Video Game / Path to Nowhere

Can you let me out, please?

"Venture deep into the City of Sins. Hunt down the most vicious criminals."

Path to Nowhere (Chinese title 无期迷途, or literally translated as Lost Indefinitely) is a mobile Science Fantasy Tower Defense videogame developed and published by AISNO Games, released on October 27, 2022.

Nightfall 01. Out of nowhere, a giant astronomical object crashes against Earth, plunging the world into chaos, war and an overall collapse of civilization. Fourteen years later, the Nightfall Declaration is issued, discarding the world order we had grown accustomed to and leaving the survivors to fend for themselves around independent city-states. Meanwhile, on ground zero, a phenomenon later dubbed as Black Ring arises, bringing with itself not only the distortion of the laws of physics, but also a severe mental contamination to any human who approaches said place, nicknamed Mania. In the 'best' cases, this leads to people acquiring personality-based superpowers at the cost of their mental and/or physical integrity. In the worst, it causes a total mutation of the victim's body and mind, transforming them into dangerous monsters.

Yet, despite all the pain and suffering, the seeds of a new era started to bloom. Amidst the ruins of the meteor crash, humanity discovers a new power source, the Hypercube, which becomes a key element in the collective struggle to adapt and survive. With the guidance of Dr. [redacted] , the surviving and emerging powers sign the EDGE accord, laying the foundation for the rise of the last megalopolis on Earth: DisCity, the city that rises over Hell.

It's N.F. 112, and all hell breaks loose at the MBCC (Minos Bureau of Crisis Control), an underground organization tasked with the capture, surveillance and reformation of Sinners. A hostile, known only as "Suspect R", invades the Bureau's prison complex with a group of rioters. Interrupting a shady memory restoration process, and awakening you as a collateral, Suspect R uses her power to take on your appearance and free every Sinner held by the MBCC. It will be a long, long and confusing night for you...

Made into the new Chief of MBCC and given the ungrateful task of pursuing, capturing and managing every Sinner—you are thrown into a dangerous path of deception and betrayal. There are, of course, several problems attached to this mission: a) you don't seem to remember who you are or where you come from; b) after an encounter with one prisoner who voluntarily stays in her cell, you awaken a strange power—dubbed the Shackles—that allows you to empower, control and manage the abilities of Sinners; and c) you get the impression that your shady superiors and the overall organizations involved in the Mania business are hiding a few skeletons on their closet, and might be less interested in the overall survival of the city than they are on their hidden agendas. What starts as a police thriller will rapidly escalate into a calamity that not even you can control.

Path to Nowhere released with full voice acting in four languages - English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The game was released to positive reception, hitting 1 million downloads within 3 days of its launch.

