This is just a reminder that the upcoming limited Nintendo Switch physical edition of Ghost of a Tale (from Super Rare Games) will go on sale on November 26^th. Apparently these could go really fast so don’t forget to mark the date… 🙂

(You’ll notice the box has an exclusive variant cover and features new original art from Jerome!)

The post Switch Limited Physical Edition of Ghost of a Tale! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

You can go to the Nintendo eShop and download a digital copy right now (or within a couple of hours, depending on where you live)!

There will also be a limited physical edition coming later, but we’ll communicate about that as soon as possible.

If you remember more than a year ago I was emitting doubts that a Switch port was at all feasible while retaining the artistic identity of the game. Well, today I’m glad to be proven wrong by Seaven Studios!

Being able to play Ghost of a Tale in the palm of your hand is quite a treat. Please enjoy! 😉

The post The Switch version is out today!!! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

Here’s the trailer (captured entirely on the Switch):

And here is the the store page for the game.

We wish we’d be able to give you the release date right now but due to the current pandemic a lot of things are getting delayed as countries (including ours) go into lock-down mode. So for now it will have to just be “Spring”. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for up-to-date information.

One thing is for sure though; the game will first be available as a digital download. A physical release will come later on…

Also, if you were part of the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that helped us to create the game then you are eligible to get a free download code when the game gets released on the Switch!

All we require is that you send us an email from the same email address you used for your pledge during the campaign (since that’s the only way we can make sure emails are legit). You can send us your code request here: crowdfunding@ghostofatale.com and we’ll send you codes as soon as possible.

That’s it for now! Remember to stay safe at home!

The post Ghost of a Tale on the Nintendo Switch! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

Ghost of a Tale is out on consoles!! 😀

You can find the game right now on the Xbox One store… (note that if you already bought the game when it was in the Preview program you can simply download the final version at no additional cost):

… And the PlayStation store:

Here’s the final trailer:

And the official press release can be found here.

As I already mentioned in the past, a lot of the new tracks have been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra (directed by none other than Mathieu Alvado himself, the tracks’ composer), but this time you can take a peek at the recording session itself:

Now that the game is out on consoles we need to see if it finds its audience. A lot of the larger websites in the US still don’t even know Ghost of a Tale exists and we regularly receive messages along the lines of “How in the world didn’t I know this games existed!” So word of mouth is and remains to this day the primordial means by which the game stands a chance of reaching its potential audience.

There is no doubts that this release provides closure on a very long journey which started when I hadn’t yet met my wonderful collaborators without whom Ghost of a Tale would not be what it is today.

But right now we’re staying focused on the console version (a patch is already in the works) and then, later, maybe we can breathe a sigh of relief… 🙂

The post Ghost of a Tale is out on Xbox One and PS4! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

To start, we’ve discovered that coordinating a synchronized release between us (a microscopic studio), a console-porting studio, Microsoft and Sony is quite a challenge and as a result we’ve had to push the console release date by a couple of weeks. We were hoping to release before the end of the month but we’ve finally set the official date to Tuesday March 12^th.

That was necessary in order to get review codes before the release day and incidentally it will also mark the anniversary of the PC release.

Here’s the PS4 trailer to whet your appetite, supported by the dulcet tones of Mathieu’s composition (with a little help from the London Symphony Orchestra):

The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X will benefit from improved textures and higher resolution (compared to the basic PS4 and Xbox One). Framerate will still target 30fps on all platforms.

Let me also remind you that if you want to get Ghost of a Tale on Xbox One you can still do so at a lower price ($19.99) right now while the game is still in Preview. The price will get aligned with the PC and PS4 versions (at $24.99) when the final version gets released.

To the often-asked question of “Are you going to release the game on Switch?” the answer is still a fairly non-committal: “We would love to”… 🙂

Now I mentioned music earlier and here’s a news that I know a lot of people were waiting for (myself included). I’m obviously speaking of the…

Original Game Soundtrack

I am extremely proud to announce the long-awaited release of Ghost of a Tale’s original soundtrack. It contains all of the game’s tracks composed by Jeremiah Pena, Containher and Mathieu Alvado. It represents more than an hour of truly outstanding music (36 tracks to be precise) and you can get it right now for $7 on Bandcamp at this address.

