Thus ends our celebration of The Path’s one year anniversary and 11 years of collaboration. Here’s a summary, in case you missed something.

We published The Path postmortem chronicling the making of the game. This was a great way for us to look back on the history of the project, even if it is impossible to describe 3 years of development in a summary fashion!

On The Path blog there were 10 days of posts written from a very personal perspective to supplement the grand postmortem essay. These stories were full of insights about the Red Girls and their Wolves. And we uploaded tons of work in progress imagery, drawings and screenshots covering the entire development, on Flickr on The Path Archive. So if you are curious about the making of the game, have a look at all the Anniversary posts listed there.

We had a very fine sale where all our games were available at 50% off. Even if you missed it you will find everything we’ve made reasonably priced for download.

• ☛ The Path (PC or Mac): $9.99
• ☛ The Graveyard (PC or Mac): $5
• ☛ The Graveyard (iPhone): $1.99
• ☛ Fatale (PC or Mac): $7
• ☛ The Godlove Museum (PC or Mac): $20
• ☛ Vanitas (iPhone): $0.99
• ☛ And there are still great deals on The Path merchandise in our online store! Including the Anniversary USB stick special edition!

Also:
The Path translations patch for windows received an upgrade. And these translations are now available for our Steam players as well.

We published 2 new interviews with artists that we consider inspirational and whom we wanted more people to know about.

And we announced the coming of The Path Soundtrack which will be available next month!

So, now, we move on.
To those who celebrated with us, we thank you!!

Enjoy the short but sweet interview (English and Japanese)!

Our celebration of the one year anniversary of The Path ends tomorrow. Until then, you can still buy all of our titles at half the price.

• ☛ The Path (PC or Mac): $5
• ☛ The Graveyard (PC or Mac): $2.5
• ☛ The Graveyard (iPhone): $1
• ☛ Fatale (PC or Mac): $3.5
• ☛ The Godlove Museum (PC or Mac): $10
• ☛ Vanitas (iPhone): free
• ☛ Lots of great deals on The Path merchandise in our online store!

The limited Anniversary Edition USB drive will remain available after the sale. Until they’re sold out.

All their work and all your waiting will pay off next month when the waiting will be -over! We are finalizing things so we don’t want to say too much… BUT What we can say is that The Path original soundtrack album will be published by UK label Paradigms Recordings in April 2010. There will be a specially packaged CD and t-shirt to be had. And we will figure out the best way to sell the album digitally, because we know a lot of you want that.

The tracks are named after the Wolves. This will not be your typical game soundtrack album. And it will blow your mind + possibly your speakers.
Needless to say, more details coming soon!

When creating the art style for The Path, we were influenced by several wonderful artists. We are trying to interview them all. Our interview with Lisa Falzon was published a while ago. And the interview with Ray Caesar was done in that same period. But we never got around to publishing it. What better moment than the first anniversary of The Path to share this very insightful and inspiring interview with one of the world’s most imaginative contemporary artists!

People think I paint pictures of children… I don’t! I paint pictures of the human soul… that alluring image of the hidden part of ourselves… some call them ghosts or spirits but I see them as the image of who we truly are, made manifest with all the objects and bruises that filled the story of each life.

I look at the game industry today and see only one game… it starts the same and ends the same and it’s sold in a variety of names and packages and has no mystery because it is not utilizing creativity as well as it could…

Enjoy the interview!

Read the conclusion here.

In the penultimate chapter of our postmortem article about The Path, we take a closer look at the reception of our birthday baby in the first year of its life. How did the press respond? How did the fans? How well did the Path sell? And where? All this and more in the fourth chapter of The Path postmortem.

Enjoy the read.

Please read on.

The second part of our postmortem of The Path is written mostly by Auriea and explains the design process that went into the game. From the uncertainty at the start of the project, over mixed experiences with collaborators, the inspiration of glitches and the importance of prototyping, to our ideas about 3D aesthetics and dealing with personal emotions in videogames. Illustrated with work-in-progress sketches and screenshots.

Enjoy!

• ☛ Danish translation by Tobias Kosmos and Nicklas Beck Jørgensen
• ☛ Dutch translation by Michaël Samyn
• ☛ French translation by Yann Cossiaux
• ☛ German translation by Susanne Laws
• ☛ Hungarian translation by Kiss Helga, Dékány Csilla and Ország Tibor
• ☛ Italian translation by Matteo Sarnari
• ☛ Portuguese translation by Bruno de Figueiredo
• ☛ Romanian translation by Andra Andrei
• ☛ Spanish translation by Ricardo Oyon

Once again, thanks to all the translators for putting so much effort into making The Path more accessible.