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This game provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: It's not explicit how far into the future Path to Nowhere is set (and thanks to the Nightfall callendar's difference, it's impossible to truly know), but it's far enough into it that holograms and walking fortresses are a common ocurrence.
• After the End: Albeit followed by an Apocalypse Not. The meteor crash that brought the Mania contamination didn't end life on Earth, but it did collapse and end society as we know it. Even so, civilization rebuilt itself fairly well after the Perishing Star fell on Earth and the Nightfall declaration was made—while DisCity is quite the criminal hub, many modern-day amenities such as the internet, professional sports teams and even the cinema industry are show to be in working order. The outside of it is much messier, but there are other city-states such as Goldionville which exist in a similar state to DisCity.
• Allegedly Free Game: The game can be played for free, but you can pay for more Hypercubes and warrants to roll the gacha for desired Sinners.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: If too much Mania accumulates in their bodies, Sinners turn into Corruptors.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The game has many quality of life features.
  • When raiding for materials to upgrade your Sinners, it will automatically stop after you gather the required amount.
  • Failing a stage does not consume stamina.
  • There is a panel in the home screen that displays your current goals to work towards, in case you ever forget what you were supposed to do.
  • Pre-Mission briefings provide a rundown on the enemies you will meet during the stage and their abilities. You can review them at any time during battle too.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You are limited to a maximum of six Sinners per stage. This number drops to even less in some special stages.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: As the Chief of the MBCC, you use a variety of criminals in your armed forces, using your shackles to control them. Some of them are relatively good people, Mania contamination aside, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they "awakened" as Sinners. However, others under your control are outright unrepentant carrer criminals and mass murderers.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Several of the Sinners remain kind at heart despite the Mania in their bodies, such as Ariel and Kawa-Kawa.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Mania corruption is also detrimental to the mind, and several Sinners have downright bizarre motives for committing crimes. For example, NOX believes she is saving people by killing them.
• Crapsack World: DisCity is riddled with many crime organisations, and many of the more malevolent Sinners pose a huge threat to civilian safety. As for the outside and surrounding areas of DisCity, the so-called "Outlands", they aren't much better; WhiteSands for one is an inhospitable desert full of sand worms, roaming raiders and constant dust storms that makes travel impossible without proper precautions taken beforehand.
• A Day in the Limelight: The Interrogations are essentially this for each individual Sinner, where The Chief will discuss and talk to a Sinner about the case that brought them into incarceration and (hopefully) have them come to terms with their actions.
• Eldritch Location: Black Rings, places of disastrous explosions of Mania, where laws of physics and logic are all subverted in favour of Black Ring's master's whims and desires. Black Rings are so dangerous that even information of them can cause minor Mania outbreaks in otherwise safe conditions, which made the FAC very secretive about anything and everything somehow related to the Rings. Black Rings are supposedly created when an S-class Sinner loses their marbles because of inhumanly high M-values, basically turning into walking Mania. However, Chief's investigations show that for a Black Ring to emerge, a collective threshold of Mania must be reached, and to make a Black Ring truly dangerous, Parma must introduce the Patient Zero to their corruption in the form of the Inheritance and create a Corpseborne. By Chapter 8, Chief managed to destroy the latest one, created by Zoya, before it got out of control, and neutralize another, BR-01, which existed for more than 20 years.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • People suffering from Mania contamination, and Sinners in particular, tend to be regarded by society as potential threats to public security at best and as dangerous criminals at worst. To make matters even more grim, this tends to lead to otherwise upstanding citizens to turn to shady elements for support after being rejected by others, which often leads to them becoming the aforementioned "dangerous criminals" they were regarded as by others.
  • Eastsiders and Syndians don't see into each other's eyes at all, the former considering the latter to be region where the worst gangs gather together and where criminality runs rampant on the street, barely any better than The Rust, while the latter thinks of the former as a bunch of stuck-up bastards who look down and stereotype the average Syndian simply based on their societal status. Not helping matters is that there's a movement restriction law between the two regions, acting like a pseudo-segregationist measure that only fosters animosity between the two.