Of course if you backed us up at the “Bold” level (or higher) during the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign you can get it for free. All you need to do is send us an email at crowdfunding@ghostofatale.com from the address you used to pledge during the campaign (that last part is important) and we’ll send you a code to access the album free of charge on Bandcamp.

If everything goes well you’ll be playing Ghost of a Tale on your favorite home console in a little more than three weeks. Wish us luck! 🙂

The post Xbox One and PS4 release date locked! Soundtrack available! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

In addition to being faster than the old one (and better organized) we also have a brand new forum. The main site and the forum are unified, so you can use your forum user name and password to post comments on new updates such as this one.

In the Development section of the gallery you’ll find a lot of information regarding the creation of Ghost of a Tale, with behind-the-scenes looks at game-design and development. This information was put together by Paul and contains drawings and notes that haven’t been published on the site yet.

We’ve updated our entire Media page as well, where you’ll be able to browse screenshots, videos, illustrations, fan art, etc.

(Note: Since the paint is still fresh a few hiccups are to be expected, so please bear with us in the event of technical difficulties)

Best indie Game Award:

I’m proud to announce that Ghost of a Tale has received the Ping Award for Best Indie Game of 2018 (along with the Best Graphics in a Indie Game award) at the end of the Paris Games Week!

It genuinely is heartwarming to be recognized for the hard work we’ve put into the game. As you know it’s been a long and arduous journey but we’ve learned a lot along the way!

Xbox One and PS4 release:

Following a discussion with our distributor we’ve been made aware that releasing the Xbox One version of Ghost of a Tale smack in the middle of the holiday’s season is Not a Good Idea™. That is unless we want it to go totally unnoticed.

Important semantic point here: a distributor is a partner who is paid by a developer to make a game available on as many platforms, worldwide, as possible. A publisher actually finances and drives a game’s development, and as a result can impose its rules (likely dictated by marketing considerations). It often owns the final game’s intellectual property and sometimes owns the developer itself.

Now as you all know we don’t have a publisher. By choice. Which means we’re absolutely independent and as such we can do pretty much what we want. However we’re still capable of recognizing sound advice when we hear one!

In parallel with this we have also been informed that the PlayStation 4 version of the game will be ready towards the beginning of the year, for a potential release in February.

So the decision was straight-forward: We will do a simultaneous console release of Ghost of a Tale on Xbox One and PS4 in February.

This way we’ll stand a much better chance at getting noticed by the specialized websites, which at this point is exactly what the game needs.

Papercraft contest:

Speaking of console release… As we did once in the past, we are today announcing a paper model contest to win free copies of Ghost of a Tale on consoles!

The papercraft pdf document was lovingly prepared by Paul (he also created the Tilo one from the previous contest). Here’s how it should look like when you’re done:

All you have to do is build good old Kerold here, then put him in situation and snap a couple of pictures. You can then post your pictures in this thread.

The first 20 persons to post pictures of their very own paper Kerold will later on receive (via email) a key code to download Ghost of a Tale on their favorite console (Xbox One or PS4)!

Ghost of a Tale soundtrack:

We get from time to time requests regarding the game’s original soundtrack, so let me address this: it is our intention to put together all of the game’s tracks (composed by Jeremiah Pena and Mathieu Alvado) into an official OST which will be available on this site. We can’t give any date or pricing yet, but know that it is in the plans!

Finally I’ll leave you with the link to the Steam page of Ghost of a Tale, where you can now nominate the game (and/or us) for a Steam award if you wish so.

And on that note… see you in the next update! 🙂

The post New website! Simultaneous Xbox One & PS4 release! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

You may wonder what we’ve been up to since the game’s release back in March, so let me start by saying that we’ve been actually supporting the game by outputting bug fixes and improvements, so much so that we’re today very proud of the current state of the game.

That being said, we’re still going to improve Ghost of a Tale from a musical point of view! But more on this later…

We have found a distributing partner (Plug In Digital) who’s now taking care of making the game available on many different distribution platforms on PC as well as other international markets.

