Tales - $4 bundle!

Started by , Mon 14/11/2016 21:44:28

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Decided to get me 'Tales' gifted for upcoming christmas holidays. With a bit of luck, the Linux build might be also available on Humble...  ;-D


m0ds

#41
That's pretty sweet playthru (also a good way to spot bugs early on, and it was interesting to see someone take a while to find the inventory bar, lol) ... but man, that dad ignores his kid quite a lot ;) nice to know it's being played by folks like that though!

Spanish is now working on Steam. Hope to update the DRM-free copy as soon as we can (once we're certain Spanish is working proper and we've fixed a bit of Russian text!).

Mandle

Quote from: Screen 7 on Wed 30/11/2016 23:52:24
That's pretty sweet playthru (also a good way to spot bugs early on, and it was interesting to see someone take a while to find the inventory bar, lol)

Yeah...another thing I noticed in every playthrough was that they have a hard time finding the King Arthur book because they go to K immediately without looking at the A page... This was not supposed to be a puzzle, but it seems it might have turned into one. The book is on the A page because it was thought that people would find it easier because they would see it as soon as they opened the catalogue. I guess that probably works for native english speakers, but if someone who is not native must look at every title one by one to concentrate on reading them, it doesn't work so well by the looks of it...

Mandle

Quote from: Screen 7 on Wed 30/11/2016 23:52:24
but man, that dad ignores his kid quite a lot ;) nice to know it's being played by folks like that though!

I was wrong actually. Through talking a bit with them I found out that this playthrough is actually a guy playing the game with his little sister. I think they are from India. This actually warms my heart more than a father/son team as fathers have a natural inclination to get their son involved in their interests, but older brothers (and quite a bit older by the sounds of their voices) do not usually have the same inclination towards younger sisters... So yeah, an interesting combo there indeed!

cat

We (I played the game together with raeff) finished playing yesterday. I thought I'd write a short review.

We really enjoyed the game and recommend to play it!

What I liked about the game:

Story A lovely story based on a unique game concept. I loved that you could visit several different stories (of some of them I haven't even heard before - great to learn something new!) and all characters were interesting and believable. It had also a very good and satisfying ending.
Spoiler
Around the world in 80 days was the only book in the game I read myself, but I couldn't for my life remember where they boarded a balloon. A Wikipedia search revealed that my mind was not playing tricks on me and there was indeed no balloon. So, of course Fogg could not help us with the balloon - great take on the story!
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Graphics Beautiful! The backgrounds were done with so much detail, it was a pleasure to look at them. Also the portraits enhanced the dialogs by emphasizing emotions. We played the game with the laptop connected to the TV having all graphics shown at large scale, which was great and helped a lot with immersion.

Music The lovely music was, together with the graphics of course, a huge factor of setting the scene for the different stories. You just opened a book and were immediately pulled into the world just by hearing the first bars of each tune.

Voice acting Great performance throughout, my favourites being Alfred and Enkidu. I also enjoyed the accents that were fitting to the book (especially in the Gilgamesh story)

Puzzles The were ranging from easy to difficult with lots of variation. Of course, this is mostly personal preference, for example
Spoiler
the tile slide puzzle in the temple: when we encountered it, I was "Great, I love this kind of puzzle" but raeff was just the other way round, he hates them. So, in our case, I solved it :-)
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What I didn't like:

UI Since we were playing together, most of the time raeff was controlling the mouse. Using the magic bag was somewhat tedious: every time we were interacting with the full bag, there was an unnecessary messagebox if I really want to remove the item (of course I do, that's why I clicked there!) and another box when it was empty. Also, only beeing able to carry just one item was annoying, especially with
Spoiler
the recipe puzzle were you have to carry so much stuff to the kitchen
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Another thing about how the GUI reacted to clicks:
Spoiler
The magic coat: you would either put it on or just take it as an item, depending on the room you were in. This was a bit weird. I'd have prefered to have Alfred clickable and use the coat on him.
Also the last puzzle: In all previous situations, left clicking the empty bag would just show a message. But suddenly it is the solution? Merlins hint wasn't helpful either (and he gave great hints for all other puzzles), we even tried to cut the books with the knife from the library (i.e. from outside) and just discovered the solution by accident. We felt a bit cheated then, especially with it being the last puzzle which should leave us satisfied.
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Voice direction Of course, noone knows for sure how ancient names were pronounced, but it should at least have been consistant. Some said for example 'Enkidu while others said En'ki:du. Additionally, some of the voices had very irritating accents, like the left woman at the market. Some of the voices where slightly different in volume.
Another thing: Lowering the music volume during voiceacting was sometimes a bit distracting, especially when there were several lines with just short breaks in between. It might have been better for a game with so much text to keep the music volume a bit lower throughout the game.



We found a tiny bug:
Spoiler
When you look up "Around the world" in the cataloge after you have been there, the red frame and error wont go away anymore. It was even visible in the final cutscene.
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m0ds

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it :) About that bug,

Spoiler
you are able to see the red squares anytime just in case you forgot where the book was. Would you say the "error" was that you could see it during the ending sequence? As such, it was working as intended except for at the ending? It's true, if you searched for it again and never had reason to go back into it (thus clearing the red box) it may NEVER clear the red box from that point on.
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thanks for the report!

cat

About the bug:
Spoiler

The red squares worked as expected throughout the game. They show up when selecting the book in the catalog and disappear as soon as I enter the book.
But the "Around the world" book cannot be re-entered later on (but can still be marked by selecting it in the catalog). So there is no chance to "get rid" of the red square again. The red square was a bit distracting, especially during the ending sequence.

I would suggest to remove all red squares either as soon as any book is entered, or at least before the final cutscene.
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Mandle

Quote from: cat on Tue 06/12/2016 16:38:36
About the bug:
Spoiler

The red squares worked as expected throughout the game. They show up when selecting the book in the catalog and disappear as soon as I enter the book.
But the "Around the world" book cannot be re-entered later on (but can still be marked by selecting it in the catalog). So there is no chance to "get rid" of the red square again. The red square was a bit distracting, especially during the ending sequence.

I would suggest to remove all red squares either as soon as any book is entered, or at least before the final cutscene.
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I would also add:
Spoiler
Also maybe make the 80 days book unsearchable again in the catalogue once the player has done everything needed there. The display message could be something like:
Quote
"There's nobody left in that book that can help me. Oblivion has already wrecked that tale."
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cat

Good idea, Mandle!

I just want to point out, that the bug is really tiny, more a graphical glitch.
Throughout the game we experienced no other bugs, no walkbehind glitches, no voice lines not matching the text,... none of the things that usually can be overlooked by testing. The game is very polished!

Mandle

Quote from: cat on Wed 07/12/2016 08:41:13
no voice lines not matching the text

Well then, I'm glad that my extra half-a-dozen playthroughs to track down all the voice actors not reading the lines as written and then rewriting the TRS file to match what they said was not to waste!

But, actually this was a good thing for the game for the most part: Mostly the cases where the voice actors misread the lines resulted in a much more natural performance than what the line originally was, and I was more than happy to rewrite it to match what the actor did with it.

It felt a lot like what movie directors do when they decide to go with the actors' ad-libbed lines rather than what was written in the script: As long as it means the same and the delivery is better, I will always go with that version rather than it be delivered awkwardly.

Mandle

I've found another let's play of Tales on youtube by a quite entertainingly snarky younger guy called Masterwolfin:

This is the first one I've seen in the current style of professional youtuber let's players where they show themself on webcam in the top corner and bounce their own comedic style off the game as they play it.

And this guy is quite good in my opinion. He's outspoken and snarky but never really at the expense of the game, and often mentions how much fun he is having playing it. The humour is just his style and it makes me smile a lot.