• Foil: To Arknights:
  • In terms of setting, both are located in Crapsack Worlds where wastelands are more common than habitable lands; Path to Nowhere is set after an apocalyptic event when a meteor struck and thrust society into ruin, whereas Arknights varies wildly in environments because of the Catastrophes, natural disasters wrought by wild Originium. What they have plenty in common is the sheer number of opportunists and dictators taking the helm of every society, and potential world-ending threats that must be dealt with.
  • Path to Nowhere has Mania while Arknights has Originium. Both are unknown materials that have uses to people but, when improperly used, cause incurable diseases that directly affect the mind. Mania, however, is only really useful to those willing to risk turning into monstrous Corruptors for power, especially to become Sinners (though this is a rare case); these Sinner mutations have a large range of abilities that start from the basic and physical to the outright immaterial and conceptual. Originium on the other hand sees widespread use, commonly as industrial fuel and the science-based Originium Arts that does not require being Infected, in addition to a number of mysterious powers that don't use Originium.
  • The MBCC and Rhodes Island are organizations that take in outcasts, especially those infected by their respective Green Rocks, and/or those who are criminals with varying levels of black morality while operating against organizations larger than them. However the MBCC is a governmental organization that literally and magically shackles Sinners (and Sinners only) whose powers threaten society; Rhodes Island is an independent (ostensibly) pharmaceutical organization that takes in not only Infected but also people of interest (who may or may not be Infected too), which includes societal outcasts, criminals, and VIPs.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: You can get any Sinner during Arrests, but it doesn't mean Chief actually has them or uses them In-Universe. In fact, Chief finishes entirety of chapter 3-8 in company of just Hecate and Hella, with only some additional help of other Sinners. In particular, EMP, K.K. and Labyrinth aren't mentioned at all during Chapters 1 and 2, despite being "recruited" specifically to aid Chief with Salva incident in a actual mission-stage. In more general sense, a good chunk of gacha-arrested Sinners either don't appear in story or specifically never recruited. As of the Dream Bubble event, Langley is still very much Chief's boss and not prisoner, Eirene is borderline enemy nobody can even suspect in being Sinner, Hamel is still trapped under the lake at the former BR-01 site and Zoya is still... somewhere in Bai Yi's custody—Bai Yi herself, by the way, is only barely noticed by Chief while losing consciousness back in Chapter 6. This, however, may start to change as story goes on. This is because EMP, Labyrinth, and Lisa have more active roles in Night of Wonders.
• Girls Behind Bars: Downplayed. While the MBCC has many female criminals within it and plenty of them indeed provide quite some Fanservice or at the very least eye-candy, the game treats the life-and-death nature of criminality in a serious manner, and in contrast to most media in the genre the POV of the game is not any of the inmates but The Chief, the in-universe equivalent of a warden of the organization. Also unlike the vast majority of examples, the MBCC also deals with male Sinners, with The Chief potentially being a guy himself if you so choose.
• Have a Nice Death: Getting a Game Over during a mission will have a Sinner (that was in your party) comment on your failure—some doing this in a nicer way than others.
• Horrible Hollywood: The DisCars is portrayed as the DisCity equivalent of Hollywood and by extension the Oscars, but the portrayal is not a pretty one: Vain critics, Executive Meddling and Censorship galore alongside shallow directors more interested in racking up cash than producing genuinely unique and creative works is the sad but typical reality of the DisCars cinema world.
• Improbably Female Cast: Becoming a Sinner has not been mentioned to be gender specific. Yet, a large majority of the cast is female.
• Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life: A few Sinners' arrest records can come across as so overkill even Judge Dredd would have a double-take. These include Peggy, who got a warrant for making insulting rap lyrics towards the City Council, and Lisa, who stirred up way too many internet debates. Justified in that as discussed below, Sinners who don't receive the proper treatment to their Mania can be a danger to everyone near them, even if unintentionally, and that the Public Safety Bureau and the City Council are not as spotless as they might seen to be and both use the MBCC as a means to get rid of potential dissenters and as a means of "cleaning up" the Sinners they had a hand in "creating" themselves, as demonstrated by Wendy's backstory.
• Lighter and Softer: The Beyond DisCars event is this compared to the special operations that came beforehand, which were mostly serious apart from the occasional Plucky Comic Relief and, in the case of Night of Wonders, being outright horror-themed with Sosia having a Near-Villain Victory. Beyond DisCars stays relatively lighthearted all the way through, helped by OwO being the central character to the event and the main conflict, capturing the Apostle of Ashes while it's in the dormant state taking a backseat to OwO's own much more low-stake objectives, winning the DisCars Awards and reuniting Stella with her family.
