No Trail Back

About the Game

Whoever leaves the trail belongs to the mountain.

No Route Back is a survival game in a valley in the Polish mountains: a big lake at the bottom, meadows and forest, small ponds, rocky peaks all around, and old mines deep under them.

From golden autumn to deep winter

The game starts on the 15th of October and goes all the way into deep winter. Every tree loses its leaves at its own pace. Rain, fog and the halny, the warm wild wind of the Polish mountains, which melts the snow and can break whole trees. The first snow comes in patches, then covers everything; you leave footprints that new snow slowly fills. The lakes freeze over, and the blizzards leave you almost blind. The sun moves as it does over a real town in the Polish mountains: in winter the days get short and the nights get long.

Stay warm

Warmth is a need, like food and water. At night your fire is your only light and your heat, and when the cold wins, you start losing health. Snow settles on your clothes on the side the wind comes from, and melts by the fire.

Build it by hand

Collect sticks, stones and branches, fell trees with your axe and carry the logs one by one. Make a camp with a campfire, a tent and a bedroll, or build a real log cabin with no blueprint: lay the floor from split logs, raise the walls log on log wherever you want, then cut out a door and a window with your axe.

Explore the valley

Old forest roads with puddles, stone huts you can walk into, places with things to find, and old mines that broke into a natural cave, with rails, carts and a hut deep underground. There are useful things down there. It is also dangerous.

Who lives here

Wolves come for the meat you carry, circle your camp and react to what you do. And there are people in this valley: a band of cannibals that lives in the woods. Fight back with your axe, or stay out of their sight.

A valley that looks like the Polish mountains

An original map we draw ourselves, built on what we made from real data of the Beskids and the Tatras.

Coming next

More places to find, more in the mines, and co-op, so you can survive the valley with a friend.