research - tale of tales

i will be researching the company 'tale of tales', trying to find out the differences between big name game developers and the smaller indie developers,   tale of tales is a  games development studio, founded by auriea harvey and michael samyn in Belgium in 2002.

''
The purpose of Tale of Tales is to create elegant and emotionally rich interactive entertainment. We explicitly want to cater to people who are not enchanted by most contemporary computer games, or who wouldn’t mind more variety in their gameplay experiences. For this purpose, all of our products feature innovative forms of interaction, engaging poetic narratives and simple controls.''

from what i can gather, tale of tales make it their goal to make obscure games with a unique gameplay and art styles, as opposed to anything which might be considered 'mainstream', by looking at their games i can tell that in my personal opinion, they focus more on the art side of things to how fun the game is.

for example, 'the path' is a horror game they have made based off the old stories of little red riding hood, it apparently offers an unsettling atmosphere and environment and a unique style of gameplay, The six protagonists each have their own age and personality and allow the player to live through the tale in different ways. Most of the story, however, relies on your active imagination. i find this to be an interesting concept, but as there are apparently no goals to accomplish, enemies to fight or puzzles to solve, makes this debateable if it can even be classed as a 'game' at all.

another example is their debateably most popular game, 'the endless forest' their own description for this game is as follows ''The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game and social screensaver, a virtual place where you can play with your friends. When your computer goes to sleep you appear as a deer in this magical place. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow. Just run through the forest and see what happens.''  this seems to me like a charming idea, but doesnt sound like there must be very much to do other than run around as a deer, and by word of mouth that IS all there is to do.