Last updated on November 29th, 2025 at 04:51 am
Road Not Taken – Roleplaying Game Review
Road Not Taken is a Roleplaying/Puzzle game from Spry Fox LLC, first launched in 28th July 2016.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 201+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Road Not Taken Stand Out
"It looks like a cute fairy tale, but this is a turn-based game that's thorny with challenge and packed with an incredible number of gameplay secrets."
Should you play this game: YES – Kotaku
"Road Not Taken is the cutest catalyst for an existential crisis I've ever encountered"
4.5 out of 5 – Joystiq
"It's as mean as life, as cruel as the universe, and it still manages to be one of the most intriguing and moving titles released this year."
90 out of 100 – GamesBeat
About This Game:
Road Not Taken is a puzzle game about surviving life's surprises. You play as a ranger adventuring through a vast, unforgiving forest in the aftermath of a brutal winter storm, rescuing children who have lost their way. Randomly generated levels deliver a limitless supply of possibilities to explore and challenges to overcome. Your actions will influence not only your own story, but that of the villagers you hope to befriend and the town you call home.
Story Details:
Each time you play Road Not Taken, you're likely to experience a very different story. The paths you take will change; the relationships you pursue will twist in ways you did not expect. Which, as it happens, is just like real life.
The villagers of Road Not Taken believe that there is an optimal path through life: a good person gets a job, falls in love and has children. You won't follow this path. Can you find your own unique way through a life?
Gameplay Details:
No path leads to the same destination in Road Not Taken. The trails you take will change, the relationships you pursue will twist in ways you might not expect, and the narrative you create with every action will be yours to decide. Every playthrough offers new and unusual creatures to encounter, secrets and items to discover, townsfolk to build relationships with, and devilish, hand-crafted puzzle rooms to solve.
Brains, Not Brawn:
Your character has the magical ability to levitate and move objects. You must figure out how to use your talents and tactics to circumvent or defeat a wide variety of dangerous creatures, obstacles, and boss encounters.
Get Lost in the Wild:
Road Not Taken is brought to life with gorgeous 2D artwork, expressively charming sprite design, and an evocative, atmospheric soundtrack. Every puzzle is a challenge of exploration and strategy, testing players to think before taking each step forward.
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Road Not Taken is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th March 2017
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Questions? Issues? Email [email protected]!
Download & Availability
Road Not Taken is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Road Not Taken on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We had this game years ago when it first came out. We got a new phone and somehow forgot about the game. Until today we googled the story because we couldnt remember the name of the game and we found it within 10 minutes on YouTube! Well we bought it again. We think it was free when it first came out but we bought it this time because we loved it the first time and we have already played for an hour this time. One of the best games on a phone we have played. Im not sure if you can still get it on PlayStation but Im going to see if we can download it on PlayStation again too.
Spry Fox makes pretty, high-quality games. This one is no different. The mechanic of moving and throwing objects is interesting and challenging. The game has tons of personality. The tough part is the sheer number of objects is difficult to track and the combinations you can make are sometimes arbitrary and difficult to remember. Many items are strange creatures and spirits and weird trinkets and there isnt always a clear logic to what you are supposed to do. This makes for a fun game of discovery but as you get deeper into the story the frustration and difficulty rises to the point that the game begins to feel impossible. However the journey is enjoyable and its a fun experience despite feeling generally unwinnable. Recommended if you enjoy puzzle games and quirky magical stories.
Oh Em Gee this app is the best app in the world on our God we love it its.
Slide puzzle plus rogue plus dating sim? Fun time.
Played almost all the way through when we first got it, but got super duper stuck once we started running into Baba-Yaga. Re-downloaded it recently to show it to our boyfriend (who also loves it now) and am thoroughly enjoying replaying :).
The animation is so great art style music wonderful.
Fun little game! Sometimes frustrating but you keep working at saving the kids! We love the crow parent combo.
We're on our fifth play-through. The puzzles started out very confusing, but it starts to make sense before long. And new discoveries along the way keep it interesting and make it more rewarding. (The controls also get much easier with practice.) we recently shifted to playing on Difficult mode, and that adds some new interest as well. Meanwhile, the world is delightfulI enjoy the art, the sweet and quirky interactions with villagers, and plying them with gifts until you can propose marriage. (You can marry the whole village if you want to, regardless of gender! We love it.) we haven't managed to get our character to have their own children yet, but we think it's possible. Altogether a charming game.
