Making this post a few days later so my recollections are not as fresh as with the other tester reports…
This player made me realise how immersive The Path can be. She came at 9 in the morning started playing around 10, after coffee. She was really eager to start playing! Told us she needed to leave around 2 in the afternoon. Before any of us realized, it was time for her to go. Time flew! I take that as a good sign. Seems one can play for a long period of time without getting fatigued or getting bored.
We had tackled many of the show stopping bugs of previous play sessions so she experienced no crashes at all! Yes! There was only one major glitch. And we noticed some issues with finding things in the forest that we will improve. She was able to play as each of the girls and gave us a really good chance to make lists of what we will need to put into a manual and what information we can convey through the game itself. As a casual gamer (she’d played many browser-based games, for example) she was able to give us insights as to what attracted her to our game. This is useful to know as we hope to market heavily to adults who think 3d video games are “for kids.”
I am very pleased by the variety of people we are having over for these testing days!
It occured to me this morning as I watched tester #4 play that we are asking a lot of patience on the part of players of The Path. So many times we are forcing people with the design to slow down, build tension, look around carefully, let go of control. It will be interesting to find out how many people find this an attractive aspect of the game… will get the idea why we are wanting them to do that… or will it just be a source of urges to skip the cut-scenes push the girls to do what you want, run faster, etc. not that any of that will do you any good.
He was a bit impatient with the game I think. Still enjoyed himself though.
It was exhausting to see that as bugs get fixed others spring up, where you least expect them. Wish some of these would just magically disappear… lets see if little elves sneak in and do all the fixes while we sleep tonight!
Today’s tester was someone who, at last, is very much a gamer! And also a male, also in a younger age group than the other testers so far. This was great because we could discuss our game in relation to other games as well as just have some all around geek-out game talk. He was very comfortable just jumping right in and playing The Path without us having to explain much of anything. He tested with the joystick controller and the keyboard. His play style was very different from the other 2 also in that he invented in the game certain challenges for himself. He had a amazing mind for 3d orientation, finding some of the things we do -on purpose- to disorient the player a bit frustrating. We were excited at how he truly embraced the narrative of the game though!
Again, a big list of bugs! We’re going to take a few days out from the testing and work on everything that has come up recently. We will begin again with this exercise next week.
She was elegantly dressed. She chose to use the keyboard rather than a joystick “because I am not a gamer, I am comfortable with a keyboard,” she said.
After an orientation where we explained controls and some basic info about the game. After the coffee and the croissants. She played tirelessly all day, and diligently wrote out all the bugs she found. A great help! And she helped us decide to include on a feature which all future players may thank her for ;). She volunteered to come back another day next month and I think her familiarity with the game will come in handy to evaluate the fixes and tweeks we’re about to make.
We sent out a notice to our mailing list last week that if anyone would like to come to our studio and help us bug test the current builds of The Path they could set up a time with us via email. These tests are happening one person at a time and every night we try to fix the bugs found the previous day so the next tester can find what we missed and help us keep our to-do lists full of new bugs >.<
As people come to play I will draw them… just because, that is what I do if I have to sit still without a computer for any length of time.
Anyway, we had our first official tester of The Path come over today. What a difference it makes for us to see the game through a fresh set of eyes! We’re so busy making the game that it can be hard to find the time to really examine the total effect of a play through… or we just don’t see it anymore because we are always looking in such a specific way at specific things as we work. When someone comes and just PLAYS we see the game finally as it was intended! And we are very very happy with what we’re seeing so far!
Thanks to Drama Princess, the characters (or “Actors” as we call them) in The Path are aware of their environment. This allows them to look at objects in their vicinity. The picture is made of several super-imposed screenshots taken from a tool external to the game, where we visualize the Actor’s activity with lines and blocks, so we know what’s going on in their heads.
I feel responsible for her. Someone has to. She is always looking after the others. First born but last made. I think some of my weariness rubbed off on her. She was made in such a lazy way. Forced to grow up before she was ready.
This is not to say that I don’t find her perfect. I sketched her after being inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman, the mannerisms and characters of his actresses, especially the lovely Liv Ullmann. It is hard to say if what I felt I learned by watching his movies has been injected vertex by vertex into Scarlet…. but I believe a little bit remains.
She is a serious young lady. More images of her are shown in the gallery and on flickr. She’s looking a bit frightening in the wallpaper, but i think it’s just her way of dealing with a frightening world. Let us all wish her well.
Well, well, well, now we’ve come full circle. She’s the one you’ve seen the most, if you’ve been paying attention round here. But what do you *really* know about dear Ruby, eh? “You think you know me?” as she is fond of saying with a sneer (okay, at least in my imagination.)
When we had to decide which character to make first, I said it immediately, Ruby is the one! Through working out her character and style we solidified what all the characters would be…. how can I say, Before her, we had no idea what we were making. Ruby helped us figure all of it out. What’s more, she’s the girl who, for me, totally epitomized what I felt about my time growing up. What happens to her, could have happened to me. She’s like a friend I never had but still remember… or a long lost sister of my dreams…. Anyway, all that is to say, she’s been through a lot during the long process of getting here. To a final image.
The process started with lots of looking around on the Internet for images and inspiration. I found her absolutely in the short skirts and red knees of Fuco Ueda’s girls and the undulating necks of Audrey Kawsaki’s fantasies, pretty and distant. But, what kind of girl was she? Had to figure that out. Then I sketched around on paper and in computer til I had her.
Ah, nostalgia
There are the usual beauty shots of her in the gallery, and some other things will be showing up on flickr. I made a strange and unusual image of her for your desktop, hope you like it!
All hail the fearless, little Ginger!
I think every parent has a favourite child. You don’t let them know it, but there is one that always surprises you. One that reflects the best of you while still becoming their own person. Ginger was always my favourite. Not only was she the one I feel I finally modeled perfectly correct, but with the animation’s Laura made for her, she’s absolutely not like the other girls. Also even though she is 13, she is smaller than her little sister Rose… something she is not happy about.
In my original sketch she was more boy-ish. But I changed my mind to make her a little more flirty and feminine after revisiting a favorite film of ours:
The hair, necklace and penchant for playing with wolves are pretty much where the similarities end, I think making Ginger more of a little girl who doesn’t know her own beauty was a successful choice.
She is outgoing and active, and is a lot of fun in the game!
This journal chronicles the making of The Path, a single player horror game being developed by Tale of Tales, scheduled for release in spring 2009. Contributors to this journal are the game’s main creators Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn.
We hope you will enjoy our candid revelations about the work process. But we do want to warn you that if you truly want to experience The Path fresh, you might want to avoid reading these pages. We cannot garantee spoiler-free content!
We sent out a notice to our mailing list last week that if anyone would like to come to our studio and help us bug test the current builds of The Path they could set up a time with us via email. These tests are happening one person at a time and every night we try to fix the bugs found the previous day so the next tester can find what we missed and help us keep our to-do lists full of new bugs >.<