Masterwolfin's Tales playlist can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMaw0MQGWqQ&list=PLPep3x97x1NV3PviF91t0F2NbJvL9NOTZ

Also 123Pazu that I mentioned before is continuing his playthrough and has just said that he plans to finish the game by the end of this week...

Emineo4j, who I also mentioned on the previous page, has finished the game and the full playthough is available on his channel...

I will update links to these channels soon but for now you can just go back a page and follow the links there if interested...

cat

Adventure Gamers reviewed Tales and gave it 4 out of 5 stars:
http://www.adventuregamers.com/articles/view/32050

The German Adventure-Treff gave it 85% (which is very good):
http://www.adventure-treff.de/artikel/tests.php?id=435

Mandle

#52
I just read through the Adventure Gamers' review and it was very fair and balanced hugely in the positive side, while still pointing out what they viewed as slight flaws...

I was especially pleased to read the following section as it reinforced for me the warm-fuzzies I have gotten from watching let's plays and the reactions to my take on the different characters, and the choice to steer away from archaic speech and write them as modern archetypes, and the warm and light feeling of the original script by AprilSkies, also not to forget the voice actors that really gave each character their true souls:

QuoteIt was good, too, to see the dialogue treated with a spritely touch. The characters you meet aren't burdened by olde worlde speech and the knowledge that the weight of the world is on their shoulders, instead being more likely to greet you with a cheery, "Hey, dude!" They'll also occasionally give you acerbic commentary on everything from Uruk's bureaucracy to Bellerophon's angst at being mistaken for Hercules. They seem human, with ordinary human troubles and humour, and do a good job of making their lives and worlds feel real.

Thanks for sharing these links cat, and let's hope that the game's fame spreads even more because of these reviews!

Uhfgood

I'm assuming this is for sale, have you had any sales yet?

[delete}

#54
The friendly guys from German Adventure-Treff.de published a test of Tales recently. Overall, a well-written review with a quite good rating. Especially the emphasis on books, the amount of animations as well as nicely produced voices and music are positively mentioned.

Congratulations, Ape Marina and Screen 7!

Edit: Me stupid  :sad:  Of course Cat and Mandle already mentioned it. Sorry. Will post more carefully, and read the thread thoroughly first.

NickyNyce

I had a great time playing this beautiful game. I wish I could create backgrounds like this. I loved everything about it. Thanks to everyone involved for making a very enjoyable and fun adventure game.

m0ds

Thanks for pointing out the reviews, and your own comments, they've all been nice to read! The game is on sale and it is therefore selling - but it is by no means a GTA 5 or the likes, as such it has a job to do winning some hearts first and what you might be hinting at - "selling well", later. It's good to see it's been appealing to different age groups and the fact it has several functioning alternative text translations is obviously paying some dividends - even if only small ones right now - for euro gamers (if the reviews are to be believed, ie, Adventure Treff isn't fake news ;)). Thanks again for purchasing, playing... when it goes on discount for the first time proper, I'll be back to let you know.

Mandle

Just a quick heads-up that youtuber 123Pazu has just finished his 34 episode let's play series of Tales.

The full playlist is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZQ31oLs8KQ&list=PLv_2SQLNWWxYoBMjr2vaw9axAei7ouJTD

Mandle

I found another review of Tales which I don't think has been mentioned yet in this thread:

http://www.gameboomers.com/reviews/Tt/Tales/Tales.htm

It is once again a massively positive review with only a few niggling negatives mentioned (the same ones that everyone mentions (laugh) )

m0ds

#59
Nice! .................... we won't talk about the adventures planet one though........................... :P

Never the less, the game has been well received by many of the sites, and by the 5 people that own it. It's been named Tales [PC] on Steam to help with visibility. Can't afford Linux version at the moment, sorry. Maybe when 7 people own it (laugh) No regrets. It has a solid shelf-life ;)

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