Work, work, work!
Welcome to this new Ghost of a Tale development update! It should come as no surprise that hard work continues, more intense as ever; Cyrille and Paul are toiling away on their task list and we still have to implement quite a few things before we’re ready to start beta testing. I mean we do test constantly of course, but this time it should be with people who never actually touched the game before.
Here’s a picture of Tilo exploring the sewers. Ooh lookie, he found the Red Ranger’s hood (the Red Ranger is a folklore character in the game’s world)! 🙂
Jeremiah also has a lot of work ahead of him to compose all the tracks needed for the pre-release. But he’s as fast as he’s good, so I’m not worried. Instead I’m excited to be the first one to discover his work!
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve done a huge amount of work in animation, 2D art and coding. I’m currently squashing A LOT of bugs which is actually pretty nice because that means hopefully you won’t find them in the game (no, you’ll find completely new ones! 😀 ).
I’ve also started implementing in-game tutorials. As you know it’s a tricky task to trigger them only at the right moment and location. I personally hate it as a player when a tutorial message interrupts the game just to tell me something I’ve already figured out. So that shouldn’t happen in GoaT!
Next I would like to thank all the contestants of our papercraft Tilo “contest”! Paul was so proud of all the creative energy put into bringing paper-Tilo to life!
Those pictures are just a sample of the ones posted in the thread. Congrats to all the winners; you guys will be able to claim your Steam key when we the pre-release goes live. You earned it!
Which is a nice segue into the next topic: Steam! Cyrille took it upon himself to dive into all the tutorials related to the online distribution platform and came up with a plan that worked (as you can see in the picture below).
We have tested the Steam publish pipeline and were able to upload a build which we could then access through our Steam accounts. Needless to say this is a significant milestone! It means that when the time comes to go public we should be able to do so with minimal fussing.
(FYI the build we uploaded was just a dry run and didn’t contain the game’s environments – hence the small footprint; the Early Access download itself should be a little over 1GB)
Alright, I’ll go back to work and leave you with this short test video I posted on Twitter a few days ago. It just shows the game’s starting area. See you all in the next update! 🙂
Dacki
February 8, 2016 at 10:23 am\o/
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 6:49 pm/o/
Akryum
February 8, 2016 at 10:43 amAwesome update and thanks for your amazing work!
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 6:50 pmYou’re welcome! Thanks for coming by!
scott32
February 8, 2016 at 10:59 amOMG! I can’t wait to play this! I wonder if I’ll have the patience to wait until the Japanese translation…
Seith, sir. What languages will be available at launch? I feel like you’ve answered that question at some point, but I cannot find it.
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 6:53 pmFor the pre-release the game will only be in English. But when the full game is released there will be French, Italian, German and Spanish. Other languages like Portuguese, Japanese, Polish, etc… could come later on (we would have to see if the game is successful enough to warrant the financial investment for those localizations).
Evan
February 8, 2016 at 11:35 am1GB is still impressively small considering how awesome the game looks and is shaping up to be.
I know it’s taboo to ask questions on the possible beta version, but I can’t wait. 🙂
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 6:57 pmWell let’s say that we try doing things in the most simple and effective way. I still remember as a kid being totally amazed by the fact that Dungeon Keeper (for Atari 520) was released on a mere floppy disk! 🙂
The beta will come within a few months, but be assured it will be announced here first. 🙂
Daniele
February 8, 2016 at 12:54 pmThis is so great!
Since you mentioned tutorials, I thought I’d share a thought. True, it’s not nice when a tutorial appears for something you already figured out yourself. But as a player sometimes I figure things out without really, uh, realizing I figured them out. So it might still be a good thing to show a tutorial for that. Just my two cents 😛
Cheerios!
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:00 pmHey Daniele, thank for dropping by! 🙂
That’s true! It will be a balance to strike. And anyway, people who already know how to play the game will be able to turn off the tutorials altogether in the gameplay options menu.
MundM
February 8, 2016 at 1:03 pmNah, skip the tutorial development, there are only so many buttons on my 360 controller, I’ll figure it out! 😛
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:01 pmOr THAT’s what you think…! 😛
James
February 8, 2016 at 2:15 pmGreat update! Starting in prison cell like that reminds me of Elder Scrolls games. Just when I think I couldn’t get more excited for this, it happens yet again. 🙂
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:03 pmThanks James! The start-in-a-prison-cell certainly began as a simple nod to the Elder Scrolls games but it then truly became part of the story. Glad you picked up on that! 😀
Neverarine
February 8, 2016 at 4:12 pmwoooo
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:03 pmyay!
Tomos Watts
February 8, 2016 at 5:56 pmthe game looks fantastic two questions
1.do you know a price for the early access version?
2.do you know how many characters will be in the early access version?
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:06 pmThanks!
1: Not yet (it might be around 20 euros/dollars).
2: Just a handful. Enough for a few good conversations and quests though.
FirestormDDash
February 8, 2016 at 6:25 pmThis game will be what my child self wanted from watching all those old tv shows/movies about mice when I was young.
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:07 pmI hear you. I feel the same… 🙂
Jeff
February 8, 2016 at 11:35 pmI am dying to get my hands on this, and have been following this game since last year. Do you have any idea when we can officially preorder it/buy it early access?
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:09 pmProbably in a couple of months. It just needs to reach a satisfying level of quality throughout before we let it out the gates!
Steve
February 9, 2016 at 4:30 pmThis looks so amazing.. already looking forward to the sequel!
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:10 pmHehe. Thanks. If the game works financially you can be certain of that; the overall arc of the story is already planned beyond the scope of this game. 🙂
Dragonhead
February 11, 2016 at 4:55 pmWow! Looks super!
Seith
February 11, 2016 at 7:11 pm*High-fives*