What’s wrong with this picture?
Answer after the cut.
Euro Gamer, Multi Player, Zombie Girls & more
The Path is a strange, unusual, progressive and unique game, which may even be important for the industry and the development of the form in a handful of ways. It’s also so arty that it makes Braid look like 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Non ci sono buoni o cattivi, ma c’è soltanto l’esperienza in quanto tale e la crescita, di cui fanno parte il sesso, il sogno e tutti gli altri elementi che caratterizzano la vita umana. Inoltre c’è lo smarrirsi, ovvero la necessità di perdersi per ritrovare – e accettare – il proprio io.
Simone Tagliaferri on Multiplayer.it
First I thought the moral might be “Shit happens,” but then I rethought my stance and it seemed more like, “Life sucks, then you die.” I rethought that one too, thinking more on the “this is a game about growing up” angle.
Voodoo Girl on Zombie Girls Online
Opera matura, di transizione tra il videogioco come puro e semplice intrattenimento di serie B e la vera dimensione artistica, poetica e autoriale che questo strumento espressivo ormai merita a pieno titolo.
Sebastiano Pupillo on NextGame.it
Local enthusiasm:
The Path is een vooruitstrevende game die België op de kaart zet en brandhout maakt van de vele gerecycleerde concepten die de winkelrekken vullen. We kunnen fier zijn.
Stijn Bolle in Chief
And two interviews:
Si le rectangle de l’écran de cinéma est une fenêtre à travers laquelle nous entrevoyons une partie du monde, peut-être alors que l’écran de jeu vidéo occupe une fonction de porte à travers laquelle nous pouvons entrer dans ce monde.
Interview with Louis Filiatrault on Panorama
For us, a game is good when it allows us to play, when it makes us think and feel something, when it makes us discover something about life, when we feel the pure joy of immersion, etc.
Interview with Mark Newheiser on Adventure Classic Gaming
Meanwhile guerilla-marketing hits De Balie in Amsterdam.
Many more reviews of The Path
We definitely cannot complain about the attention our little game is getting. Nor about the appreciation for it. We’re quite proud of our little Red Girls. And frankly, of the games press and blogs as well. Makes us feel a lot more comfortable, far away from museums and galleries. 
Tale of Tales set out to make a horror game and this they have pulled off spectacularly.
Michael Rose on IndieGames.com
What I do know is that for as indefinable as The Path may be, I find myself thinking about it long after I stop playing. The Path is an odd, but beautiful experience that gives me hope for what games can be.
The fog and lighting serve to generate an ethereal sense of surrealism, while the stylized characters reinforce the unique quality of being in a sort of fable.
The Path represents a prime paradox in the world of games. It is simple to play, but incredibly deep in its execution. It’s mystical, often perplexing, and more disturbing than pleasant.
I sing in praise of The Path, a game that realizes – if only in fleeting brilliant flashes – the personal, expressive interactive storytelling experience video games have long aspired to communicate.
Michael Abbott in The Brainy Gamer
Mysterious, brutal and beautiful, this game tells a childhood story so dark it truly delivers the original spirit of the fairy tales, in all its grisly glory.
Allen Cook on Gamers with Jobs
This game succeeds at appealing to an audience segment that does not usually play games, and in a baroque and crafted way that many hardcore gamers relish about their chosen genres, not in some watered-down, Wii Fit kind of a way. It is, in other words, an important benchmark for the high’s evolution into the true mainstream, beyond this indie-games-versus-blockbuster-games false dichotomy, I’m talking about those extra billions who could really be succored by interactivity, but have been ignored.
Patrick Dugan (+ girlfriend) on Play this Thing
This is the game that real gamers scream for at the top of their lungs. This is something new. This is what needs to be heralded from rooftops, shown to every new developer; when you bought FEAR or Doom, you didn’t know it, but that disgust on your face was you screaming “WHY CAN’T YOU BE THE PATH?!?!?!!”
The Path is almost certainly the most significant videogame that will be released this year, in terms of evolving the form of what videogames are capable of.
Iain McCafferty on his personal blog
And all of this happens in other languages as well.
“The Path” ist selbstverständlich ein Spiel, und als solches ein faszinierender Beweis dafür, dass das junge Medium noch zahllose unerforschte Erfahrungen und Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten anzubieten hat.
Alliant une bande-son extraordinaire et un design gothique à souhait, The Path ne pourra certainement pas vous laisser insensible, il n’y a pas de juste milieu avec un titre de cette trempe : soit vous détestez dès les premiers instants, soit vous accrochez et vous vous laissez emporter par cette expérience hors du commun.
The Path is op geen enkele manier te vergelijken met andere games, maar biedt een uniek ervaring die je de kans geeft om na te denken over woorden en gebeurtenissen.