Incidentally, a new place where you can get Ghost of a Tale is EA’s Origin platform:

Ghost of a Tale on Consoles:

On the road to releasing Ghost of a Tale on the Xbox One we have reached a tremendous milestone: indeed we’ve just received Microsoft’s certification! Among other things, it means the final version of Ghost of a Tale actually runs on the Xbox One without setting fire to the console, which is great, right?!

More seriously though, now that this important step is behind us, it leaves us free to polish the last details and integrate the most recent bug fixes (we’ve recently put out a small patch for the game on PC). In terms of a release date we can’t say anything more precise yet, except that we are aiming for December. There’s still  a lot of moving parts though so please be aware that this is our hope, as opposed to a solid promise.

In any case we can’t wait for people who played the Preview version of the game to find out about the new characters, locations, quests, etc. Hopefully new players will like what they discover as well! From a visual standpoint, the final version provides better textures, lighting and dynamic resolution.

Here’s a quick video capture of the game running on the Xbox One. The audio track is one of Tilo’s songs by ContainHer. The fingers on the gamepad are by Cyrille.

Now regarding the PS4 version, I’m happy to announce that we’ve hired Seaven Studio to take care of the port. They’ll start working on it within the next month or two and we hope to be able to release the game on Sony’s console early next year.

Finally regarding a potential port of Ghost of a Tale to the Nintendo Switch (since we get quite a few requests about that), let’s just say that my stance has slightly changed from “I’m not sure that’s even possible” to “we might look into it in the future”. 😉

Music:

At the start of this update I mentioned something about music, and here it is: the console version of the game will feature even more tracks (that’s more than 23 additional minutes of original score) by composer Mathieu Alvado who is taking over from Jeremiah.

Those will be new character themes and ambient tracks to enrich the overall experience. They will be recorded live by none other than the London Symphony Orchestra. They will join the existing compositions on the game’s soundtrack, which will eventually be made available on our site (no ETA yet, sorry).

Needless to say, those musical improvements will get integrated into the existing PC versions free of charge.

Website:

I’m also very happy to say that this is one of the last updates on this site, as we’ve been working hard (thanks Stefan!) on designing a brand new Ghost of a Tale website, including redesigned forums and much improved reactivity! We should be able to roll this out next month, barring any unforeseen technical incidents…

That’s it for this update! I’ll leave you with a recent in-depth interview (in French, but Google Translate is your friend) I did with 3DVF. Ghost of a Tale is mentioned of course, as well as the use of Unity, and even some movies I worked on!!

See you in the next update! 🙂

The post Ghost of a Tale on consoles, more music! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

After five years of hard work now is the time to see if it was all worth it… 🙂

Here’s the release trailer:

So far the feedback is overwhelmingly great, with about 96% of positive reviews on Steam!

Speaking of reviews, we got our first official one! It’s on French site Gamekult and it’s an 8 out of 10! Let’s hope this marks the beginning of a good trend.

And now it’s back to listening to players’ feedback and fixing (hopefully few) bugs. Oh, and catching a little sleep too. 🙂

I’ll see you in the next update, as I leave you with one last screenshot taken by Nautilus (using the game’s photo mode)…

The post Ghost of a Tale is out on PC!! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

Before we start, you’ll notice in this update I sprinkled quite a few more screenshots than usual (most of which were created by the awesome Nautilus using the photo mode included in the game). Because now is the time to not only spread the word about Ghost of a Tale, but also SHOW that this little game is actually worth their attention!! 🙂

Release date

So here it is, after almost five years of learning how to create a game from scratch: the final version of Ghost of a Tale will be released for Windows PC on the 13^th of March.

It will be available for download on Steam, GOG and Humble Bundle at the price of $24.99. There are no plans for physical release yet (although we would love to eventually have one).

(Note that the game will remain at $19.99 for the next two weeks, until it’s out of early access)

The release date for the consoles version (Xbox One (X?) and PS4) is not yet set because I want to make sure we address everything before we start entering the “certification dance”. I have a very poor internet connection and I can’t upload huge files back and forth as quickly as I wish.

In any case, the only thing I can say for now is the final version of the game on those consoles will come “later this year”.

Before you ask, there are no plans to release Ghost of a Tale on the Switch since it would most likely require a complete re-tooling of all the visual features and a fundamental re-authoring of most of the 3D assets.

