Find Your Way – GameArchives

Release Year: 2018
Platforms: Linux, Macintosh, Windows
Publisher: OnBlind
Developer: OnBlind
Genre: Action
Perspective: Diagonal-down
Gameplay: Shooter
Setting: Western

Description

Find Your Way is a third-person shooter set in the Wild West, where players assume the role of a sheriff in the once-peaceful town of Syver City seeking revenge against the notorious outlaw Jesse James and his gang. The game features a captivating low-poly art style and an immersive western soundtrack, blending intense shooter combat with authentic era activities like horseback riding, quickdraw duels, and poker games, all within an endless game mode that ensures continuous replayability.

Find Your Way: A Desolate Journey Through a Forgotten Western

Introduction: The Echo in the Dust

In the sprawling library of video game history, countless titles fade into obscurity, their digital permanence a fragile promise. Find Your Way (2018) stands as a poignant case study in this phenomenon—a game that whispers its existence from the deepest recesses of storefronts and databases, carrying with it the weight of unfulfilled ambition and the quiet tragedy of a lost narrative. Developed and published by the enigmatic, singular entity OnBlind, this third-person shooter set in a mythologized American West represents not just a product, but a fragment of a creator’s vision that never quite coalesced into the resonant experience it promised. This review is not merely an assessment of a finished artifact, but an excavation of potential, a forensic analysis of a game caught between the promise of its store blurb and the stark reality of its minimal footprint. My thesis is this: Find Your Way is a game defined by its absences—absent player reception, absent critical discourse, absent completion—and in those voids, we find its most defining characteristics: a compelling but underdeveloped thematic core, a technical foundation showing its indie constraints, and a legacy that exists more in the realm of “what could have been” than in any tangible influence.

Development History & Context: The Lone Sheriff of OnBlind

The studio behind Find Your Way, OnBlind, remains an almost ghostly presence in the industry record. With only this title and no other credits logged on major databases, it appears to be a one-person operation or a very small, transient team. This context is crucial. The game was built in Unity, the engine of choice for a generation of indies seeking accessible tools to realize grand ambitions. Its release in May 2018 placed it in a landscape dominated by polished AAA blockbusters and a thriving, competitive indie scene. Against titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 (released months later) or even smaller narrative-driven Westerns like Dead Redemption or Overture, Find Your Way was a lone rider entering a crowded, dusty town.

The technological constraints are evident in the Steam description’s emphasis on a “captivating low-poly art style.” This was not an aesthetic choice made purely for artistic statement, but a pragmatic necessity for a small team. Low-polygon modeling reduces asset creation time, computational demands, and the sheer volume of work required to build a world. The vision—an “immersive Wild West World” with “picturesque landscapes” and a “captivating… soundtrack”—clashes with the practical reality of indie development: limited scope, tight resources, and the monumental challenge of crafting a compelling narrative in a genre saturated with iconic imagery and stories. The decision to structure the game in Episodes (“Prologue,” “Episode 1,” with “Episode 2” in announced but never-released development) is a classic indie survival strategy: release in chunks, build a community, fund further development. The public Trello roadmap mentioned in Steam news posts is a telltale sign of a small team using transparent, agile project management, a practice common in indie and Game Jam cultures, but revealing the fragility of the project’s scope.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: A Story Told in Fragments

The narrative of Find Your Way is its most tantalizing and least complete element. From the official “Ad Blurb” and the sole “Prologue story” news post (correcting typos from the original), we piece together a plot:

The Catalyst: The player is the Sheriff of Syver (or Saiver) City, a once-peaceful town brutally disrupted by the gang of Jesse James. The sheriff was absent, “wandering around with a bottle of bourbon,” during the raid—a classic trope of the flawed, fallible hero.
The Pursuit: Returning to find the town evacuated, the sheriff follows a trail of notes and survivors heading west through Bryce Canyon. The stated goal is “revenge and justice” against Jesse James.
The Desolation: The pursuit is a march through increasingly hellish landscapes: the emptied town of Brainbench, the dangerous Canyon de Chellay (with its dark history of Navajo persecution), and the operational Rowl-Wheels station. Each location is not just a level, but a scene of aftermath—emptied, burning, filled with “dirty and embittered bandits.” The world is actively decaying, a consequence of the gang’s passage and the desperate flight of civilians.
The Personal Stakes: Intertwined with the chase is the search for the sheriff’s family, Emily and Lucy. Their fate is the emotional engine, the “gripping” personal motivation that should elevate the story from simple revenge to a quest for redemption and family. The news post tragically reveals the climax of the prologue: finding the burning estate of the Bretinson family (friends), only to confirm the search for his own family was “futile.” This suggests a narrative steeped in loss, futility, and relentless pursuit in the face of despair.

