Now is the time for the independent games to take center stage as the AAA developers rest, scheduling their big releases for later in the year. For me this time of year always presents a challenge, forcing me to look afar from what I might typically play. In some respects Ghost of a Tale isn’t too different from what I usually play, adventure/rpgs are one of my mainstays, but I honestly hadn’t heard about it until I went looking. The promise of great graphics and a good story were enough to intrigue me but unfortunately, after playing it for 3 hours, I’ve decided it’s simply not for me.
You play as Tilo, a minstrel mouse who’s been caught up in a perilous adventure. Separated from your wife you’ve been thrown into prison to await your sentence and, quite unfortunately, the possibility of the hangman’s noose. So you take it upon yourself to break free of the prison and begin the search for your wife. The prison is full of unlikely allies however including a few of your former captors. You’ll need every bit of help you can get as breaking out of the rat infested prison will be no small feat, even for a small mouse like yourself who can fit into some incredibly small spaces.
On the surface you’d think that Ghost of a Tale was running on the Unreal engine given its overall look but it is in-fact a Unity based game, something I honestly did not expect. The aesthetic then is not born out of the engine defaults or limitations but instead is an active choice by the one and only developer behind the game. The environments aren’t particularly large but they are brimming with detail, a lot of which is unfortunately hidden away quite often due to the dark areas you’ll be exploring. Whilst many reviewers laud the visuals they’re honestly not that great, but the fact that they come from a single person is quite impressive. It has taken them over 5 years to get to this point though.
Ghost of a Tale is an adventure game in the truest sense, giving you an environment to explore and a set of puzzles to solve in order to progress. There are a few RPG elements thrown in for good measure, like a rudimentary level and perk system, which helps with giving you a small sense of progression (outside of unlocking new areas). It’s a stealth based game without a true combat system, instead giving you some options to cope with situations when you’re discovered like hiding or knocking them out. The adventure game elements are well developed as well, going as far to incorporate things like what you’re wearing into how NPCs react and what dialogue options will (or won’t) be available to you. Overall Ghost of a Tale is a surprisingly complete game and is certainly the product of someone passionate about bringing it to life.
The stealth mechanics are done well, giving you the usual “awareness meter” that will fill up as your enemies become aware of where you are. If you’re discovered you’ll have to break line of sight and then hide somewhere for a time until your pursuer gives up the chase. This can get a little buggy at times as the rats can get stuck on corners and other places which, for some reason, prevents them from entering their non-alarmed state. You can also throw bottles at them to knock them out which is sometimes necessary in order to steal a key from them or to get through an area quicker. Running drains stamina but the rats don’t move faster than you do at your normal pace so really all you need to do to avoid getting hit by them is run past once then trundle along until you can find a hiding spot. Once you get the hang of it navigating the map becomes a lot quicker as you can judge when you can quickly dart through or when you need to take your time. This well done stealth is what kept me playing for the first hour or so but after then things started to drag on a bit.
Pretty much all of the missions are fetch quests, sending you around the map looking for different things that you’ll need to bring back to someone in order to progress the story. If you loot anything and everything in sight (which there’s no penalty for doing, by the way) you can sometimes preempt some of these but most often you’ll be sent to find a bunch of things that you couldn’t collect beforehand. Given how much of a maze the map is this quickly became tiring as I’d often forget where I was or where I’d looked already and then have to spend the next 5 minutes staring at the map to figure it out. Whilst I’ll admit that this is probably what a lot of people enjoy about the game for me it was simply frustrating. If at all possible I’d love an option to guide me in the right direction for my current quest, even if it was just to the general area. That’d certainly have kept me playing for much longer.
Those who played the game will now likely point out that the game has a kind of in-built walkthrough in the form of florens and the blacksmith. Basically you can find some currency in the game and spend it on hints which I honestly quite like. However there’s not a lot of them around and I feel like I’d probably run out of them before the game was half over. Sure I could also consult a walkthrough guide but I just wasn’t that interested in what the game had to show me.
A lot of that is probably due to the fact that the story wasn’t exactly resonating with me. I’ll wholeheartedly admit I’ve been spoiled by many games that were fully voiced and so my tolerance for wall of text based games has dropped considerably. That, coupled with the fact that it didn’t feel like Ghost of a Tale’s story wasn’t going anywhere fast, meant I didn’t have anything driving me to play it beyond the few hours that I did. It’s a shame as based on the wildly positive reviews I’ve seen for it on Steam and elsewhere I had good expectations for it but, unfortunately, it just didn’t deliver for me.
Ghost of a Tale is one of those few games where I seem to find myself on the opposite end of public opinion. There’s no doubting the amount of love and effort that’s gone into this game, something that’s especially commendable given it was all done by a single person. However if The Witness taught me anything great craftsmanship only goes so far if the result isn’t fun to play. There’s perhaps a few small changes and additions that could bring someone like me into the fold but, honestly, it feels like that might be antithetical to what Ghost of a Tale wants to achieve. So whilst I might not have enjoyed this game that certainly doesn’t mean you won’t and the review score below is simply reflective of my experience, not necessarily the quality of the game itself.
Rating: 6.0/10
Ghost of a Tale is available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 right now for $24.99. Game was played on the PC with a total of 3 hours playtime and 15% of the achievements unlocked.