The language patch for The Path is a continuous project. We are working on more translations and will release them in an updated version of the patch as they get finished.

For the one year anniversary of The Path we’ve made a new version of our popular USB stick edition! This time in silver and printed with a picture of Robin. We only have 50, and of those 42 of them are for sale. We will not print this edition again so this is your only chance to get the Robin printed USB drive! This is a whole package too; you also get your choice of poster, a The Path sticker and the 6 Red Girl polaroid cards. You get both Mac and PC versions of the game, and lots of extras! (Yes, different extras than were on the PC only USB stick.) Check out the page in the store for more details!

We are also marking down prices on many of the other store items.

• ☛ Mac users! The Mac USB edition featuring the lovely print of Rose has been discounted to 20 EUR!
• ☛ The Russian import CD version of The Path can be yours for 15EUR
• ☛ You can buy all 6 posters (signed and decorated) for 40EUR
• ☛ Get the 6 polaroid postcards for just 4EUR

So, if you have been interested in The Path merchandise there has never been a better time to get something! It will be a lot of work for me to put these packages together, I put effort into making each poster unique, but I’m looking forward to it! :)

The store sale runs until March 28th. But the Anniversary Editions will remain available until the last one is sold.

A first introductory chapter summarizes the history of the project: How the idea started. When we got funding. And how long it all took.

In the next part, scheduled for tomorrow, we delve deep into the design of the game, followed by an overview of what went right and what went wrong, to conclude with a look at reception and sales.

We hope you enjoy the read.

For the next 10 days, until Sunday March 28, prices are:

• ☛ The Path (PC or Mac): $5
• ☛ The Graveyard (PC or Mac): $2.5
• ☛ The Graveyard (iPhone): $1
• ☛ Fatale (PC or Mac): $3.5
• ☛ The Godlove Museum (PC or Mac): $10
• ☛ Vanitas (iPhone): free

One year ago, tonight, The Path was released from a bed in a room in a hotel in San Francisco, where Auriea and I first met in person, exactly 10 years before. To celebrate this double anniversary we’ll be revealing and announcing The Path related material throughout the week. So keep an eye on our blog, facebook, twitter or wherever you’re reading this!

On 18 March 2009, we launched The Path from a room in the hotel where we first met exactly 10 years before. Get ready for celebrating the first anniversary of our six little girls and their very own big bad wolves! Expect an elaborate and revealing post-mortem/making-of, a special limited USB edition package, a nice discount on the regular download, an updated translations patch (now also on Steam!), an interview with a source of inspiration, news about the soundtrack, and of course an Endless Forest bathed in darkness and mist.

The Graveyard and The Path are now available on Stardock’s Impulse platform.

Last week, 1C released a full translation of The Path in Russian. So now our friends in Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldavia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan no longer need to fiddle with badly made torrents. They can simply get the game here.

And thanks to the help of many volunteers, you can also play The Path in Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, next to the English and Dutch available in the normal release. A patch that translates the game to any of these languages can be downloaded here. Credits for the translations can be found here.

Oh, and there’s also the Polish version, of course, published by Topware. We still have a few copies available in our store.
More languages will be added later. We’re working on Arabic, Czech, Japanese and Korean at the moment.

Six years ago, on a freezing snowy day like today (at least that’s how I remember it), the document that founded “Tale of Tales BVBA” was officially published. To celebrate our anniversary, we’re discounting our three commercially available downloads for the week. As a lucky coincidence, this means you can still get a quick and cheap and very original Christmas gift for your loved ones! :)

From now until next Saturday, you can get The Path for 6.66 US Dollars (30% off).
Available from the regular page.

Plus, The Graveyard and FATALE are bundled together for 6 US Dollars (50% off!).
Available only through these links:
FATALE/The Graveyard bundle for 6$ PC version
FATALE/The Graveyard bundle for 6$ Mac version

These offers are valid until 26 December.

(Just a quick note, because we are experiencing some Internet fail at home today :p)

Can’t believe I never blogged this until now! (>.<) BUT
In our recently revamped online store you will find we have the Polish Collectors CD Edition of The Path (playable in Polish or English, with great extras!), The Endless Forest postcards and the usual assortment of posters and USB drive games (which we’ve marked back down to 25 EUR.)