Thematic Analysis: What emerges is a thematic framework on inescapable consequence and the corrosive nature of vengeance. The sheriff isn’t just chasing outlaws; he’s chasing the ruin they’ve left behind, a ruin that now defines the entire landscape. The historical footnote about the Navajo (“for one killed Indian the authorities gave 25 dollars”) hints at a deeper layer: the Wild West was already a place of systematic violence and displacement before Jesse James arrived. The sheriff’s quest is thus set against a backdrop of endemic lawlessness and moral bankruptcy. The “endless game mode” mentioned in the store description could be thematically read as the cyclical, unending nature of violence and pursuit in such a world—there is no true victory, only the next confrontation.

However, this framework crumbles under the weight of what is not present. We have no dialogue samples, no character interactions beyond the note-finding, no exploration of the sheriff’s guilt over his drunken absence, no nuanced portrayal of the townsfolk or the gang. The thematic depth promised by the “gripping narrative and character development” remains entirely theoretical. The story is a skeletal chase sequence, a plot skeleton lacking the flesh of character moments, moral complexity, and environmental storytelling. The sources on narrative design (from the provided game design articles) emphasize “player agency,” “conflict and stakes,” and “pacing.” Find Your Way‘s narrative, as documented, offers high stakes (family, town) but seemingly minimal agency (a linear pursuit) and its pacing is implied to be relentless combat, with little room for the quiet moments that sell the emotional weight.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Sheriff’s Duty, Undetailed

Gameplay is inferred from genre labels and sparse descriptions. It is a third-person shooter with a diagonal-down perspective (a classic angle for top-down or isometric shooters, though the term is ambiguous) and “direct control.” The store blurb lists “Authentic Wild West Activities”: horseback riding, quickdraw duels, and high-stakes poker games. This is a significant promise, suggesting a blend of action and simulation.

Core Loop: The loop appears to be: navigate a location (town, canyon, station) -> engage in combat with bandits -> complete an objective (e.g., “prevent bank robbery,” “defend Ford” per Episode 1 notes) -> progress to next location. The “Endless Game Mode” (later called “Survival”) offers a procedural or wave-based variant.
Combat: Described as “intense” and requiring “cunning strategies.” Given the low-poly aesthetic and indie scope, this likely means basic cover mechanics, perhaps a cover system, and a limited arsenal of period-appropriate firearms. The mention of “tactical battles” is a hopeful descriptor; without footage or detailed reviews, we cannot assess if tactics are meaningful or if it devolves into straightforward shooting.
Progression & UI: There is no mention of RPG elements (skill trees, upgrades). Progression seems level-based and narrative-driven, with “levels opening as you progress.” The UI receives a minor patch note about fixes, suggesting it was functional but unremarkable.
Innovation & Flaws: The most innovative (or flawed) systemic element is the episodic, quest-based structure with a persistent world state. The news posts imply your location is tracked even in menus (“Discord chips, now in the discord displays your current location”). This is a cool idea for immersion but technically tricky for a small team. The major flaw is the evident incompletion. Episode 1 released, but Episode 2 never materialized. The story ends on a cliffhanger (“the end of the prologue”), leaving the core narrative promise unfulfilled. The “Endless/Survival” mode being moved to the main menu suggests it was a more fully realized feature than the campaign, a common indie pattern where gameplay loops outlast narrative development.

World-Building, Art & Sound: Atmosphere Over Detail

The world of Find Your Way is its strongest selling point and its most significant contradiction.

