Archive of our old blog (2005-2010)
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…
Behold!
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.
Direct2Drive is celebrating its 5th birthday and for the occasion they’re having a big sale of games, all at 5 Dollars. This week, a number of indie titles have been added to the party, including The Path, Mount and Blade, World of Goo and Gish. So now there’s no excuse anymore!
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.
Our short horror game ThePath has been selected for the IndieCade festival. The award ceremony, exhibitions and conference take place from October 1 to 4 in Culver City, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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! 
On both Direct2Drive and Steam you can now purchase The Path at a higher price than normal!
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!
Heather Chaplin has interviewed us and made a piece about The Path for “All Things Considered” on NPR. It’s running today at 4:50 East Coast Time.
An MP3 version of the piece can be downloaded here.
We may have been a bit quiet lately about The Path, but that doesn’t mean that other people don’t talk about it anymore. Most of the time to share their joy and attempt to express why they think The Path is interesting. The only really negative reviews are passionate expressions of hatred and disgust and disapproval that sadly don’t contribute much to anything -apart perhaps from being amusing in their own right, for some. So please forgive us if we skip those.
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.
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.
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?
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.
What if ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ was not simply a cautionary tale, but a metaphor for life instead?
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.
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.
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!