Pathway suits players who like solving fights with cover, positioning and team abilities, then facing decisions on the road. At ≈ $1.33 from Kinguin, it is at the tracked low, making this a compelling entry point if that blend is what you want.
Five campaigns and shifting event routes give you reason to try different team combinations. Steam reviews stand at 76% from 1,908; whether the tactical style appeals to you matters more than the score alone.At $4.79 from Kinguin, Pathway is at the site's tracked low; its mix of tactical fights and risky choices suits players who enjoy planning a squad.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated daily
Historical Low~ $1.522026-07Current Low Across Stores~ $16.99Kinguinvs. Historical Low+1018%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Pathway
Pathway blends a pulp adventure across North Africa with tactical, turn-based squad battles. Build a team, explore randomized events and weigh the risks of each choice as you travel toward mission objectives.Steam player reviews: 76% positive from 1,908 reviews.Interface languages include English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.Released April 11, 2019.
Credits
Composer
Gavin Harrison
Developer
Robotality
Publisher
Chucklefish
Steam player reviews
76%positiveMostly Positive1,908 Steam reviews
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$1.522026-07-30 · KKinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.
Language support
Language
Interface
Subtitles
Audio
Simplified Chinese
Yes
Yes
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English
Yes
Yes
Yes
German
Yes
Yes
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Show 2 more languages
Language
Interface
Subtitles
Audio
French
Yes
Yes
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Japanese
Yes
Yes
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Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
How it plays
Combat is turn-based, with cover, positioning and character abilities shaping each encounter. Between fights, the team crosses randomized maps and makes choices in brief story events.
Controls and language
The Steam PC version has full controller support. English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are among its interface languages; English audio is available.
03Frequently asked questions
What is combat like?
You assemble a team of adventurers and use cover, positioning and special abilities in turn-based squad battles.
What happens between battles?
Your team travels across a randomized map, encountering short story events with choices and risks along the way.
How much variation do missions offer?
There are five campaigns with varying difficulty, and each attempt generates a new web of events.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviews
Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
🎤Introduction
Pathway is a turn-based rogue-like that takes its core mechanics inspired by the Xcom series and its art style and story inspired by Indiana Jones. Neither of these hinders the game because it’s not original, in fact these two combined work well together. Though the rogue-like elements don’t suit the strategic and cautious gameplay style very well and overall it makes the game more repetitive and frustrating than it needs to be.
✔️Pros
• 16 unique characters all with their unique abilities, skills, perks, and personalities
• A difficulty slider to make the game as easy or difficult as you like
• Constant risk-reward choices
• Writing is detailed enough to compensate for the lack of animation
• Soundtrack is simple and minimalistic
• Sound effects are powerful and varied
• The art style is beautifully represented with pixel graphics
• Environments are varied, very distinct and unique from one another
❌Cons
• It can get repetitive at times
• It might’ve been better off not being a rogue-like
• Only 5 adventures (About 15 - 20 hours of gameplay)
• Some levels are too big for their own good
• Occasionally the percentage of landing your shot doesn’t make sense
• Sometimes the screen isn’t zoomed out enough to see how far an enemy can move or shoot
🕹Gameplay
You’ll be greeted with a vast selection of characters at your disposal, only starting with a handful at the beginning whilst the rest you’ll have to unlock by completing certain tasks. Each character possesses their own abilities, skill trees and perks that they can utilise as well as certain types of weapons, armour and off-hand equipment that can aid you in battle. Micromanaging all of the equipment for every character however is tedious, if there was an optimise button to give all the characters the best equipment from your storage it would make things a lot easier.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2054275580
Each adventure you’ll be traversing across various maps, going to different location points to reach your destination. Each of these locations will provide a randomly generated scenario whether it’s an ambush from enemies, a shop, a camp to heal, a risk-reward scenario or just flavour text. It’s your job to ensure you have enough supplies (ammo, fuel and supplies are all limited) to reach your destination and succeed at defeating the evil forces.
