Archive of our old blog (2005-2010)
The Zillion Monkeys have translated their interview with us to Japanese. This is probably the first ever interview with us in Japanese. Congratulations, Laszlo! 
Also, we have just signed a contract with Zoo Corporation to translate The Path to Japanese and distribute it through their digital network.
Christian Schiffer expresses his hopes for the future of videogames in German mainstream newspaper Die Welt, focussing on yours truly and ignoring that we may not be all that representative of the indie scene. His optimism sure is contagious and confirms my belief that Europe is currently the best place in the world for innovation and exploration of the medium (partially because we’re running behind in market terms).
The article is also available online (in German, of course).
Playing The Path is a very moving and enjoyable experience to many. But others just get bored and cannot detect any point or find any joy in it. We tend to dismiss this issue by accepting that The Path is not for everyone. But maybe that’s too simple.
Enjoying The Path is not difficult. You don’t need to have special skills for it, or have read any heavy literature or seen any particular artworks. From observing play behaviour and listening to reports of experiences, we have learned that the difference between enjoying The Path and not is often simply a difference in attitude.
For some people this attitude comes naturally. But others may need to do an extra effort, or perhaps simply learn about it. It is for them that I’m writing this post. Because I have a feeling that many might be looking for an answer in the distance while it’s actually right in front of them.
“Once I figured out that the demo is solely attempting to establish an atmosphere, I enjoyed it quite a bit.”
– from a comment referring to “The Path – Prologue” from WK on TigSource
Tip #1: It’s about the girls
We realize that in many videogames, your avatar is mostly a vehicle that allows you to navigate through a virtual world. In The Path, however, the behaviour and personality of the girls is crucial. If you witness them carefully and try to imagine what they are thinking -and perhaps respond to that by caring for them- the game will become a lot more meaningful.
“Each girl’s journey through the forest is not so much a series of plot points but a non-sequential, undirected character study of the girl herself, leading up to a confrontation between that psyche and the adult world.”
– from a review by Rebecca Wigandt on Gamer’s Intuition
Tip #2: It’s about playing together
The avatars in The Path have a certain degree of autonomy. And sometimes they do things that you did not expect or do not want. This is on purpose. The idea is that you try to develop a relationship with the avatar and play the game together. You do your part, she does hers.
“Do not even try to fight against the pace, just surrender.”
– from a blog post by Tetelo on Femina Ludens
Tip #3: Everything is meaningful
While some things might appear absurd or the result of bad design at first sight, in most cases they are the fruit of careful consideration. The Path becomes much more enjoyable if you take everything that you see seriously and interpret it as part of the story. This is a very playful activity (feel free to even include technical errors in this “game”: it’s fun!).
“The effort put into The Path is equal to the enjoyment received. Look at the game like a difficult piece of literature that needs to be sampled over and over again.”
– from a review by Aaron Thayer on The Silicon Sasquatch
Tip #4: Play pretend
The Path is a fiction. It is not real. The girls are composed of polygons and pixels and algorithms, the leaves of the trees are abstract ornaments, day turns into night depending on place, etc. But you need to forget about all that and pretend that everything is real. The Path asks you to suspend your disbelief but it doesn’t force you to. If you can willingly do this, you will enjoy the game much more.
“The joy of it comes not from the way in which the journey ends but rather in the full immersion that one experiences on the way.”
– from a blog post by Joshua on Mouseandcat
Tip #5: Play, don’t game
Elements in The Path that appear to be traditional (rules, goals, collecting, grading, inventory, etc) form part of the narrative that we invite you to ponder. They are not the point of the game. Traditional gaming behaviour (like trying to completely explore the forest or collect all the flowers or beat the game in a minimum amount of time) is not rewarded. For joy, ignore those urges and approach things with wonder instead. Delight in what you receive and don’t go “hunting”.
“I found the game more enjoyable when approaching it more as an interactive narrative than a traditional “game”.”
– from a review by Dan Liebman on Game Zone
Tip #6: It’s pretty
If all else fails, just enjoy the sights and sounds that The Path brings. If music can be simply beautiful and a painting can be enjoyed purely for its aesthetics, why not a game? Just look, listen and enjoy. Don’t even try to find meaning. Indulge yourself. The gameplay will not get in your way in this game.
The whole environment is beautiful, and I love how the look and feel changes depending on whether you’re on the path, in the woods, or near a wolf. The game IS artwork.
– from a review by Allison Boyer on Binge Gamer
I may have missed some possible tips. Maybe I’ll create a second post like this in the future, with more tips. If you have enjoyed The Path, please comment about how you did it, what attitude you assumed versus the game, what expectations you brought, etc.
