The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage is not your run-of-the-mill adventure game. A casual glance at the screenshots might have you believe that it’s just another Myst clone, but there’s an unusual facet to this game that has never been explored in the adventure gaming genre before: biofeedback. That’s right, you can actually hook yourself up to a computer with the biofeedback equipment that comes with this game. Biofeedback technology started as a fad in the late sixties, and till a few years ago depended on complex hookups to clunky EMG and EEG instruments. This has all changed now, and you can see the new heights of simplicity, effectiveness and entertainment that biofeedback technology has reached with this game. While they don’t go as far as to read your thoughts, the biofeedback sensors included with The Journey do monitor your heart rate and skin conductance level. These biometrics allow the sensors to detect a change in your energy levels and body rhythms when you experience such emotions as joy, excitement, relaxation or aggravation (your typical reaction when you stumble across a wretched maze in an adventure game for instance). Movement through parts of and the ultimate completion of The Journey is dependent on your ability to regulate your energy levels, which you will learn to do in the course of the game. By now you would have figured out that this adventure game is quite different from the ones you are used to playing. The Journey claims to be a game of personal realization where you can discover the ancient yogic wisdom of mind-body mastery through the power of biofeedback technology. Is this game for you? Read on to find out …

The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage is the first game in the Wild Divine trilogy (the second, Wisdom Quest was released in late 2005) and is set in the mythic Sun Realm where you embark on a journey of self-discovery. It is loosely based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces which drew upon the vast archive of the world’s stories that describe the journeys of heroes and their transformation. Actually there is really not much of a story here to speak of. When you play this game for the first time, you are guided by Sophia, an in-game personality, who teaches you how to interact with your environment and use your biofeedback interface. Once this introductory tutorial is over, you’re on your own, ready to explore your surroundings and solve a series of quests. I would have really liked to see a more cohesive storyline in this game, as it would have added another dimension of immersion to the game. However, credit goes to the developers for making the game immensely satisfying and enjoyable to play, even without much of a story to bank on.

It is in the gameplay department where The Journey really earns its bread and butter. The game has a unique biofeedback user interface consisting of three biofeedback sensor rings (or “magic rings” as the manual would have you believe) that must be worn on the hand that is not controlling the mouse. These rings connect to a small turtle shaped hub (“Lifestone”), which in turn connects to your computer via a USB port. The Journey uses the biometrics detected by the sensors on your fingers to control various “events” in the course of the game. While you’ll still be using your mouse to move around, pick up and drop items and trigger hotspots on the screen, an “event” will be an opportunity to use the biofeedback sensors to complete a challenge essential to your progress or to practice your skills. There are over 40 different types of events in the game where in order to succeed you must regulate your body’s physiology through the use of breathing techniques that will be taught to you by your spiritual guides in the game. For instance, in one event you will need to light a fire and you’ll be able to do that by being relaxed and breathing calmly. The calmer you are, the higher the flames rise in the fireplace. If you’re excited or tense, the fire will die out. In another event, you must levitate a sphere till a certain height. If you are unable to breathe calmly and rhythmically, the sphere will not even get off the ground. Don’t worry if you’re perpetually hyperactive like me – the breathing techniques taught in the game will help you overcome many of these challenges.

While some of the events will require you to be relaxed, others will require you to raise your energy level. In one such event, you must juggle three balls and the more vigorously you breathe, the higher the balls will soar. Other more challenging events will require you to shift between different energy levels in order to succeed. One very interesting event of this type requires you to stack a set of rocks one on top of each other, and as the next rock come flying towards the stack, you must regulate your breathing, breathing calmly to lower the rock and more energetically to raise it, so that the rock lands at the top of the growing pile. There are many other events throughout the game where you must control your breathing to open doors, hit targets with a bow and arrow, land flying parachutes and operate boats. Not all of these events are essential for the completion of this game – a lot of them exist to unlock parts of the game which teach you more advanced yoga and breathing techniques, or show you beautifully rendered animation clips and pictures.

I must admit that the game can get frustrating at times, and I found it very hard initially to reach the desired level of ‘calmness’ to complete certain quests (feeling energetic to raise my energy level was never a problem). This is where an option of varying difficulty levels would have helped. However, perseverance is the key and you will certainly find yourself becoming much more relaxed and tranquil as you successfully complete quests and learn to better control your energy levels. Best of all, the skills that you learn with this game can be applied to reduce stress and anxiety in your daily life. The Journey also some puzzles which do not require biofeedback, but these are fairly easy and enjoyable enough to not seem like a chore.