The handcrafted battle maps are carefully designed to ensure that there's plenty of cover to tackle any situation you might find yourself in and offer variations of maps with the cover in different places. Even though there are explosive barrels that can aid you in battle, I wish there were more environmental objects to utilise to make the maps more intriguing.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2054251996
Rogue-like is quite a popular genre nowadays, sometimes it feels like it’s thrown into a game for the sake of it and this can either hurt or enhance the gameplay. Unfortunately, I feel like this title would’ve been better without some of the rogue-like elements and focused on a more linear game with more handmade adventures. Having to restart an adventure over again because you died at the last hurdle is frustrating, especially if it’s taken you an hour to get there because you’ve been playing cautiously. Despite obtaining better equipment when dying, it doesn’t seem plausible enough to compensate for the lack of progress you could’ve made by completing the adventure and moving onto the next one. Since the game encourages you to play cautiously there isn’t much incentive to try again immediately after failing. Even if you do, you’ll probably find yourself rushing through the adventure to try and complete it as fast as possible to progress to the next one.
However to counter the aforementioned problem, there is a difficulty slider you can adjust before setting off on your adventure making it as easy or difficult as you wish. Changing certain variables such as the amount of ammo, fuel and supplies you start with or changing how many enemies will spawn on each map.
During each adventure you’ll undoubtedly be faced with random scenarios that you’ll have to make decisions for which can yield either positive or negative results. This is where the risk-reward system comes into play. For example, you might discover an abandoned building that could hold valuable loot, on the other hand you might not find anything and instead get ambushed by Nazis and be forced to battle. Some characters have perks that can be used in a handful of situations for a higher chance of yielding positive results.
What this game lacks in animation it makes up for with detailed and impactful writing to best describe the scene, probably better than it could've been animated. The sheer level of detail is never let down and is consistent throughout no matter if it’s part of the main story or if it’s a random situation that you’ve found yourself in. The occasional voiceover at the start and end of each adventure is equally as impactful and helps set the atmosphere for each journey.
❓Bugs
Occasionally the health of an enemy won’t update immediately. Killing 2 Infected enemies next to each other in a single shot causes one of them to stand up as if it’s still alive.
🎧Music & Sound
This game does a fantastic job of keeping the music simple and minimalistic, setting the atmosphere for every battle extremely well whether you're outnumbered and trying to survive, or if it’s another encounter with the Nazis in the desert.
Sound effects are also a big plus for this game, from shotguns to snipers, pistols, rifles, everything has a specific sound. When you hit your target there is a lot of feedback even more if you land a critical hit. When you miss there’s a very distinctive sound to it that’s satisfying every time you hear it. Though hopefully you won’t hear that particular sound too much...
🎨Graphics
The visuals in this game are stunning and the pixel art in itself is impressive, but it’s further enhanced with great use of lighting and a lot of very distinctive and diverse environments. From gloomy underground caves, to rancid sewers, to villages with lushes green grass, there is a lot of variety. The characters and the majority of the enemy designs are all recognisable (besides the Cultists and Zombies) so you can instantly tell what types of enemies you’re up against.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2054252056
💭Closing Thoughts
Pathway doesn’t try to disguise itself from being inspired by Xcom and Indiana Jones, and this in no way holds the game back because it’s not original. However, I feel the style of gameplay doesn’t suit the rogue-like system very well. As enjoyable as it might be the first few times, it does get repetitive after a while and you’ll find yourself rushing through an adventure that you were narrowly close to completing previously. However, the game provides stunning visuals and varied environments to keep the game fresh for as long as possible and the detail in the writing is fantastic. You might only get a couple of hours out of this game depending on your tolerance, but those few hours will be worth it.
For more critically honest reviews of mine, check out Metro’s Review CornerShow moreShow less
48.5 hours at review139 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Pathway gives a good first impression, but its flaws are quickly uncovered
Pathway is an exploration/turn-based ‘strategy’ game developed by Robotality. Essentially you lead explorers on expeditions across Africa and the Middle East, shooting Nazis (and some less than living foes as well) and collecting loot. Pathway’s gorgeous visual and initial few scenes had me pretty impressed, but it didn’t take long to realize just how shallow this game is.