Awesome Ruby cosplay photo, sent to us by Per Janssen, as seen at an anime convention.
I think The Path is so freakin’ postmodern that its whole purpose is to challenge classification. And, therefore, whether or not it’s a game is irrelevant. Let me explain…
Not many critics have talked much about the actual design of The Path (apart from the relatively general mantra “as a game, it sucks”). Despite our sincerity as storytellers, we do find this “meta-layer” important -and amusing. Check out Touché Bitches for some interesting observations.
We’re not the world’s greatest authorities on deconstructivism and intertextuality but we have always considered the interactive medium to be the single artistic medium that is truly able to embrace the conclusions of postmodernism and allow us to use them to create better experiences for the viewer/reader/player -instead of falling into the trap of “cleverness”, irony, cynicism en relativism we’ve seen in a lot of fine art. The multiple layers of experience and the multitude of realities that can be created simultaneously in a virtual world offer opportunities for telling stories in ways that they have never been told before and, more importantly, about things that we were never able to talk about before.
I’m not claiming that The Path does all of that with equal success. But we do believe that this is one of the more interesting areas of the medium to explore.
Michel Musters interviewed us for Gamer.nl about The Path, its production process and the games industry in general. Good thing none of you can read Dutch. 😉
De retoriek is goed: iedereen zoekt naar manieren om games vernieuwend en toegankelijk voor een groot publiek te maken. Maar de realiteit is dat er weinig games gemaakt worden die buiten de nauwe genres vallen. We willen dat verschil tussen de retoriek en de realiteit verkleinen. En we willen ontwikkelaars aanmoedigen om onafhankelijk te werken en te denken, niet koste wat het kost deel uit te willen maken van deze industrie.
After suffering a technical problem overnight leaving our servers down, We are back up! So The Endless Forest Community is back, Our store is back, The Path – Prologue is available again.
And speaking of the Prologue… There was an issue where it wouldn’t run on Mac OSX 10.5.6. The Path full game runs happily on that version. Transgaming (who handled the port of the game) had made the Prologue 10.5.7 only without telling us. We’ve had them roll this back. So now, if you’re on Mac you can run both the game and the demo on OSX 10.5.6 upwards. If it wasn’t working for you before we invite you to download the Prologue again.
But its probably a good idea to upgrade your OS anyway. Because Apple puts new graphics drivers in every system upgrade making all 3d games run better, smoother, faster on your computer.
Okay… end of announcement. Lets hope we never suffer downtime like that again.
Instead of extracting part of The Path and releasing it as a free trial, we made a brand new chapter, similar to parts of the game, but not the same. It should give you a free taste of the atmosphere of the game and be a good test for your computer’s ability to handle our technology.
In The Path – Prologue, you control the mysterious Girl in White. There’s a not a lot of gameplay in this demo. This should inform players looking for that sort of thing that The Path is perhaps not for them. It’s just about exploring the forest and pondering the sights.
Something strange seems to have happened. Did it really happen before the Red Girls visited the forest? How is that possible?
Download The Path – Prologue here!
Available for Mac and PC.
Publilcations great and small gather to discuss the wonders of The Path, apparently the It Game of the game blogosphere (Slate). It still amazes us that mainstream magazines like PC Format award The Path with Gold. That thing that is wrong with the games industry, well, it’s definitely not caused by the games press, who is meeting our little experiment with open arms.
The Path is also starting to get noticed in the more general press. Which makes us very happy because we really hope that it is a game that non-gamers will appreciate too.
The Path is thoroughly gynocentric in its design, character direction, music, etc. (…) You don’t have to be a female gamer, though, to appreciate The Path’s take on literary symbolism, Gothic sensibility, and relaxing pace of play.
Rebecca Wigandt on Gamer’s Intuition
The Path is a sort of anti-game in a way, a game turned inside out in service to something deeply personal, human and disturbing.
Mike “Scout” Gust on Tap-Repeatedly
The Path, in my opinion, transcended everything I’ve ever thought a computer game to be and instantly planted itself into my thought patterns.
What’s more, certain independent games are entering a phase – familiar to historians of jazz, comics and indeed 20th-century literature – of vigorous experimentation with techniques of narrative. (An evening with the frightening and baffling The Path, rather like an Angela Carter story siphoned through The Sims, will show you what I mean.)
Telling a story through open interactive medium is not a simple task, but Tale of Tales pulls it off using atmosphere and implication. They also leave plenty for the reader’s imagination. Love or hate the experience, The Path is a marker in the evolution of storytelling.
DG Shrock on Writing for Torre
Man muss sich in jedem Fall auf The Path einlassen, muss in den Wald ganz eintauchen und den Alltag hinter sich lassen. Wem das gelingt, den erwartet ein ganz besonderes Erlebnis.
