The Path is beautiful
Upcoming artistic horror title selected for the Independent Games Festival
"The Path" has been selected as a finalist in the Independent Games Festival in the category "Excellence in Visual Art". Winners will be announced during the Game Developers Conference on February 20th in San Francisco. A playable demo of the game will be presented in the Independent Games Festival Pavilion on the show floor at conference, from 20 to 22 February.
http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html
http://www.gdconf.com
The Path is a single player horror game, currently under development at Tale of Tales. The game is scheduled for release in early 2009. The entry to the IGF consisted of a single chapter of the game (out of a total of six). The Path is an atmospheric interactive experience inspired by the folk tale of Little Red Ridinghood. It subverts players' expectations and evokes an intensely dark and sad mood.
http://www.tale-of-tales.com/ThePath
"We are both surprised and delighted to come up as finalists. Surprised because, historically, the jury of the IGF has been leaning towards retro games and experiences that prioritize gameplay over content. The Path stands out as a game that goes against the grain: embracing contemporary technologies, exploring realtime aesthetics and focusing on narrative and mood above all. So that makes us very happy: to see artistic ambition in independent games being rewarded."
Tale of Tales is a Belgian games studio lead by media artists Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. They develop games with the explicit intention of exploring the artistic potential of the interactive medium, which they believe to be enormous. This often leads them to designing titles that are unorthodox and not even considered to be games at all by some. Case in point is their multiplayer screensaver The Endless Forest, in which every player plays a deer without missions, goals or combat.
"The Endless Forest is an idyllic and peaceful game. The Path deals with extreme violence in an intense, psychological way. Nevertheless, both games share a number of design principles, centered around the freedom of the player to decide how and when to play and what the ultimate narrative will be. Both games are casual in terms of interaction, but deep and poetic in terms of content."
Tale of Tales is celebrating its fourth birthday next Wednesday, December 19th. There will be a special ABIOGENESIS performance in The Endless Forest starting at 11 UTC. Everyone is invited to come and join the Twin Gods in a party of raining rocks, flower fireworks and goofy song and dance. Because the sublime requires the grotesque!
http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/abiogenesis.html