Love this game. Too easy to accidentally throw items when you want to move, but otherwise great.
We stumbled across this game while trying to find a new entertaining game to play. We saw this game and thought we're going to try it. It's worth the money we will tell you that much. It is amazing! Super cute. Super easy to get the hang of. Game play is awesome! Hands down best puzzle adventure game we've come across.
We enjoyed this game on the PlayStation and it is just as good on the iPhone. It is challenging but fun.
Definitely worth a buck. Probably worth more.
…. And addictive. We can't stop playing.
We really enjoy it and highly recommend it.
We first played Road Not Taken on Steam over a year ago and had a lot of fun with it. We think this is a good port to mobile, and a steal for a dollar in comparison. This is a puzzle game where the mechanic you use is picking up everything in the four tiles adjacent to you, and drop them, which will shove those objects to the farthest tiles in their directions until they hit another object or the forest wall. The challenge is figuring out how to minimize the moves you make to conserve energy, with a main goal to reunite children to mothers per "room" of the forest. Sometimes instead of children, you have to group objects together to open doors to the next room(s). And of course there are more enemies/obstacles as you progress that you have to plan around. A lot of people think this game is hard at first, and so did we. But then you really get into it once you start learning what objects and enemies do through experience. It does take some patience in that respect. But it is a really fun game for puzzle lovers, and would be great to take on-the-go.
This game is fairly challenging for a mobile game and we really appreciate the devs trying something new.
We love this game to bits, the art and gameplay is wonderful to experience. The only issue we have is the controls due to the small size of the d-pad. Although a future update will probably have an option to optimize the size of the d-pad. Other than that, this is probably our favorite mobile game so far.
This game is great! We never get tired of playing it. Its a cute mini adventure game for the right price.
We like this game because it has a very nice feel to it. Beautiful graphics, crisp controls and challenging puzzles. That's what makes this game appeal to us.
Great art style and fun gameplay. 10/10, would rescue children again.
We originally had this for PS4, and it showed up in the App Store, so we got it. It is definitely one of our favorites.
So far really enjoying the game. The characters are super cute and game play is interesting and challenging. Look forward to really unlocking all its secrets.
Great graphics, fun gameplay. Lots of things to uncover and interact with, and inspired by a robert frost poem. Try it.
Ive had this game for years now and downloaded it pretty much when it came out. We played it on our phone but have more recently been playing it on our iPad, which we find we prefer since the screen is bigger. We really enjoy the game overall, and how you can build on past iterations of the Ranger and explore different scenarios. We also really like puzzle crafting games and this perfectly scratches that itch. Our only complaint is that the controls can be frustrating at timesits an onscreen arrow pad and oftentimes Ill find that Ive not been precise enough when Im using it and Ill end up going the wrong direction or going further than we wanted which then means we usually get attacked or lose some health. This might just be an iPad issue, though. Similarly, the game crashes on occasion when Im using our iPad.
We are a big fan of fusion games. Also there is quirky humor. And a cat.
We get the feeling that we have no idea what Im doing, but we sure do enjoy this game.
Okay, so at first we loved this game but it was so hard and we could never get past a level, if you make this game a little bit more easier we'll give you the full 5 stars. But if you love challenging puzzles then this game is PERFECT for you.
It's no Binding of Isaac, but if you like rogue-likes or cute puzzle games or have money to burn on stylish iPhone games, you could do far far worse than this game. There's hundreds of reviews for this game online so we won't waste any more of your time. We enjoyed, you'll probably enjoy it, have a nice day.
The strategy is alright, however the controls are a bit lacking, the dpad is rather all and the game sometimes registers a direction as a pickup action this makes playing through this complicated strategy game tedious as you have to do things over again if you mess up slightly.
…but we can't get any sound. Kind of annoying, but we didn't pay much for it.
Gameplay is intriguing and fun. A thoughtful puzzle strategy game. Wish the controls were easier to use on the smaller device sizes though. Find ourselves tapping repeatedly to trigger any entry in the book, as well as accidentally picking up objects and moving before we had a chance to realize what we were doing.