Noli_me_tangere on Resurrection: dead
The Path, in sostanza, è la Corazzata Potemkin del videogioco. Pretenzioso, soporifero, sconclusionato, per chiunque sia alla ricerca di un normale videogame. Elegante, ipnotico, onirico, per chiunque sia alla ricerca di un’esperienza audiovisiva.
What I experienced was nothing short of breathtaking: entire worlds of narratives and areas to explore unrestrained by contrived and cliched gaming tasks (such as “defeat this monster, progress to the next level” etc).
The animations are beautiful. The music can be chilling. The words and images grow increasingly disturbing, and sometimes sexual, though opaque. When it’s all over, there’s a lot to think about, which turns out to be a more enjoyable exercise than actually playing The Path.
I’m really torn on The Path. I don’t know what to do about it.
Akela Talamasca on Big Download
Many won’t enjoy it and some won’t understand, but this is an important step in the evolution of gaming. This sort of experimentation deserves recognition and reward and I only hope we’ll see more like it.
Dave James in PC Format 227 (June 2009)
The Path probeert je duidelijk te maken dat je je eigen levensweg moet bepalen en niet altijd naar anderen moet luisteren, zelfs al weet je dat het naar je eigen ondergang zal leiden. Zware kost dus, afwisselen met Braid is dan ook toegelaten.
Bart Van Heymbeeck in PG Gameplay 157 (May 2009)
There was also a 4 page review plus interview in the Ukrainian Gameplay magazine. Apparently, according to our esteemed colleague of Ice-Pick Lodge, they rated The Path the same as Killzone 2. 😀
As an art house project The Path can be considered quite successful. The work of Tale of Tales is preserved thanks to the vagueness of the game’s genre. It’s difficult to review something that has nothing to be compared with. If you’re looking for a new experience, then consider your $10 well spent.
Kirill Tokarev in Gameplay
It wasn’t easy to shoehorn the DirectX-slave that is Quest3D into the seductive arms of Mac OSX, but with the help of the friendly people at TransGaming and Act3D, we did it!
Now there’s no more excuses to stay on the PC path. The OSX forest is filled with temptations. Give in to your thirst for Knowledge of Good and Evil. Come, Adam, come! I have a sweet and juicy apple here for you!…
The Mac version costs the same as the PC version. $9.99.
Which means Good because it is 666 upside down.
Oh, and for the occasion, we have made some new desktop wallpapers (in Mac resolutions only) and… new Deluxe Edition USB sticks!
Thank you, Vikas and Blair and Daniel and Mark and Rob and Paul and Ferry and Remko and Jos!
Our favorite German games magazine gave The Path their coveted “Gee loves me!” sticker. This and much more in today’s episode of The Path in The Press.
The Path poses many intriguing questions about the division between art and game, it is also a horror game of the finest degree, it doesn’t have any shocking scare moments. Rather, it unsettles and unnerves you in many ways.
Es ist eine interaktive Erzählung, eine Geschichte, die man sich selbst erzählt.
Carsten Görig on Spiegel Online
But is it a game, per se? Probably not, yet the game mechanics are key to its success.
En The Path se habla de la vida, de la muerte, del amor y de la sexualidad haciendo uso de un simbolismo sugerente como en muy pocos otros medios se encuentra, y al contrario que en muchas ocasiones en las que se intenta emplear escudándose en un sobrecargado diseño y exageradas pretensiones, funciona.
Aitor Fernández on Eurogamer.es
Be sure to approach this short horror game as an experimental interactive narrative rather than a typical video game with clear goals and rewards, and you won’t be disappointed.
Das genussvolle und bisweilen verängstigte Herumirren, die Ziellosigkeit und die Langsamkeit gehören nicht nur zu “The Path”, sie machen das Spiel aus.
To classify Tale of Tales masterpiece of interactive adventure in storytelling artwork as a game forces expectations on The Path and these expectations would do more harm than good to this brilliant and memorable experience.
Mit diesem wirklich gelungenen Experiment im Bereich interaktiver Selbstfindung zeigen „Tale of Tales“, dass man in der festgefahrenen Branche durchaus noch Neues schaffen kann.
(…) it is obvious from the outset that developer Tale of Tales have made a conscious decision to attempt to shatter any conventions you may previously have held regarding gameplay and narrative.
Het oogt en klinkt prachtig, en speelt uniek.
There’s also an interview with Auriea on Gamereactor TV, filmed at our booth at the Independent Games Festival.
And once more, for the record:
Without titles like The Path, games risk being relegated to permanent insularity. Audiences and designers who care about games must play– and buy – these kinds of games, and accept their role in the future legitimacy of the medium.