Positives:
The art for Pathway is really fantastic. It seems Chucklefish only publish the best when it comes to the pixel art side of things. The animations aren’t fantastic, but it’s not a huge issue.
There are a wide variety of explorers available, each with positive and negative attributes. You start out with six to choose from and then more are unlocked by doing certain things while you play (such as revive x number of characters). Each character also has their own skill tree, and their xp and skills carry over across expeditions.
Loot also carries over (as long as you don’t die) which means you might find stuff during an expedition that you can use for a specific character on your next one. You’ll occasionally find merchants who you can buy/sell to, of course their prices are significantly inflated.
Negatives:
I’m only on my second expedition, which I haven’t even finished, and the scenarios are already repetitive. There’s one particular scenario I’ve seen three times already, and even if you’re not seeing the same scenario each time, they’re just so painfully similar. I’ve seen several variations of ‘you stumbled across a German, he sped away in his car, do you want to chase him?’ I shouldn’t be seeing this much repetition already, and it makes me concerned that there’s little replay value here. This is really the thing that kills the game for me, it’s just so samey that I’ve already lost my desire to keep playing.
The tactical combat is so shallow. Initially I was quite pleased that it was basically simplified XCOM, but I quickly realized that it’s just too shallow. There’s a basic cover system and all of your explorers have one main weapon and a backup weapon (such as a knife or grenade) or some kind of equipment such as a medkit. You essentially just run between cover and shoot enemies, it never really felt like there was any real strategy to it. The chance to hit an enemy is always 100% if they’re not in cover; trees don’t count as cover; you can never deal enough damage to kill a regular enemy in one turn (you can kill dogs or zombies in one turn though); the AI often makes really stupid decisions such as running away with full health and not attacking; only snipers have overwatch abilities. The combat just isn’t up to scratch and you spend a fairly major chunk of the game in the combat.
There’s no undo or move confirm option in the combat. I frequently moved my characters during combat entirely by accident, or misclicked and they ended up on the wrong spot and out of range of enemies. There are some good arguments against having an undo button, so at the very least I would have liked it to require two clicks to confirm a movement like you see in XCOM.
I have not found the story compelling at all, in fact I’m not entirely sure what the story is. The first expedition is clearly about rescuing a character, but I guess I missed what the second expedition was about. Either way, the scenarios themselves in game are also pretty lacklustre. The writing is mediocre at best and I never really felt a sense of urgency or danger when deciding what to do like FTL made me feel.
There are only two adjustments you can make to the difficulty of the game: enemy health/enemy damage output; starting fuel and ammunition. I feel like changing these doesn't make a satisfying difference, I mean I don't think making enemies bullet sponges makes it harder, just more frustrating.
Verdict:
I was initially impressed by Pathway, but that quickly gave way to disappointment. Shallow gameplay and the repetitive feeling of the game really spoil what could have been. I apologize to those I initially recommend this too. Having played more, I've lost most of my desire to continue with it and I certainly wouldn't recommend buying it.
If you found this review helpful, please consider following my curator page: Kemo's Corner.Show moreShow less
3.4 hours at review925 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
A beautiful game if you like turn based/rpg tactics. Amazing art style. You can see the care and attention developers paid to all the little things that make the characters and entire world drip with nostalgia and the love put into this title. For the price it's just a no-brainer.
The gameplay has a nice balance of depth, serious consequences, and rewards. I like the difficulty right off the bat. You can die, easily. Cover and positioning is key. Fun weapons and items. Looking forward to putting a lot of hours in.
Can't wait to see this on Nintendo SWITCH. It would be so nice to be able to carry this title around. Take my money Robotality, port to switch ASAP!
I am excited to see how developers expand the world and tweak the game over next few months.Show moreShow less
0.7 hours at review134 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I've given it a fair shake, but I'm pretty much done with Pathway unless the devs at Robotality commit to a total overhaul.
