Beauty on The Path

rose on the pathgrandmothers house in the rain
robin in a field of flowerscarmen and the woodsman wolf
see larger versions on The Path gallery page and on flickr

We have released 4 new screenshots of The Path. The other screenshots on the site are quite old by now and the game has changed a lot in this year of production. Once we get to beta (we are very close!) there will be a deluge of images and video. For now, we just want to give you a peek at what we’ve been up to.
ahem, some quotes from a recent text we wrote about the aesthetics of the game…

“You control the avatar, but she also has a life of her own -directed by Drama Princess, a home-brew alternative AI system. The foliage on the trees turns out to be careful arrangements of gothic ornaments. What first seemed like sound effects, is in fact a continuously changing musical soundtrack -created by Jarboe. Random signs of decay on the screen become helpful hints for navigation. The entire forest feels natural but closer inspection reveals its artificiality. This is not the real world. You have entered a fabrication, a story, a memory, a dream.”
…
“Painting with the aesthetic palette of realtime 3D rather than using the medium for the simulation of reality, The Path could not have been made without contemporary technology. Yet it clearly sets itself apart from any other Next Gen game. The hand of the artist shows. Sometimes messy and strange, sometimes verging on the sublime. Harvey and Samyn are not in complete control. A large part of the attraction of game technology is its potential to surprise. Rather than locking down the look of each and every scene, The Path contains systems that alter the aesthetics of the game in ways that the creators may not have expected. To some extent, the players themselves can decide what things look like. Walking down the path, for instance, changes the time of day. Depending on where you enter the forest, you will be wandering through a bright and misty environment or a dark and spooky one.”

And if all that still sounds overly mysterious, hopefully we’ll be able to pull back the veil with some video… soon, soon, soon.

A video game as playing cards

Would it be possible to design a video game like a deck of playing cards? A virtual world with characters, objects and artificial life but without an implied goal or ruleset. Perhaps, like many decks of cards, accompanied by a manual that proposes several different games that can be played within this environment. Somewhat similar to the way in which games like Quake and Halo allow for multiple types of multiplayer games with different objectives but set in the same environment and using the same characters and game objects. But without the application having to switch modes explicitly. Just like the pictures on the cards don’t change. The game to play would be entirely up to the player(s). Depending on how they act, the game would be different.

In a traditional computer game framework, one could think of a virtual world in which the player decides to play either an adventure game, an action game or a strategy game, depending on what they do in the world, perhaps on which studies their avatar takes and jobs they choose, for instance.

It would be even more interesting if the game itself would also have input so that somebody who sets out to be a soldier in the game ends up becoming a diplomat because the death of his wife made him allergic to aggression. The player of such a game would be required to actively suspend disbelief and really play his role in all earnesty, without trying to manipulate the game into becoming something pre-defined and expected. “Playing Cards Next Gen”: where the cards themselves can change the nature of the game.

Latent story

Perhaps, in an interactive piece, like a game, the story should be treated as if it is already there. And not as something that needs to be developed in a linear fashion. Interaction does not need to tell the story, it should merely support its existence, not contradict it. Perhaps the narrative purpose of a game is to create the effect of having read a book, the feeling that you get after finishing the book, not the one you experience while you are reading.

Somebody hates The Graveyard

And he hates it because it isn’t a game. I feel sorry for his refrigerator, his cat or his copy of The Collected Work of Franz Kafka. None of those are games either.

Nothing new, of course. But it’s nice for a middle-aged couple to feel that their work is somewhat controversial. 😉

The Graveyard infuriates me because it isn’t a game. The creators think it’s a game, of course. They think that by making a game which includes no choices, rules, or goal they are expanding the medium and redefining our understanding of what a game can be, but they’re really just spinning wheels. Games, by definition, include rules and goals. To make a game with neither is not expanding the definition of what a game is, but simply making quasi-interactive cinema.
Anthony Burch

So going down on our knees and saying “It’s more like an explorable painting than an actual game” on The Graveyard’s home page isn’t enough? Perhaps next time we should apologize too? Apologize to gamers for enjoying this medium in a different way than they do and acting upon that as creators?

The Path preview on Eurogamer

For those of you who can read Dutch, there’s a (sort of) preview of The Path on the Eurogamer Benelux site. The game was not exactly finished when we showed it to Philip Cremers, but it’s interesting to read his impressions.

The Path is anders dan je doordeweekse spel. Toch speelt sterven een belangrijke rol, al zal het niet gebeuren doordat je personage doorzeefd wordt door kogels. Eens je het huis van grootmoeder hebt doorlopen, sterft Roodkapje namelijk. Hoe en waarom dit zo is laat men bij Tale of Tales liever in het duister, en als we eerlijk zijn willen we het ook niet echt weten. The Path maakt zich voor het grootste deel sterk door het mysterieuze aspect en het gevoel dat je zelf krijgt bij het doorlopen van het spel.

Read it here.

The Graveyard post mortem, final chapter

Phew! It took longer to write the post mortem of The Graveyard than it did to make the game! 😉

A lot has happened since the release. One of the major things being that the lady who was a great inspiration for the design of the game, my grandmother, passed away last August. Which is why I wanted to finalize this article today, on All Souls Day.

Margriet was my godmother. She talked about dying all the time. And asked if we wanted any of her stuff. Her table is now in our living room. And we’re taking care of one of her plants. I know she was happy to go. Her husband had died a few years back. Her body was shrinking and practically falling apart (she was almost 100 years old). Yet she remained extremely lucid. Hence her desire for death, I guess.

I wish the final chapter of our awkwardly titled “post mortem” would have been a bit more solemn and quiet, but we had scheduled to talk about the public response to the game and evaluate the downloads and sales. So we’re sticking to the plan.

Please enjoy the final chapter of the epic saga that is The Graveyard post mortem:

Out in the world

Spooky Forest Fun!

We will be holding 2 ABIOGENESIS parties in The Endless Forest! The first Friday, October 31st, at 9pm GMT/UTC and the second on All Souls Day, Sunday, November 2nd, at 9am GMT/UTC.

We’ll be performing the first ABIOGENESIS live from FOAM Brussels’ “All Hallow’s Eve celebration of the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators.” ha!

Weather Report: Expect mist! 😉

Is it art or is it horror?

Before we started working on The Path, we weren’t very familiar with the horror genre. And even now, after lots of research and so much work, it still feels odd to realize that we’re making a horror game.
It’s very comfortable to us to work with the strange and surreal elements in The Path. We have, in fact, always done this sort of thing. But in the past it was called art. And when people from outside the arts world happened upon our work, we invariably got the “what drugs were they on?” comments.

But if such “freaky and weird things” are put in a horror context, suddenly all objections disappear. It’s as if art, when confronted with popular culture, turns into horror. Or as if art is only acceptable in the mainstream when presented within the horror format.

The Cell or is it Damien Hirst?

Do art and horror have something in common?

I guess they both deal with the unknown. And they both contrast the familiar with the uncanny, or look at familiar things in a non-familiar way.

And if art turns into horror in a mainstream context, does horror turn into art in a museum context?