in some cases, films. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. In television, the use of the story...

s; clicking on one of the girls in the Forest Treehouse will move the player through her path as past events leading up to her predicament are revealed.

Darnetta James

Darnetta doesn't want to care about school. She has been making bad grades, which her mother berates her for, but her ambition lies far beyond marks. She wants to start a travelling dragonfly

Dragonfly

A dragonfly is a winged insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera . It is characterized by large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and an elongated body...

 circus. Her older sister, Peggy, is an overachiever that can't see why Darnetta would want to waste time on something so frivolous, and Darnetta feels that she has to become her sister to please her mother. Upon completion of Darnetta's Secret Path, which resembles overgrown ancient ruins, she is presented with the tale of The Bears Who Couldn't Get Along and decides that Peggy isn't perfect either. If she asks her sister to help her with her homework, she will teach Peggy to have more fun.

Dana St. Clair

Dana just lost the soccer championship for her whole team, and she blames herself, although no one else is angry with her. She even wonders if she should quit playing, deeming herself useless. Once Dana's path, a meadow filled with wheat

Wheat

Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...

 and framed with trees, is complete, she hears "A Tale of Unity" and realizes that a team is more than one person and winning isn't the prime objective.

Whitney Weiss

In the absence of Whitney's mother, her father has found a new girlfriend. Whitney fears the coming of her birthday, which her mother always "made special" with her "birthday box" of decorations and games. She reviles the idea of her father's girlfriend trying to replace her mother by using the box, but her birthday would feel empty without it. After completion of Whitney's tropical path, Whitney hears The Snow Child, and embraces the memory of her mother as someone that cannot be replaced while allowing for a relationship with her father's girlfriend.

Minh

Minh

Minh is a common first and middle name among Vietnamese people. It is derived from the Chinese name Ming , which directly translates to "bright"....

Unlike the others, who appear in other games in the Purple Moon canon

Canon (fiction)

In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...

, Minh is a character invented specifically for this game. A Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

ese immigrant, she is shy and ashamed of her heritage, just wanting to fit in. However, her grandmother is proud of her original country, and being seen with her embarrasses Minh. After finding all of the stones in the moonlit lake that is Minh's path and hearing The Hedley Kow, she recognizes that there are good things about being different from everybody else.

Jessie Marbella

Jessie came home one day to learn that her mother had a "surprise" for her—she was being sent to summer camp. Jessie's irrational fear

Phobia

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational...

 of the forest comes out in full force, and she refuses to go. Not entirely ironically, Jessie's path is a typical deciduous forest, but as she learns, the most "dangerous" things in it are benign singing spiders and a deer that is just as afraid of people as Jessie is of the forest. The Fearful Rabbit, her fable, inspires her to brave the forest and enjoy camp.

Miko Kajiyama

The school achiever, Miko wins all kinds of various awards, especially in chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

. However, students, parents, and even teachers are speaking out against her being allowed in the upcoming chess tournament, because she will inevitably win and bring down the spirits of the other competitors. Miko herself is more discouraged with each day about entering. Her path, a tumbleweed-crossed desert, reflects a life where Miko's joy is sapped from the things that she loves to do. Sari's Story insists that it does no good to fear success, and Miko enters the chess tournament- if anyone has anything to say, she'll enter the music recital too, to prove that she's not perfect.

Viva Cortese

Viva is a skilled ballet dancer, and the only one in the class that can perform the modern dance moves that her instructor has set out for the next recital. However, none of this matters to her, she says; "I still look like a flamingo!" Not tall, slender and straight-haired like the other girls, Viva is discouraged by sticking out. Her path is an elegant Japanese koi garden with frogs, pelicans and yes, flamingos. The story that waits at the end is The Bird Who Couldn't Sing, which celebrates Viva's being different from the other girls, and she gladly returns to dance.

Gameplay

The Secret Paths games are puzzle games where one selects a girl (in this game, from a paper doll in her image in the top drawer of the "Friendship Box" end table) and plays through her Path, clicking warped pieces of foliage to see scenes leading up to her problem or her own thoughts. Puzzles are set throughout the Path, the completion of which presents the player with Secret Paths Stones. A purple flower appears in the corner of some screens and can be clicked to change the level of difficulty on that puzzle.