In depth reasons are below but the **TL;DR** is this: The core conceit of Pathway is good, but I'd say there is neither enough content, nor depth to justify the purchase and several poor design decisions cripple the experience.
First, the good stuff: The idea of doing an Adventure Serial Indiana Jones-like FTL-like is a good concept and I'm glad someone else made an attempt at it. The lo-fi early SNES graphics are nice and bright, and the music (what little of it there is) is good too. It makes a good first impression with its first adventure too. But that's pretty much it.
The biggest flaw is that the core scenario you'll be playing - turn-based tactical battles - are dreadfully shallow and boring. Your characters have far too few options they can perform per turn, and genre standard functionality is relegated to "special ability" status.
In XCOM for example, every soldier can sprint, hunker down, or prepare an interrupting overwatch attack on the enemy's turn. All of those abilities are present in Pathway, but they cost a resource and are limited entirely to a character's weapon/armor loadout. So only a person with a Sniper Rifle can do an overwatch attack, only a person in heavy armor can hunker down, only a person in light armor can sprint, etc. Combined with the fact that, despite all of the core weapons being firearms, you can't even make an attack outside of a gun's proscribed range, and you have MANY turns where a character can literally do nothing other than stick a thumb up their butt, and you can't really do much with your characters to plan tactically other than put them into defensible positions. This is aggravated by the inability to cancel a move order, which means you can easily misjudge or misclick a move and have a character with a gun who can't even attempt a shot at an enemy because they're one tile outside of a magical range box even though this is not how bullets work.
Collected, this means the combat portion of the game is incredibly shallow and you've really only got one core strategy - keep your team grouped up, find a semi-defensible corner and double attack one enemy per turn that you can get into range until they're all dead (occasionally using special abilities or grenades to speed the process up). Do this and you'll win every battle in the game no problem. There is no ability to set up counter-attacks, extremely limited ability to set up traps, and little in the way of setting up an active defense - basic swarming will work every time along with some kiting for zombie enemies.
And as this is the CORE activity in the game, comprising probably 75% plus of what you'll be doing, this is a major problem (oh, and the "next turn" button that ends your *team's* whole turn, rather than being in the right hand corner of your screen as standard in most turn-based games, is in your character's command list instead, which will lead to you losing turns early on until you break your habits).
But even on the exploration map there are just unfathomably poor choices. Campsites where you can perform a party full-heal, for example, are map locations rather than a resource, so they're both abuseable when you find them, and can spawn in horrible zero utility locations. In my second adventure, two camp sites spawned right at the start and nowhere else on the map, which meant they were completely pointless since you start at full health. There is no risk/reward on this mechanic, just pure RNG, which considering the importance of this kind of mechanic (when do you expend your party wide full-heal on a longer campaign map?) is simply ill-conceived.
Worse there is no mission variation. Literally every encounter consists of a brief introduction text that presents a small number of options that either win the encounter completely (if you have the appropriate key skill with a character or get a good RNG roll) or you go through some dialogue until you get into a fight, or nothing happens. So far, after over 100 fights, not a single one presented an alternate objective, like "hold this point," "protect this VIP," "plant this bomb" or "survive 10 enemy waves." It's always just a slightly different layout of the battle map and a slightly different layout/amount of enemies. Kill them all and win. There are no dialogue tree encounters with a correct path to success I've found, and the only skills that matter in success/failure are the permanent instant win "personality" skills. There aren't even any multi-battle situations I've encountered (I'm guessing the final mission probably has one, but even adventure/chapter finales don't do this
Character development and progression is poorly thought out too. You have extremely constrained upgrade paths that have you making permanent choices on development (no re-spec is available between adventures) and only consist of extremely incremental stat boosts or unlocking a new weapon/armor type. You won't see much payoff from the increments until a character is mostly or fully leveled and the hard 1 weapon, 1 item limit per character means having more flexibility in terms of equipment usage is mostly useless (other than swapping in undamaged armor between battles). Upgrades to your jeep are also terrible since they're extremely expensive and VERY incremental. Meanwhile, you can't even buy items in preparation for an adventure at all! So once you get comfortable with defeating the weak AI, you're going to start building up a pile of mostly useless cash pretty quickly.