Het vergt soms wat geduld, maar ik merkte zelf dat deze trage loopstukjes vaak ook een mooi moment voor overdenking zijn. Momenten waarop je de beelden die je juist gezien hebt, probeert te duiden.
The Path Group on Steam
Now that we’re back and settling down, we’re making plans on how best to support The Path now it’s released. Putting plans into ACTION! For one thing, we’ve created an official group on Steam for the game. Behold!
The direct url is: http://steamcommunity.com/games/ThePath
There seems to be some interesting features to the Group… Like seeing how many are playing. That’s nice, like playing the game all together as a big community. And there’s a chat room too, though that scares me.
We will use the group to keep Steam players informed about news and updates and such… And who knows what THAT may lead to… o_0b
Anyway, I hope all of you Steam players (and you know who you are) will come join the group and let’s see what that does, eh.
2 slides
Unititled Random GDC sketch post
We didn’t go to many sessions at GDC this year. hmm… but what we did go to…
there was the Independent Games Summit. met some very nice people during those 2 days.
Continue reading “Unititled Random GDC sketch post”
The Path Fan Song
GDC Presentation Slides
These are the 100 slides that we used for our 4 minute presentation at the Indie Game Makers Rant during the Game Developers Conference.
(ToT) Independent Rant Slides from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.
Text of our rant after the cut.
Continue reading “GDC Presentation Slides”
Some more reviews of The Path
Here’s some more reviews of The Path. We remain impressed by how well our experiment is received. Hopefully this encourages more developers to take the path less traveled.
It’s definitely different from anything else you’re likely to play; it might not be a game many people will like, but it is something to be respected and admired.
Michael Thompson in Ars Technica
The Path is a hugely significant work in terms of what a video game can be beyond the realms of throwaway entertainment and is potentially a seminal moment in video games.
Iain McCafferty in Videogamer.com
This game is completely subjective, like a puzzle of a starry sky made out of perfectly square pieces.
Kristen Spencer on Count Gameula
So, I’ve read a TON of theories behind the meaning of the game in general. I don’t agree with any of them, and at the same time, I agree with all of them. I don’t think there is one right or wrong way to look at The Path, and I really love that.
The horror. A good innovation and a different way of playing that definitely leave a mark. Do not miss it or become “Zombie”.
The Path’s style of horror isn’t the overt kind where a zombie suddenly crashes through a window. It’s a feeling that lurks at the back of your brain, bubbling up during periods of intense personal change. It’s the terror of encountering the unknown; the fear of the revelations a new experience might produce as well as how it might afterward manifest itself in your thoughts and world.
It feels like being the only person laughing in a cinema – except the film you’re watching is Schindler’s List.
GDC impression: indie games have levelled up
It’s been 6 or 7 years that Auriea and I have been attending one Game Developers Conference or other, first in London and the last few years in San Francisco. Over all those years, speakers have complained about the same thing: games are juvenile, games are only for teenage boys, games are sexist, games are not artistic, etc. The continuous frustration of a medium that wants to be (regarded as) something more and other than it is.
In the first GDCs we attended, this made us hopeful. Because we felt we had a solution to these problems. But as we continued to fail to find a connection with the commercial games industry, we lost that hope. We learned that, although the industry complains about these issues continuously, it had zero intention to change anything.
Last year’s GDC was the year when independent games suddenly seemed to be the new thing, the most exciting area in the industry, where at the very least, people were making games for the love of it. This year, the excitement was still there. And the complaints were still there. But they were expressed in the most vehement and passionate manner ever. Heather Chaplin’s raging rant about how game developers are stunted and sexist juveniles brought a tear to my eye. But the main point of her talk was that we should stop making excuses about the medium’s young age, and start working on solutions for the problems.
And this is where independent games come in. As opposed to the desperation that accompanied the complaints over the previous years, this year everybody’s hopes were directed towards independent games. So much so that Clint Hocking even warned AAA game developers that if they didn’t change their ways, they would be rendered irrelevant by indie games. And I guess the AAA took note. We have entertained both Hideo Kojima and Fumito Ueda at our little booth in the Independent Games Festival this year. Warren Spector came by several times but we sadly missed the opportunity to talk to him. I have spotted Will Wright circling the indie floor. And who knows who that guy was with the funny name on his badge but looking so much like Cliffy B…
Anyway. Andy Schatz was pleading for unity between indie games and AAA games during the IGF awards ceremony. But it seems like AAA games will benefit more from this relationship than we will. Last year’s plaything has turned into this year’s hope for the future of the medium. Now I’m really curious about what will happen next year!
Because it’s not just that indie games have always been around and suddenly became fashionable. It is also important to note that the quality and diversity of independent games has increased tremendously over the past few years. So rather than sitting on our mini-laurels, I hope we continue on this path and make games that push the medium into territories that it always hoped to reach (or falsely claimed it had).