Moving around in the game is as easy as clicking a mouse in a particular direction. The visual interface is simple and intuitive, using a magical wand as a cursor. When the tip of the wand turns from blue to gold, it indicates an area available to explore and you can click with the mouse to go in that direction. Once you get the magic bag, you can pick up or drop items by simply dragging them to or from the bag. Interactive objects on the screen which trigger events are indicated by a purple puff of smoke when the wand passes over them. Other areas on the screen which have objects that can be picked up, or expect an object to be placed on them offer similar visual clues. One minor gripe that I have with The Journey is that it does not offer complete 360 degree exploration of the environments, which is a kind of a let-down, considering how beautiful some of the locations in the game are. And on the topic of let-downs, I was slightly annoyed with the inability to quickly move around in the game. When you click on the part of the screen which allows you to move your current point of view to another position, often a painfully long motion animation is played as you move to the new position. In all fairness, the animations do look nice, but they get repetitive after a point. The ability to interrupt the motion animations with the click of a mouse would have been nice. The developers did have the right idea when they provided a bookmarking feature which allows you to jump to bookmarked locations in the game and speed up the in-game navigation. However, for some inexplicable reason they only provide two miserly bookmark slots. You’ll find yourself wishing for more slots as you progress in the game, especially after you’ve yawned your way through several lengthy motion animations.

For the most part, you will find yourself roaming around the Sun Realm interacting with objects, looking for clues, completing events and training yourself from time to time so that you can succeed in even more challenging events. Your journey will take you through several enchanting locations such as the Sky Temple, the Towers of Legends, the Golden Pagodas, the Temple of Great Compassion, the Pool of Akki and the Valley of Balloons. You will also encounter plenty of characters that you can interact with in your journey – an enlightened guru from the East, the enchanting Lady of Compassion, a journeying Falconer, the pagan Lady of the Woods and many others. This eclectic group of characters will teach you essential skills, offer clues and guide you in your quests. If you’re ever lost, just make your way to the magic mirror in the house of the Lady of the Woods, and it will tell you what you need to do next. You can also find clues in the wonderful companion guide that comes with the game.

The mythic Sun Realm that you will encounter in this game is a beautifully rendered oasis of peace and tranquility, replete with breathtaking temples carved in stone, majestic pagodas and magnificent towers. You will travel through mountains, pass through lush green forests, navigate rivers on a boat, journey into caves and come across magnificent gardens with sparkling fountains and colorful flowers, as you progress in the game. There is a misty, dreamlike quality to the environments in the game, which makes playing the game a soothing, almost blissful experience. When you come across a character in the game that you can interact with, you’re shown a blue-screen video of the person superimposed on the rendered background. The quality of these videos is quite good, and blends in quite well with the environment. The graphics in The Journey are imaginative, detailed and look gorgeous, even if they are not as good as some of the more recent games like Myst V: End of Ages and Echo: Secrets of the Lost Cavern.

All the instructions and conversations with characters in the game involve voiceovers which have been very well done. The game has a wonderful background musical score which changes from location to location. The ambience created by the music adds to the magical feel of the game. After you complete certain quests, you will also be rewarded with some superb songs sung by the Wild Divine Band. Their music is very New Age – soothing, uplifting and immensely listenable. The music CD “Soul Flight” which accompanies the game has more music from the Wild Divine Band, and believe me, it’s really good.

In a few words…The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage is a groundbreaking interactive experience which boldly goes where no other adventure game has gone before. The game is like having Yoda in your living room, training you to become an enlightened warrior who can harness and control the synergy between your mind and heart to enrich your daily life. But all this comes at a cost. Did I mention that the game costs around $150? For this price you get the hefty game package which includes the PC and MAC versions of the game, the biofeedback sensor hardware, a manual, companion guide, a bonus CD with music from the game and another bonus CD featuring an interview with renowned spiritualist and best selling author Deepak Chopra, animated excerpts from his new bestseller “The Book of Secrets” and a preview of the next installment of the Wild Divine series, The Journey to Wild Divine: Wisdom Quest, which was released in late 2005. The majority of the cost, not surprisingly, must be attributed to the biofeedback sensor equipment, which does not come cheap.

So why would you want to spend down so much money on this game? Because The Journey will most likely be one of the most innovative games you’ve ever played which will have remarkable and perceptible repercussions on your everyday life. The exercises and techniques that you will learn in The Journey will help you to reduce stress and anxiety in your life, and teach you to use your meditative mind to regulate your body’s physiology for improved creativity and performance. Even after completing The Journey, I often find myself revisiting certain parts of the game to relax and calm down at the end of the day, and it’s really effective. Think of this game as an investment. The next installment of the Wild Divine series won’t require you to buy the hardware again, and there are already several enterprising fans of the game have already begun producing free applications to perform basic biofeedback graphing using the biofeedback equipment (check out http://www.psychostructure.net). I highly recommend this game to anyone – you owe it to yourself to give it a try, especially with the 30-day unconditional money back guarantee offered by the developers. If you do try it, you will find The Journey to be a fantastic voyage of self-discovery that offers an incredible sense of immersion and a learning experience you will never forget.