If you order by Friday I can still send things out this week. Will probably reach you in time for Xmas.

That is all. xo.

Much to our surprise, The Path has ended up second in this year’s Quest3D Awards.

When you start the game you immediately notice this game is different. Your first instruction is “Stay on the path” and visit your grandmother. If you do so the game ends and you start over. What could be the intention behind this game? This game offers an experience no other game can so this alone makes it deserves a spot in our Quest3D awards.

Quest3D is the authoring tool that we used to create the game. It is mostly used for architectural visualisations. So the winning projects are usually these amazingly photographically realistic spectacles. Hence our surprise.

Quest3D is a great tool to make games, though. Especially for the code-allergic and the artistic (like us). Its realtime visual programming system is second to none. That’s right, both The Path and The Endless Forest were created by connecting little virtual blocks together with little virtual wires. We believe that one day, this style of programming is going to supersede coding, much like C++ and Javascript have removed the need to punch in zeroes and ones today.

This is part of the “source code” of The Path, in the Quest3D editor. There’s hundreds of little flow charts like this and together they make the whole thing tick. And look pretty. :)

We’re happy to announce that today we paid off our loan to CultuurInvest for the production of The Path. We are debt free! That took about 35,000 sales. The loan only covers part of the entire production budget. But the rest was funded with subsidies and art grants with much more modest expectations of return on investment.

Ergo: as of now, every copy of The Path sold contributes to new Tales of Tales!
Or returning to an old one…

This the edycja specjalna of The Path, published by the great guys at Topware in Poland. It is the very first Tale of Tales product that has been published for retail. We’ve had some great reviews in the Polish press, so hopefully The Path will do well in the stores in Poland.

Our friend Paul Eres’ Immortal Defense is not included in the celebration (despite it being his own birthday). But he lets us know that you can get it for $3 by entering BMCN000H7 as Discount code.

Sadly, we will not be able to attend the event -because we are w o r k i n g- but it looks like it’s going to be great!

Red is the colour of blood, and therefore signifies both life and death. We never see the mother at the beginning of the story, but in a sense she is there nevertheless, because the red room from which all the girls start their journey can be interpreted as a womb-symbol.

British writer Edward Picot, well known to us for his wonderful exploration of computer games as art, has published an in-depth review of The Path both on Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange.

It’s a remarkable article because it goes a lot further in analyzing the content of the game than most reviews have so far. There’s quite a bit of fair criticism as well, which only contributes to the article’s much appreciated sincerity.

The posters walked away. Many folks stopped by to play and question us relentlessly (^_^) t’was awesome! Wonderful to meet and chat with so many other developers and students.
Glad to be home and let the others who remained have their GamesCom. Game Developers Conference was where the real action was!

We will be attending the European Game Developers Conference in Cologne on Monday and Tuesday. We’ll be presenting our work in the Flemish Pavilion (booths 162, 163, 168 and 169) in the GDC expo.

We’ll be bring some posters of The Path with us to give away for free. We’ll bring 6 posters of each girl for every day. So if you catch us at our booth (we won’t be there all the time, we also want to attend lectures and meet people), be sure to ask for a poster of your favourite girl! :)

To compensate for your trouble, Direct2Drive is throwing in 4 other indie games (Defense Grid: The Awakening, Democracy 2, Zeno Clash and Cogs). They call this the Best of Indie Bundle and charge 17.75 US Dollars for it. But you can buy The Path for 7.76 Dollars less right here!

Steam is doing a similar -if not even more spectacular- stunt by offering a choice of two bundles, each including The Path, and one more expensive than the other! At Steam you can pay up to 29.99 Euros for The Path (or US Dollars if you are so unfortunate as to live in the Home of the Brave). You do have to accept the 9 other indie games they add to the bundle (Audiosurf, Everyday Shooter, Blueberry Garden, Braid, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Gish, Mr. Robot, Darwinia and World of Goo). If you’re worried whether your hard disk can take all that, you could settle for the 19.99 version of The Path (and only get Everyday Shooter, Blueberry Garden, Braid and World of Goo extra). Steam considers these to be Top Indie Games but remember that The Path is much cheaper here. Only 9.99 weak American Dollars!

So grab your chance to pay more for The Path now! It’s a limited time offer!