And to top it all off, there is exactly one generalized setting for the game: the MENA desert, and two sets of enemy forces, Nazis and Zombies (called cultists, but actual cultists among these Mobs are rare even when it says you get attacked by a horde of cultists). Combined with the lacking encounter variety, it gets tiresome very quickly, especially since the 2nd adventure is actually rather long at 3 full maps to traverse. By the time you've done adventure 2 you've seen the bulk of the game's content, which is a bit ridiculous considering the premise -even if you only count the good Indy movies, Dr. Jones goes to the South American jungle, Downtown Hong Kong, The Indian wilderness, Venice catacombs, a Germanic Castle and a whole bunch of connecting locations in between fighting Nazis in the desert for the bulk of only Raiders and the last Act of the Last Crusade. The source material they're aping is far more diverse than this.
So all told, I'm really not sure how this came out in this state. The game needs a core redesign on a lot of fundamental aspects, and it needs a LOT more art and content if it's going to be successful at creating the experience it's seemingly wanting to do. If you want to see a similar concept done well, I'm going to have recommend the game Renowned Explorers instead. It's more lighthearted, but it's got far more depth and much more variety.Show moreShow less
12.3 hours at review291 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
At this point I had to give a positive review to Pathway. The devs did a really great job enhancing the game experience and the recent update (1.1) corrected a lot of flaws. While I feel the game still needs some adjustments, it certainly is moving into the right direction. If you didn't like Pathway at first, please give it another chance, the devs really deserve it.Show moreShow less
27.2 hours at review76 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Like a lot of people reviewing this game I was seduced by the elements it promises to bring together, but ultimately found the game lacking in fun. I will happily change my review after some updates if things are improved, but there is some significant improvement that needs to be had.
Recommendations:
- Combat isn't fun because it isn't sufficiently strategic. Some sneaking elements could be very enjoyable. Perhaps have rifles and shotguns create noise that alerts enemies, while pistols cause less damage but make less noise, and knives make no noise at all, but require melee range.
- Different armor types should have advantages and disadvantages. Why would you ever wear light armor if you could wear heavy armor? Maybe heavy armor adds great defense, but slows your move speed? Maybe light armor soaks less damage but allows you to move quickly and provides an evasion bonus? Maybe different armor weights can add different numbers of additional inventory slots?
- The preset characters aren't especially interesting. Perhaps allow players to create a single custom character they can run through the campaign with, and the others now serve as teammates to that one. Since no story is really told about the preset characters, we don't really care about them. But a character of your own making could be something you grow invested in.
- Leveling up is insufficiently rewarding and the items you can buy at stores or find on enemies do not do enough to help you progress through the game. I found myself skipping combat because earning experience wasn't worth it, and earning money and drops wasn't worth it. Balancing risk and reward in a game is good, but if the risk is never worth the reward then the game isn't worth playing.
I'm excited to see how the game improves going forward. Good luck with future developments guys.Show moreShow less
2.1 hours at review221 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
It is surprisingly good. It is XCOM + FTL but in 1936, with nazis and pixel art. I will certainly play it through next days.
A few downsides though, so far
- Main menu music is just awful. I had to turn it off despite the great campaign music.
- AI feels dumb at times. My char has 1 HP left, yet the enemy attacks the other char of mine?
- You get constantly hit. It is not XCOM or the classic UFO, or other old tactics games. Instead, it is hit & run, hit & run, hit & run. You better have a high HP. No guard/watch tactics, for instance, from what I've seen so far. XCOM is more tactical. I feel as if you are into XCOM you might miss quite a few tactical features.