But who knows, if the game is financially successful, maybe we’ll be able to afford hiring another studio to rebuild everything from the ground up while still maintaining the visual identity of the game…

On that note it will be very interesting to see how the upcoming adaption of Dark Souls on Switch is going to fare, both from an artistic and technical standpoint. It might teach us a thing or two.

In terms of the gameplay length for Ghost of a Tale (and keep in mind those are estimates) it should roughly take you around 8 to 10 hours if you don’t care much about the quests and story, but almost double that if you want to take your time and see (and do) everything.

The Poster Art

I’m also very happy to finally share with you the official poster art created by Jerome!

I really wanted it to evoke the animated movies from the 1980s, and I hope you’ll agree that Jerome perfectly captured that feel of mystery!

It seems to say “you’re going on a dangerous adventure as a minstrel mouse and you’ll meet interesting characters“, doesn’t it?! 😉

Localization

We went with LevelUp Translation for localizing the game and they are currently hard at work on the initial languages (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian and Chinese). Paul is coordinating with them (hi Damien) on top of finishing all the remaining tweaks on the dialogs, lore and quests. Which is a huge task since GoaT is has more text than many AAA games (thanks for your help, Alex!).

You see localization is tricky with Ghost of a Tale because over the years we’ve developed a consistent world with its history and rules. It’s not an overly complex one but it’s full of puns and double entendre which cannot bear a typical word-for-word translation; it is a genuine adaptation that is required in this case.

Testing

Needless to say, lots of testing is going on right now! We have brave and dedicated testers (Rhumba, Fluke, Alex…) toiling away on our forum sending bugs, which Cyrille dutifully fields and confirms before we vigorously squash them!

Additionally we’re starting a final round of testing this week, with fresh meat… err, I mean testers (hi Enzyme), which Cyrille is also going to coordinate.

Finishing Assets

I’m focused of course on fixing bugs and finishing assets and animations to make sure you don’t see too many white capsules in the final game. White capsules make lovely stand-ins for NPCs but I understand most players frown on those in a finished game… 😀

And since we’re talking about finishing assets, Jerome is practically done with all the character portraits and illustrations. Nicolas created new sounds as well (which I still need to find time to integrate in the game) and I know that Jeremiah is working on the remaining tracks.

The Past…

As I was looking for more recent screenshots to share for this update I inadvertently found a stash of old ones. I thought it’d be fun to compare how the game looked like when we showed it at Gamescom a couple of years ago and how it looks like now, in the final version.

The first comparison is with an interior shot, at the start of the game (in the jail):

The second one is an exterior shot, in Dwindling Heights’ courtyard:

It’s really nice to be able to gauge the technical progress at a glance. It’s also interesting how the artistic ambitions of the game grew to closely match Unity’s evolution as a real-time 3D engine.

The Future…

The next update I’ll post will probably come after the game’s released, as I expect all of us will be properly swamped until then (and probably well after), providing support and bug-fixes as needed.

Now comes the real question: will the game meet its audience?

That’s the scary part. Because we have no control over any of that.

The one thing I know is we have given it our very best. The game is truly charming, fun, and even moving at time: it is exactly what I was hoping it would be, and then some! I’m immensely proud of the work created by everyone involved.

But we understandably live in a world of big marketing machines, connected influencers and calibrated advertising campaigns. Will the gaming website juggernauts even take notice of Ghost of a Tale…?

Of course I would love for the game to be successful, because I would love to get a chance to keep working in this medium, and for us to do more, better, equipped with the experience and knowledge we acquired during that challenging journey.

And, well…

Wouldn’t it be neat if enough people in the world eventually cared about a certain adventurous minstrel mouse? 🙂

The post PC Release in 2 Weeks! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

I do wish I had time to post more development updates here but we’ve entered the final stretch to the game’s completion and I tend to not see time whizzing by. Paul is working hard on dialogs and quests and Cyrille still develops precious tools which allow me to streamline my everyday workflow. And at this point of the development the dividends pay up big time!

To start, here’s a screenshot that makes use of a new volumetric lighting asset (not yet in the early access version). But more on that later…

The final game’s release:

A couple of months back I was still hoping we would be able to release the game this year. Even though to this day I’ve refused to give out a specific date out of fear of missing it I’ve been known to say publicly “2017”.

