Let me catch you up on what happened since we released Ghost of a Tale…

Of course we worked right away to maintain the game and fix bugs (both in early access and after the release). We also hired and provided support to a localization studio (Level Up Translation), after which we worked on porting the final game to the Xbox One (one of the hardest things we’ve ever done) and then hired another studio (Seaven Studio) to port the game to PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch. We also worked on two physical releases (PS4: Tesura Games / Switch: Super Rare Games) featuring art and design documents. The game even won two awards!

After that we started thinking about our next game. We planned out the development and work began utilizing the same engine (Unity) we had used on the first game. We also developed a separate tool for quests and dialog creation to cater to our specific needs (our previous off-the-shelf tool was little more than a glorified text editor). Once Paul publishes quests & dialogs the new tool allows us to integrate those in-game with one click. It was a sizeable time investment that cost us a full year but it would prove to be very wise down the line (spoiler alert).

After a couple of years of steady work a picture started to paint itself and I just didn’t like it: We were spending more time fighting the engine rather than actually creating gameplay systems and assets. I was getting more and more frustrated with the everyday limitations and hassle Unity put on our iterative process…

Around that time Epic began to communicate about their new Unreal Engine 5. So I took a look at it (not having liked at all the earlier 4.x iterations) and it became clear to me this was a much better option for our game. I had no doubts about this but keep in mind it was almost a year before what could be called the “great dev migration” when a lot of indie and AAA game developers decided to ditch their current (and sometimes proprietary) engine and moved on to UE5.

Might as well go public about this: Several months ago we made the tough decision to ditch #Unity3d and move on to #UE5 for our follow-up game to #GhostOfATale. It set us back significantly in terms of schedule (lots of work to recreate) but we know it was the right decision. pic.twitter.com/SGnLkivb8f

— Seith (@SeithCG) July 15, 2022

I could talk for hours about the differences between Unity and Unreal Engine and I’m happy to if enough of you are interested. Just let me know in the comments.

Here’s a previously shared screenshot showing the first fruits (huhu) of our early work in Unreal:

Anyway I had to break the news to Paul and Cyrille: We needed to change our game engine in the middle of production. Which almost never happens in the industry because the consequences are too dire to contemplate. Normally you would have to go through a storm of unpleasant meetings, convince the heads of the studio, look producers and investors in the eye and say “we need to scrap those last couple of years of development and start again from scratch”. Unthinkable!

Thankfully in our case it turned out Paul and Cyrille were willing to trust me and bite the bullet. Still, Cyrille was doing a lot of the back-end pipeline like data management, saving/loading system and authoring tools and it meant for him to ditch everything he knew and had accomplished in C# and move on to C++. Not an easy prospect by any stretch of the imagination.

But we were hoping the quality of the visuals would clearly justify our decision, as you would hopefully agree seeing this (also already shared) screenshot in UE5:

Although Paul’s work wasn’t to bear the worst of the brunt it still meant for him to revert to early stages of testing and participate again to the initial development of a new system of dialogs and quests, intricately interwoven with game design. Thankfully our earlier choice of investing in an entirely separate first-party tool to author dialogs and quests proved to be a good one since it meant that the nature of Paul’s writing work wouldn’t be affected too much by the game engine change. Another positive outcome was we got time to refocus on the game’s strengths and essence, which we might not have done had we kept on plowing ahead as initially planned.

So in the end we “lost” about a year-and-a-half just to learn the new engine and recreate the old game systems. But I’m very glad to say today that it was all well worth the time, pain and money. We’re now at a stage we would never have reached with the previous engine. Both in terms of visual quality and gameplay richness.

Here’s a new screenshot taken in a spot that might be familiar to you as it’s roughly matching the very first (Unity) screenshot we ever shared online. This time however it reflects the look of the game in the new engine:

Anyway, as we kick off this new year we will start sharing more information about the game’s progress, like we did the first time around. Of course we still have a lot of work ahead but we are hoping you’ll stick with us as we talk about every aspect (technical, artistic, narrative, etc.) of making a game in Unreal Engine 5.

And on this note let me close this very first development blog post about Ghost of a Tale 2 and wish you a Happy New Year!! 🙂

PS: To stay up to date with news regarding the game please follow us on these:

GhostOfATale on Twitter / Bluesky / Instagram / Facebook

SeithCG on Twitter / Bluesky

The post We’re back!!! first appeared on Ghost of a Tale.

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? 🙂

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