Seriously, for those who worry about our well being, we totally approve of these discounts. We only get a fraction of the share that we usually get per sold copy. But the theory is that you sell so many more copies that you end up making more money than if you were selling at the normal price. And so far, this does indeed seem to be the case. I guess this means that there’s a lot of cheapskate gamers. But on the other hand, our work gets exposed to a lot of people who had never considered purchasing it. And perhaps they end up appreciating it anyway. So, its a good thing!

An MP3 version of the piece can be downloaded here.

This first quote is actually from a comment on an early review of The Path. But we thought it very poignant.

The Path reminds us of how innocent and hopeful most video games are. Look, say, at Doom. Man with shotgun takes on the Devil and destroys Hell. That’s optimism. Unrealistic, but a nice thought to keep you warm at night when things aren’t going well.
Real life is a variable experience where you learn things, have some enjoyable experiences, some nasty ones, and then… you die. That’s The Path.

comment by sagesource

The experience of the journey is what The Path is about. What you find in the forest, who you meet, and your girl’s eventual fate intertwine into an experience that’s almost certainly not a game in the classic sense, but does bring to mind the awesome power of interactive experiences in a way many games simply don’t do.

Matt “Steerpike” Sakey on Tap Repeatedly

There is no doubt that Tale of Tales is showing the gaming world exactly what it needs to see: that there is more to this new medium than what we are familiar with, that video games can be emotionally evocative in their own right, and most importantly that we, as gamers, should expect more from developers than overused conventions.

C.T. Hutt on Press Pause To Reflect

Der Wald kann Spiegel eurer Psyche sein, sofern ihr es zulasst. Es gibt keinen Lösungsweg, keine vorgekauten Richtungen. Ihr selbst seid Teil des Spiels, müsst euch aber darauf einlassen können.

Markus Grunow on The Gamer’s Base

O objetivo de cada uma das irmãs não é chegar sã e salva à casa da vovozinha. Na verdade, o que cada uma delas busca é encontrar o seu próprio lobo mau na forma humana. Enfrentar esta tendência pode ser tão denso e visceral que faz com que ser devorada viva pareça um final feliz.

Baixaki

What if the wolves you meet are not furry creatures with sharp teeth, but rather metaphoric wolves constructed from your past experiences, fears, and future desires that you need to understand and confront in order to be ready to cross the threshold into grandmother’s house?

Michael on VGBlogger

The music and ambiance of the game is the one that will really mess with you. Not only is it suitably haunting, which leaves you feeling a bit unsettled like something is out there watching you (guess what you’re right!), but the sound effects that are playing, while random, always seem to be happening right when your nerves are frayed from the music.

Josh Martin on netGameRadio

What if ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ was not simply a cautionary tale, but a metaphor for life instead?

Brad Cook on Apple.com

A The Path egy olyan bizarr mese, mely teljesen új megvilágításba helyezi gyerekkorunk egyik meghatározó, mindenki által jól ismert, “happy enddel” végződő történetét. Egy metaforikus költemény, melyben mindennek mondandója van, minden utal valamire, amit vagy megért a játékos, vagy nem. Döntéseinknek súlya van, rajtunk áll mikor és mit csinálunk, és hogy mindezt hogyan éljük meg.

Horváth Tamás on SG.hu

Obwohl kein Blut fließt, wirkt “The Path” ausgesprochen
verstörend und unheimlich.

Nico Nowarra in c’t magazine #13

Iedereen die geïnteresseerd is wat er allemaal mogelijk is met games en de manier waarop men op interactieve wijze verhalen kan vertellen, is het aan zichzelf verplicht dit grimmige sprookje te gaan spelen.

Jan in Power Unlimited magazine #186

The Path, while minimalistic, provides a magical setting in which the player’s mind blooms with imagination as they discover the beauty and terror that encircles the safety of the beaten path.

iPawn on Subjective (t)ruth

Indie game developer Tale of Tales’ The Path pulls off the virtually impossible: to create a new genre of video games that is not only addictive in its replayability, but more psychologically challenging, haunting, and disturbing than the average horror game, all at a fraction of the developmental cost and manpower of the average title.

aybendito on Ay, Bendito… UFF DA!

The last article also calls The Path “The Blair Witch Project of video games” which is enormously flattering but sadly incorrect giving the discrepancy between the two in terms sales figures. At least, so far… So don’t stop talking about The Path! :)