Archive of our old blog (2005-2010)
Giochi (Games) Magazine of Italy has written a rather extensive review of FATALE this month, in which they give the game a perfect 10/10. We don’t read Italian but we can feel the love. Thank you!
Also a short article about us and FATALE appears in this month’s issue of Wired UK Magazine:
And Wired.co.uk has published more of the complete interview with us at their site.
Edit: journalist Daniel Nye Griffiths posted even more on his blog.
(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.
We are pleased as punch to announce that The Endless Forest deviantART fan club lead by Jen Stuber, has once again made a Calendar filled with beautiful artwork from players who love the game. It’s pretty freakin awesome!! Michael and I don’t have enough exclamation points! 
All cash raised goes directly to help to fund the future of The Endless Forest. I think we can count ourselves fortunate to have such a sweet and talented player community!
buy the Calendar on deviantART
And speaking of the community… The Endless Forest community website has received an overhaul these past weeks. The community site is a very lively place where TEF players of all ages can meet each other outside the game.
Hard for me to believe but TEF will have been going for 5 years in 2010. Thanks to MUDAM for continuing to support us with the game server hosting. They have been great. Anyway, maybe for the TEF 5th anniversary we’ll have to have a big party. In the forest, of course! 😉
A closer look at the head of Iokanaan. Created by Takayoshi Sato. Rendered and composited like crazy by me earlier today. Hope you like it.
Also, please accept this wallpaper of the 7 veils, downloadable from the gallery page of the FATALE website.
and this,… is one of my favorite paintings by Caravaggio.
Because I dream along with him that the head once had a body.
Our friends at Broken Rules have been arranging contests within their game And Yet It Moves for awihle now. This week, players of their game can win The Path!
And Yet It Moves is a platform game that looks like this:
And Yet It Moves Wii Teaser from mml on Vimeo.
Looks like that Wii version is going to be BIG 😉 The game is currently available for Mac and PC.
See more details of their contest here!
They seem to be making it a special challenge for the occasion, you can only win by not walking but rotating to navigate! o.0 sounds difficult!
Last weekend we were invited to Antwerp to see a performance of Muziektheater Transparant’s new opera Solitude which is based on the music of baroque composer Henry Purcell. A description from their website:
Solitude plays on the boundary between reality and fiction. It tells the story of He and She, each in their own room and looking for the other and themselves. Staring into the other world through their webcam, or perhaps not? On the other side of the door is an escape route, a way that would lead them to each other, a virtual world with its own laws and boundaries. Lost in the game, He and She ultimately return to their rooms.
In this annual summer project organised by Muziektheater Transparant, a group of young singers and instrumentalists take up the challenge of creating the first performance of an extremely unusual opera after a short but intensive rehearsal period.
Not only were the young musicians involved highly talented, they made a fascinating exploration of the multiplayer game experience; The emotional attachment we have to these type of games and to the people we play with in them. Yes, an Opera about playing MMOs! Scenes from many different games were projected, often superimposed over the faces of the main actors. The costumes were made of various found objects, like a suit of WoW armor made entirely of pastic drink bottles. Very odd sounding but it really did work. It was an honor that The Endless Forest was chosen for the finalé when actors and musicians donned antlers and sung a song of blissful reconciliation. =) The lyrics went something like: “Let’s play this game, as a pleasant dream. Let’s forget about everything…”
UPDATE: we were sent better photographs of the performance, taken by Koen Broos…
This is a first look at the first character from FATALE, Salome. And we can tell you now who the artist that we previously listed as “secret” on the Fatale website is! She was designed by Takayoshi Sato, who also modeled her (and another of the characters who we shall introduce at a later date.) As many of you know we have been huge fans of his character design work for years, thus it has been a true joy to be working with him on this project.
We’ve started a gallery on the project’s website. We’ll be publishing more images, along with more information, in the weeks to come. We’re gearing up for release on October 5th!
Get your hands on the September issue of Germany’s GEE Magazine! There’s a unique feature story, that we are particularly happy to be a part of. It is documentation of a Skype audioconference that took place between Jason Rohrer, Kellie Santiago (thatgamecompany), Aleksey and Nikolai (Ice-Pick Lodge) and us, Michael and Auriea (Tale of Tales) where we all discussed art, life, each other’s work, and game design philosophy. It was a very honest and frank discussion between developers in drastically different circumstances and with overlapping/contrasting motivations. Should prove insightful to anyone curious about “why do we do it?”
Theres a lot to be said about the Keynote speech that David Cage made. But I feel like we’ve said it all before. Basically, when Michael writes the things David said, everybody yells at him and insists what we want to do is game-dev heresy. Maybe they will listen to someone who is making a multi-million dollar project for Sony instead? ha!
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!