Mousy RPG Ghost of a Tale squeaks out of Early Access
Click the mouse button
We first started covering Ghost of a Tale back in 2013, and it was quite stunningly gorgeous even then. You'd think that five years would have dulled the edge of a game so heavily banking on the quality of its 3d art, but it seems that every update the game has received during its lengthy time in Early Access has only made it prettier.
Joining a recent glut of indie passion projects finally reaching fruition, the ambitious miniature-scale fantasy adventure has finally left its mouse-hole and ventured out into the scary, predator-filled world of commercial game releases. It's okay, little fella. We won't eat you, although you do look good enough to eat...
Impressively, the game has managed to arrive a little early, beating its originally planned March 15th release date by a couple days. Players around the world can now step into the (err, metaphorical) shoes of Tilo, a tiny little minstrel-turned-adventurer mouse in a world built to lilliputian scale, but still dense with dangers. Being a very small thing in a world full of somewhat larger small things, Tilo's skills tend towards stealth and evasion, always leaving you the option to scurry wildly for cover if things do go south.
I've been meaning to try Ghost of a Tale for some time, but never quite found the time. Thankfully, Brendan spent some time with the game back in 2016 and found it a little lacking at the time, mostly due to shortcomings in quest design. Interestingly, Brendan's 2016 preview mentions that the game has no direct combat, with guards evaded rather than challenged directly. The launch trailer above seems to imply a somewhat more dangerous world, with Tilo using fire-bombs to battle a pair of spiders at one point, suggesting that things do open up outside of the 25% of the game ready for Early Access back then.
We'll hopefully be able to find out just how much the game has changed over the past two years soon, and bring you our official RPS brain-thinks on the subject, but until then you can at least take solace in the positively glowing user reviews the game has garnered on both Steam and GOG. So, have any of you grubby lot been playing this over the course of its development? Share your thoughts in the comments below.