• Luxury Prison Suite: The Bureau's facilities, despite their seemingly grim outside look, are very much this, with multiple recreational areas, freedom of movement for Sinners and constant psychological/medical assistance alongside custom-made cells to acomodate their powers. Justified since the objective of the Bureau is not simply to punish the Sinner's crimes but rein in their mania and reform them through discipline.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Ads for this game on social media websites often advertise this game as one where you can "Torture sexy prisoners and uncover hidden secrets". While it is true that a lot of the Sinners you can obtain have sexualized designs, and they're explicitly stated to be detainees (the gacha mechanic is referred to as "Arresting" Sinners) who you control with shackles, the Chief does not actually torture the Sinners; it's made a point several times throughout the story that they are a good and empathetic leader to their Sinners. The closest to "torture" in this game would be the Interrogation system, where you indeed "uncover hidden secrets" about the Sinners under your command, but never by using hurtful methods upon them, the sequence plays out more like a counseling/therapy session rather than an interrogation.
• Noodle Incident: A few Sinners have some of these cases within their backstory that is often only explored in their interrogations - for example, in spite of being on the surface just a baseball hooligan, Dolly had some affairs with The Homeless organization and the Eastside Baseball riot one only learns about if they play her interrogation.
• One-Man Army: Both in gameplay and in-story, a Sinner can usually take on entire gangs and groups of enemies by themselves thanks to a mix of Super-Strength and general destructiveness of their powers. Some dialogues upon arresting S-Class Sinners in the gacha has them snide that the usual procedure to go after one of them is to mobilize all of the bureau's available forces for a chance at their capture.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Even weaker Sinners can be a walking hazard if they aren't able to control their powers, with EMP, a B-Class one, causing a power shortage lasting a week in the entirety of Syndicate when she awakened.
• Power Equals Rarity: Crimebrands can range from blue to golden tier, with the golden Crimebrands being the rarest and the most powerful.
  • Zig-Zagged with the Sinner classification system both in the story and gameplay-wise. In the lore, the classes from B to S are given to Sinners according to how much danger they present to society, but danger does not necessarily mean power (even if it often does). For example, Labyrinth, a B-Class Sinner, has the capability to hold herself against an S-Class Sinner Eifer, whose Enemy Without, Sosia, created through her powers can leave the entirety of Dis City in anarchy. This is because that in spite of her fighting capabilities Labyrinth herself is a Robot Girl completely submissive to The Chief even without the shackles, and is very much in control of her powers outside of very unusual circumstances, which might bring in mind the SCP Foundation and it's "Safe, Euclid and Keter" system.
  • As for gameplay, it's a mixed bag as with many Gacha Games out there—some S-class Sinners are considered a must-have in meta, while others do little better than their B-class cousins, which can fit into late game teams with no problem at all, though the higher Class Sinners do tend to have better stats (and higher promotion costs too).
• Power Incontinence: Newly "Awakened" Sinners often have little control over their powers, and that's if they even ''know'' how to use them, which is often what leads to them causing a crisis that leads to them being outed as a Sinner and taken in by the MBCC in the first place. More experienced ones can usually keep them under control, but since the most powerful of Sinners are often the ones with the most volatile capabilities of them, even they aren't safe from unleashing destruction.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Chief has to work together with captured Sinners, who are unintentionally dangerous at best or outright criminals at worst, for the good of humanity as a whole.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Happens any time a character swears, but it happens most often with Hella.
• Super-Strength: Every Sinner is much stronger than the average human. If not for the Shackles, the Chief would be massively out of their depth. Even then, they usually let Hecate and Hella do most of the fighting.
• Steampunk: In contrast to the Post-Cyberpunk and 20 Minutes into the Future theme of the rest of the game, the Dragon & Isle of Sky event is set in a world controlled by Etti that mixes Steampunk and Dungeon Punk.
• Victory Quote: Every Sinner has one that is displayed after battle if they were part of your party.
• Wretched Hive: The Rust is this within DisCity itself, already far from a good place to live as noted above. It's a suburb filled with contamination hazards where the homeless and gang members fill the streets and there's more abandoned buildings than living spaces—making it a favorite hiding spot of outlaws and career criminals with nothing to lose.

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