Okay… I don’t get it.
Tale of Tales is an indie game developer. They made the Path — which I thought was pretty good and pretty interesting. It’s how I first heard about their studio.
Today they released Fatale. I bought it, played it, and now… disappointed.
I like Tale of Tales because they look at games as an art form and experiment with it in that way. Which is great! Fatale, sadly, is just a horrible game.
As in game-game. Something I want to play!
At the beginning, you just stand in a cellar as text flashes up on the screen. There’s a progress bar at the bottom, and when a new scarf appears a new floating wall of text appears. They did a great job with the text effects. But I’m bored out of my mind waiting for it to show up. It feels like I’m watching an extremely long loading-bar. There’s nothing to do except wait for more text to show up.
Then, some guy enters the room and kills you.
I have no idea why the spacebar is ‘jump’ since it holds no purpose… unless you’re bored and want something to do like jump while waiting for the next block of text to show up.
Okay, on to level two. Now you take on the role of a floating spirit (I guess). And you want to turn out all the lights. I don’t know why. In fact, I don’t know why someone killed me in level one, how I got in the cellar in the first place, or why I care so much about the dancing lady the text was telling me about.
Turning out the lights is boring too! You put your cursor on the flame, wait for all of these beams of light to reach the centre, click, and then snuff out the flame with some kind of darkness. I think I’m the darkness? You can’t do it once, either. You have to do this for all the lights! I think there are 16.
The process never changes. There are no puzzle elements, or tricky lights you have to get to. There are people around, but they can’t see you. And they don’t care if you turn out the light either. Once the lights all gone, the game is over. In the ReadMe it tells you not to do this part too fast either! This is all there is. Snuff out a candle and the game is over!
You have to quit it yourself. If you relaunch it, there’s an “epilogue” screen that is just the girl dancing… which feels it was really the dance from the beginning when you were in the cellar and couldn’t really see it.
Also… why does the girl have an iPod? Yeah! Seriously! There’s an iPod. I think it’s a 1st gen nano.
If there’s a message buried in here that I’m not smart/deep enough to gather — a “games as art” thing — that’s fine… I just didn’t get it. But why does that mean the game still can’t be a game? Gameplay here was repetitive (if it could be called gameplay at all).
And… you know what, I take it back. I have no idea what I just played, either. I don’t feel I’ve grown as a person after playing it. I don’t have some profound message to think about or take away from it either. Too much of this game was missing. iPod? Floaty ghost turning out lights? head on a platter? What was the point?
I need a walkthrough to explain what the hell I just played!
Sorry, Tale of Tales — not your best.