But my guess is, and that is why I highly recommend it, that they fix/improve it pretty soon. It is a dedicated team.Show moreShow less
0.6 hours at review74 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I was really excited when I saw this game at first. It seemed like it would be a perfect blend of genres with a lot of replayability. A few hours in though and it already started to feel like a chore. It started to feel repetitive and boring. The game feels like it lacks any meaningful choices. Nothing ever really seemed to happen. Most the events were benign or nothing happening. The combat was okay, but the game in its entirety lacks depth and doesn't do anything better than any other game. It feels like a whole lot of fluff with nothing engaging or interesting before long.Show moreShow less
5.1 hours at review135 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Ok, it was a hard decision for me weather to recommend this game or not. I vote yes, but I really hope that devs read my review (as well as some others already posted before) and work to improve their game design to make their good game a great one!
Why Yes:
- turn-based tactics are rare these days so fans of the genre have to support devs who dare.
- really loved their previous game (Halfway). Remember thinking that if they successed it would be great if they develop a bigger game. They did (in a way).
- if you're into Indiana Jones you'll love the setting of Pathway (not my cup of tea, but still).
- once you get used to some game design flaws you can get lots of fun from the game!
Why it was hard to vote Yes:
- repeatative encounters. You have to pass a lot so pretty soon you'll stop reading and just click 'em through to get results. This kind of kills the exploration part of the game.
- if you want to be successful you have to fight. Technically you can avoid combat, but that'll leave you without loot, supplies and gas. So a dominant strategy is to fight every time you can.
- a SLOW combat. God! It's so frustrating: slow animations, only single move action per character per turn, no auto-end turn! I believe this part of the game has a great untapped potential.
What to improve:
STORY:
- have an overarching general plot that connects all five adventures
- have a classic "The End" after the fifth adventure, rewarding people who made it this far (I've beaten all five and feel a bit sad that they were a bit generic without the grand final)
EXPLORATION:
- hide the final location! Starting from the second adventure if you hide the exit the exploration will have so much sense. Player will have to search for clues (maybe finding a map shows where their destination is)? Players will have to spend more time exploring!
- hide the key to final destination somewhere on the map! Give reason to explore more!
COMBAT:
- allow double move action (zombies will really sworm players, there will be much more tactical choices, combat will become so much fater)
- add auto-end turn checkbox. Once all characters spent all their actions let their turn end automatically!
- speed up basic animations in combat
Hope this helps, really looking forward to game updates and your next project. Meanwhile it probably makes sense to buy and complete Halfway on this account as well...Show moreShow less
13.7 hours at review66 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The game looks promising but as is often the case looks are deceiving. I could write an extensive review later but right now I'm feeling lazy. To the art of a Pros/Cons list we go.
Pros:
- A lot of characters to pick and unlock, this is however also a con. More on that below.
- Combat is smooth, nothing deep but it has a nice pace to it at least.
Painfully short pros I'm afraid.
Cons:
- Characters. None of the unlockables are really worth a damn since skills are weapon and armor based, not character based. So all shotgunners have the same abilities, all machine gunners as well, etc. Aside from slight +/- quirks, there is no difference between them.
*Characters do have "unique" skill trees, often these are simply another characters skill tree in a different order with one or two unique skills. Important to note that these skills are passive buffs, not abilities.
- Grinding. One of the biggest but not my biggest gripes is the grinding. Enjoy replaying mission 1 several times to get medicine for mission 2. Then again for mission 3. See the problem?
- Missions are incredibly damn boring. There is little to no story aside from the start and end of each and even this is.. pathetic.
- Events are surprisingly shallow and boring. Attack or don't are often what your options boil down to. Sometimes you get an event a specific character can have a spicy third option for but in my experience and others, these just always fail. I never had one succeed.
- *Nothing* is deep in this game. Looting, combat, events, story, grinding. There is no depth to anything. I'm fine with some things being incredibly simple but everything?
- There is no variety in what you fight or what you do. Enjoy the same event 7 times and fighting the same Nazis in every battle.
Ultimately the game is a let down. I had high hopes and purchased it despite negative reviews, but please don't make the same mistake. I will change the review as updates are made, since the developers at least *say* they want to make the necessary changes but I'm skeptical personally. Keep your eyes on it for a little and see if anything major changes.Show moreShow less
1.2 hours at review106 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