Setting & Atmosphere: The setting is a quintessential, mythologized Wild West—dusty streets, saloons, canyons, train stations. The narrative frames it as a place of “peaceful and prosperous” life shattered by violence, now a “desolate” landscape of flight and conflict. The historical detail about the Navajo adds a layer of grim realism often absent from romanticized Westerns. However, without environmental storytelling—notes, logs, unique set dressing, NPC routines—this setting risks being a generic backdrop.
Visual Direction: The “low-poly art style” is a double-edged sword. It can create a striking, iconic, and performant aesthetic (think Borderlands or Enter the Gungeon). For a Western, it could evoke a graphic novel or a faded memory. But “low-poly” also often means simple textures, basic geometry, and a lack of visual density. The promise of “picturesque landscapes” is at odds with the technical limitation that such vistas require artistic skill to make compelling with few polygons. Screenshots are unavailable here, but the style suggests a focus on silhouette, bold colors, and stylized forms over realism.
Sound Design: The “addictive Western soundtrack” is the primary auditory promise. A good Western score is essential for mood—think Ennio Morricone’s iconic work. An “addictive” score suggests memorable motifs that enhance the chase, the desolation, the saloon quiet. Without access to the soundtrack, we must assume it was a high priority for the small team to compensate for other potential shortcomings, a common tactic where audio does heavy lifting for atmosphere.

The elements contribute to an experience meant to feel sparse, brutal, and melancholic. The emptiness of the towns supports the narrative of evacuation. The low-poly style may have been chosen to reflect a world stripped bare. Yet, without the narrative and gameplay systems to reinforce this, the atmosphere risks being a thin veneer over repetitive shooter mechanics.

Reception & Legacy: A Whisper in the Wind

The critical and commercial reception of Find Your Way is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

At Launch: On MobyGames, it has a score of n/a with only 1 player rating (3.0/5) and 0 critic reviews. On Steam, it has 0 reviews from both critics and users. This is the data of a ghost title. It launched, it was available, but it failed to penetrate any consciousness. The “Collected By 7 players” metric on MobyGames speaks to its extreme niche status.
Post-Launch & Evolution: The Steam news feed tells the story of a small studio trying to engage a community. There are announcements about multi-language support (beta), the release of Episode 1, and repeated promises about Episode 2 and other platform ports. The final news post, from April 2019, announces the game’s exit from Early Access and the release of Episode 1. There are no further posts. The promised Episode 2, localization, and console ports never materialized. The project was, in effect, abandoned.
Influence on the Industry: Find Your Way has had no discernible influence. It did not innovate, it did not spark a trend, and it is not cited in developer talks or post-mortems. It exists outside the canon. Its closest relative in name, Find Your Own Way Home (2009), is unrelated. Its place is not in the lineage of great Western games (Red Dead, Call of Juarez), but in the vast, uncatalogued grave of unfinished indie projects.
Legacy as a Artifact: Its legacy is as a cautionary tale and a preservation challenge. It highlights the precariousness of digital-only indie games dependent on the continued operation of storefronts (Steam) and the tenacity of small teams. It also serves as a data point for researchers studying episodic release models and the high failure rate of such ventures. The fact that its MobyGames entry was added only in 2023 by a contributor “legofan94” underscores how recently it entered any archival record at all.

Conclusion: The Unfinished Trail

So, what is Find Your Way? It is a promise unfulfilled. The vision—a personal, desolate revenge tale set in a beautifully decaying low-poly West—is clear and compelling. The execution, as far as the historical record shows, was fragmented, incomplete, and ultimately invisible. The narrative skeleton hints at a story worthy of exploration: a guilty sheriff traversing a literal and metaphorical wasteland, chasing a specter of violence that has already consumed everything he loved. The gameplay systems suggested a hybrid of action and Western simulacrum that could have been novel.

But a review must judge the artifact that exists, not the one imagined. As a released product, Find Your Way is a failure. It is incomplete, largely unplayed, and has left no mark. Its “score” in the court of history is not 3 out of 5 stars, but a null value—a game that did not succeed in becoming a game in the collective memory.

Its definitive place in video game history is therefore not as a classic, but as a case study in obscurity. It represents the millions of digital creations that flicker into existence and out again, their stories untold, their worlds unlived. It is a monument to the ambition of the lone developer, the siren call of a beloved genre, and the brutal reality that a captivating store description and a functional Unity build are not enough. To “find your way” through the landscape of gaming, sometimes you must first acknowledge the trails that have already been lost to the dust. Find Your Way is one such trail, a faint, overgrown path that ends not at a destination, but at a “to be continued” that was never written.