The thing is, now that we’ve got a very clear view on the final stretch, that’s just not realistic. Well, technically the game’s content itself will be mostly done by the end of December, there’s no doubts about this.

So I guess technically you could say “Yay, game done this year!”. But that’s not the way it works. You don’t release a game as soon as you wrote the last line of code and animated the last walk cycle.

When all is said and done we’re going to need a few weeks (we estimate 4 to 6) just going through QA. That is intense testing and making sure there are no outstanding issues (whether it be in text display, animation, mechanics, quests, dialogs, etc…).

After that (well, almost in parallel) we’ll have several people working on translating the 60K+ words of the game into as many languages as we can financially afford. Which is at first: French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will also try for Portuguese, Polish and Russian eventually (depending on how much it costs). And after that Chinese and Japanese would be great.

On that topic, some studios often go with horrendous Google translate (sometimes because of cost, sometimes because they can’t be bothered) but let me assure you that won’t be the case for Ghost of a Tale. We will make sure the translators know of context and are given the tools necessary to do a great job.

Meanwhile we will reach out to journalists and YouTubers in order to make them aware of the game’s release date (or in some cases of the game’s sheer existence). This phase includes anything marketing-related (screenshots, interviews, advertisement, etc…).

If you remember, the early access version of Ghost of a Tale was released more or less in a void. We can’t afford that for the final release; things need to be done properly in order to insure the game’s completion doesn’t go thoroughly unnoticed.

All of this amounts to roughly 8 weeks after final content is done and locked. Which is why we are aiming for a release in the beginning of March 2018.

Note that this is for the PC version. Xbox One will follow soon after that (barring any technical catastrophe). And finally the PS4 version.

(We haven’t looked yet at Xbox One X but if the Xbox One can run the game, the X won’t have any problem running it much, MUCH better!)

Development Progress:

As I mentioned earlier I’ve very recently integrated a nice volumetric lighting asset in the game, which greatly brings out the atmosphere of mystery that I always wanted to capture.

Technically what it does is it allows for the display of light rays even when the light source is off-camera. In the screenshot below the sun is actually out of the camera’s frustum yet it casts visible volumetric rays.

At night it translates for example to a much more dramatic moonlight. Which inspired me to revisit the overall nocturnal look of the game and I think that you guys are going to like it! 🙂

What’s great is when you explore a dark wood at night and the moon rays fall through the canopy as Tilo runs through them. It just feels so nice.

Final game’s duration and details:

Some of you might wonder how long the game will last. That’s obviously difficult to say but based on the early access it should take at least 15 to 20 hours to finish. Of course it could be much longer if you want to discover all of the secrets and locations.

The final game will have roughly 60 quests, varying in terms of complexity (compared to the 30 or so in the early access). It will also have more NPCs, but let’s not spoil that right now!

The new locations to explore will more than double the area of what’s already available in the early access. Believe me, the world feels much bigger now and you will get lost without a map. 🙂

The price:

The final game will go on sale at $24.99. However, while the game remains in early access, the price will stay at $19.99. Which is a way for us of thanking you for taking a chance on an early-access game and trusting us not to fudge it up!

Character portraits:

Finally I would like to officially welcome Jerome Jacinto to Ghost of a Tale’s (diminutive) team! Jerome is an experienced illustrator who worked on “Tooth and Tail” (where he took care of character design and key art) as well as the digital board game “Armello”.

Jerome is now creating the game’s NPC portraits, which appear during dialogs (the art in the current release is just place-holder if you hadn’t guessed!). This will make dialogs even more enjoyable than they currently are.

Here’s a gallery of some of the characters (no real spoilers as those already appear in the early access).

Of course each character will possess a wide range of poses to match their dialog and personality. Here are only a few of Gusto’s expressions:

I have to say every time Jerome finishes up a new character’s expression sheet it truly is a pleasure to peruse through all of them in anticipation of their use in the game… 🙂

Alright, so we reached the end of this update! Thanks again for taking the time to read all of it. I hope you liked it and now I’ll go back to work. As usual please don’t hesitate to leave your comments below and I’ll do my best to reply. See you in the next update!

The post Final Stretch! Release Plan! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.