While this is a lovely little puzzle game, with an interesting system to figure out, we leave it three stars only because the story and situation are so depressing we simply couldnt play it anymore. What a downer this game is! However, if you love the idea of repeating a cycle of failure in which you are just never good enough, life isnt fair, and you find yourself always leaving some sweet children to die in the woods in the cold, surrounded by monsters and witches, because youre just not up to the task, well, have a great time.
We can't figure out the controls. Cute graphics, but we have no idea what's going on.
The art work is unmatched. The concept is great! Our only complaint is the controls. Too hard to control on an iPhone 6S, and it ruins the whole experience. Should we expect updates? Let us know on twitter @Navarjun.
This is a really good game. The controls are a lesson of frustration; at best an example of terrible ui. – a single tap is an action : pickup or toss. Toss is undoable, so any accidental tap can be ruin.. – a swipe is a move. It has no minimum distance as far as we can tell, as we sometimes tap and find the game interpret it as a move… As the game gets more complicated, each action matters more.. You feel the challenge, and it is exciting.. And then the game misinterprets yet another action and your plan is completely shattered. This misinterpretation happens often, and kills the game for us. Please fix.. A single tap should always be safe. Pickup/toss should be different inputs, same with bump-to-investigate and move. Ex: + single tap : pickup or drop + two finger tap : toss + set a reasonable minimum distance to count between a tap and a drag (bonus if you add visual cue during the input).
Cute graphics and affordable price but the controls are terrible and there's no proper tutorial to get anywhere with the weird logic of the game. Crammed space and overall frustrating experience.
The graphics are really nice but we cannot get the controls to work for us. Having to restart each time due to poor controls is really annoying.
There's nothing novel or fun. It just feels boring.
Big fan of spryfox, esp. Alphabear and the ninja bear game. Tried this one out, got about 9 years in, aaaand the game is much more frustrating than fun. Too many obstacles in a level, too many recipes that can ruin a painstaking setup, not enough rewards to court townspeople. The game balance is way off, even w the normal mode difficulty.
Purchased it tonight, playing it on Apple TV and the menu button is a KEY button, but does not register in the game. We tried the physical remote, we tried the remote app on our phone, we tried the game controller, nothing works to activate that menu button. So we played the entry level but now we cant even advance or even move until we press menu which as we noted cannot be pressed. What a rip off.
Not worth it we mean we play it when we're bored but the controls don't work well and it doesn't give you instructions after the beginning it's more frustrating then fun and it just resets everything once you get past it and you have to start over! Feels like you don't accomplish anything though out the game.
This game is insane, and we kept dying, because the controls are terrible.
The controls for the game are terrible. When you want to move you just throw things and it never moves how you want it to. The tutorial is short and doesn't explain much. What are these ghosts? Why does it hurt to touch them and how can we move if they're still there? We don't know. It started off cute, but the controls were so tedious we got tired of the game quickly the rewards aren't good enough to keep playing. It's like you collect things, but can't use it.
The actual gameplay is boring and difficult at the same time, and the rewards you get are too small to really interact a lot with the town people. And the controls don't respond well either, it'll often make the character move the wrong way simply because the button panel is too small.
This game does not handle well. It's instructions are inconsistent with the results it produces in the game. It led to frustration rather than fun.
We were expecting some sort of rpg like ff tactics or something along those lines….but it's just a drag and drop game with super wonky controls.
The controls in this game are too obtuse. Even after reading the tutorial instructions, we still couldn't get them down (and we have been playing games for almost 30 years). Glad we bought this when it was on sale. At least we're not out too much money.
Bought it "on sale" can't imagine what they charged before that. There's nothing worse than games that have all kinds of unexplained intricacies. Within a few levels its impossible to follow. We fell for the vague explanation of the gameplay because of the cool graphics. Too bad us.
We couldn't even figure out how to connect things, drop things, or rest our energy before dying. The hints weren't working. Now way to find out how to actually play. Frustrating.
Controls are horrible. Can't move character at all. We want our $5 back.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.8
- Size: 262.21 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Spry Fox LLC
Last updated: 5th March 2017 | Genre: Roleplaying, Puzzle | Developer: Spry Fox LLC